Charles McClam cheers at a primary election night rally for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday.
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Charles McClam cheers at a primary election night rally for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Former Vice President Joe Biden had a big night in South Carolina, showing his promised strength with black voters.
If he had lost, Biden’s campaign would likely have been dead. But he far exceeded expectations, with a 30-point win in the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
“And we are very much alive,” Biden said during his victory speech Saturday night.
Biden lives to fight another day — some would say a super day — and he helped make the case for himself as the principal alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But he’s still the underdog heading into Super Tuesday because of his structural disadvantages.
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Can he gain enough momentum from his big win to help propel him? Attempted answers to that and more, with these four takeaways:
1. It may now be a two-person race
The Biden who showed up Saturday night during his victory speech in South Carolina is the Biden whom a lot of establishment and moderate Democrats were hoping to see.
If he earlier made a lot of them indecisive about whether he should be the Sanders alternative — after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and his lack of a focused message — he probably reassured a lot of them Saturday to get behind him.
“It is fast emerging as a two-person race,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said Saturday during NPR’s live coverage.
And she’s not the only one.
“I think this is a two-person race right now,” former Obama 2008 Campaign Manager David Plouffe said on MSNBC. “There’s only two people I think are going to accept our party’s nomination. It’s either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.”
Wealthy venture capitalist Tom Steyer dropped out Saturday night, which might help Biden’s margins with black voters in the half a dozen states on Tuesday that have significant black Democratic populations.
But it doesn’t look like any of the other candidates crowding the moderate lane are getting out before then. Biden has to hope that moderate voters, who don’t want Sanders to be the nominee — and are thinking about casting their votes for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar — reconsider and go with him.
2. Endorsements (can) still matter
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at Biden’s Democratic presidential primary rally in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday.
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Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at Biden’s Democratic presidential primary rally in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday.
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Biden got the endorsement last week of South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democratic leader in the House and the highest-ranking African American in Congress. He’s venerated among Democrats in South Carolina.
“My buddy Jim Clyburn,” Biden said during his victory speech, “you brought me back!”
Literally. He’s not joking, folks.
Half of South Carolina Democratic voters said Clyburn’s endorsement was an important factor in their vote — and Biden won them overwhelmingly, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by some of the major TV networks.
Clyburn endorsed Biden on Wednesday, and 37% of voters said they made up their minds in just the last few days. Biden won them by a huge margin.
Do any other bold-faced names in key states come out for Biden ahead of Super Tuesday, when he needs them most?
3. Biden has to hope he doesn’t wind up too far behind on Super Tuesday
Biden comes out of Saturday with the most votes out of the first four contests and is very close to Sanders in the overall delegate count. So then, why would Biden be the underdog on Super Tuesday?
A few reasons — he’s being badly outspent on the airwaves in the 14 Super Tuesday states; he has fewer staffers organizing on the ground; and Sanders’ strength with Latinos.
Sanders is spending 25 times what Biden is in Super Tuesday states — $15.5 million to $600,000, according to Advertising Analytics. To put that in context, Biden spent more on ads in South Carolina ($1 million) than across the 14 Super Tuesday states.
The most critical thing about Biden’s paltry Super Tuesday spending: He’s not competing on the airwaves in California. California is the crown jewel of Super Tuesday, with 415 delegates, or 30% of all the delegates at stake Tuesday.
Biden needs money — a lot of it — to have any hope of catching up to Sanders. Politico reported Saturday that Biden is gaining at least one major donor and that a pro-Biden superPAC raised $2.5 million Thursday.
But it might be too late to make a real difference for Super Tuesday. Here’s this forehead-slapping nugget from the Politico piece:
“It was too late, by Friday, to create a TV ad and get it on the air, according to the PAC — and it remains unclear whether the help is coming too late for Biden’s campaign, which largely abandoned delegate-rich California, for example, in the run-up to Super Tuesday.”
Latinos are a crucial voting bloc in California and Texas. If Sanders runs up the score with them Tuesday, he’s going to be tough to catch in the pledged-delegate race.
4. Sanders figures to do well on Super Tuesday, but he needs to do better with black voters to quiet the naysayers
Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event in Massachusetts on Friday. Massachusetts is one of the states that vote on Super Tuesday. On Saturday, Sanders was in another Super Tuesday state, Virginia.
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Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event in Massachusetts on Friday. Massachusetts is one of the states that vote on Super Tuesday. On Saturday, Sanders was in another Super Tuesday state, Virginia.
Jessica Hill/AP
If Biden needs to do better with Latinos and the white working-class voters he also promised to do well with, then Sanders needs to do better with black voters.
In Nevada, Sanders ate into Biden’s margin with black voters, but that didn’t happen in South Carolina. As expected, African Americans were a significant portion of the electorate Saturday night — 56%. Biden won them by 44 points over Sanders, 61% to 17%.
With that kind of loss with black voters, “how can he legitimately be our nominee?” former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, a Biden supporter, said of Sanders on NPR Saturday.
Sanders has shown strength with younger black voters in polls, but Sanders didn’t turn out young voters or new voters in South Carolina. Just 11% of the electorate was under 30, and just 19% were first-time voters.
Sanders is still in the driver’s seat for the nomination, but if he doesn’t do better with black voters on Super Tuesday, expect Hodges’ line to grow into a chorus with party stalwarts.
Tom Steyer, the California activist billionaire who has largely been a nonfactor in the Democratic primary campaign, dropped out of the race on Saturday night.
Steyer’s departure came after a disappointing finish in the South Carolina Democratic primary. With 70 percent of the vote in, Steyer had just 11.5 percent of the vote — despite spending millions of dollars on campaigning there.
“There’s no question today that this campaign, we were disappointed with where we came out,” Steyer told supporters in Columbia, S.C.
“But I said if I didn’t see a path to winning that I’d suspend my campaign, and honestly I can’t see a path where I can win the presidency.”
His exit came after he’d spent a total of $158 million on television and radio ads, according to Advertising Analytics. In South Carolina alone, Steyer had spent nearly $21 million as of Tuesday, the firm said.
Steyer had essentially put all of his efforts in recent weeks into South Carolina. He’d shown promise in recent polling in the Palmetto State and invested more time there than any of his competitors. His wife, Kat Taylor, even moved to Columbia earlier this month.
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Steyer had initially opted against entering the presidential contest before reversing course and joining the large field in July. He spent exorbitant sums of his own money on the race, outpaced in the Democratic field by another late-entrant, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul.
Steyer based his candidacy on promising to declare a “national emergency” on climate change upon taking office, racial justice, and ideas like allowing voters to make laws directly through regular national referenda. He also was a proponent of impeaching President Donald Trump. Former rivals thanked Steyer for his contributions to the race in tweets late Saturday.
Steyer was able to become a regular participant in the Democratic debates, though some his rivals charged that he was simply buying his way onto the stage.
The state Steyer zeroed-in on and saw the greatest return on his investment was South Carolina, where he consistently polled among the top three contenders.
As of Tuesday, Steyer had held 63 events in South Carolina, according to an NBC News count — far more than any of his competitors. He also had hired more than 80 staffers in the state — also more than any of his competitors.
Asked about Democrats thinking he should drop out of the race due to little visible path to the nomination, Steyer told NBC News in an interview he didn’t care for what “the Democratic establishment” thinks of his strategy and said it was “a crazy statement” to claim he was serving as a spoiler for former Vice President Joe Biden.
More than 15,000 coronavirus testing kits are in the mail this weekend en route to health professionals, according to Vice President Mike Pence.
There has been a concern that capacity is limited across the country to conduct tests amid a potential epidemic. The latest numbers show only 472 people so far have been tested in the U.S, according to the CDC. On Saturday, the first death in the U.S. from the virus was confirmed in Washington state.
“The FDA has approved a testing regime that state and local officials can be using,” Pence said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added the government is working with another “commercial provider” to send another 50,000 kits out. He did not provide details on the timing of when those kits would be finished.
“More importantly, we have established a process in a number of cities across the country — where if someone presents in the hospital with a respiratory ailment, we want them also tested for coronavirus,” Pence said. “We are going to move a lot of volume.”
“We think we have addressed the issue,” the vice president said.
U.S. health officials said Friday that federal agencies were increasing coronavirus testing capabilities at state and local labs, and were planning to streamline a process for the private development of test kits. So far, more than 86,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed worldwide and at least 2,979 people have died, the overwhelming majority of them in China.
Pence late last month was put in charge of the U.S. response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
On Sunday, he again urged Americans that they do not need to go out and buy masks to try to prevent them from catching the virus. He said the U.S. has about 43 million face masks stockpiled today, but those need to go to health-care providers first and foremost. The government has also contracted 3M to manufacture another 35 million masks a month starting immediately, Pence said.
The risk to Americans of coming down with the coronavirus remains “low,” Pence said.
The Trump administration is urging Americans to avoid travel to parts of Italy and South Korea amid growing concern about the spread of coronavirus.
In a press conference Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the U.S. has raised the travel warning to level 4 – its most severe warning – regarding travel to affected areas of Italy and South Korea.
In addition, the existing travel ban on Iran is being extended to include any foreign national who has visited Iran in the last 14 days, Pence said.
The “president has also directed the State Department to work with our allies in Italy and in South Korea to coordinate a screening, a medical screening, in their countries of any individuals that are coming in to the United States of America,” Pence said.
The new advisory applies to two regions in northern Italy: Lombardy, home to Milan, and Veneto, which includes Venice. Milan and Venice are major Italian vacation destinations.
Due to the heightened alert and a drop in travel demand, American Airlines late Saturday announced plans to cancel its flights to Milan through April 24.The carrier offers daily nonstop flights from New York and Miami.
Affected passengers will be given the option of canceling the flight or rebooking.
American also serves Venice but the service is seasonal and not scheduled to return until May.
The temporary suspension of Milan flights, effective Sunday, means American’s only nonstop flights to Italy this spring will be to Rome. The State Department alert level for Rome and elsewhere in Italy outside northern Italy remains at level 3, which means “reconsider travel.”
Other airlines serving northern Italy, including United and Delta, are likely to follow American’s lead and reduce flights to Milan.
“We want to lower the amount of travel to and from the most impacted areas,” Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, said at the news conference.
The restrictions are part of a containment strategy, though the coronavirus will still spread in the U.S., said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. There are cases throughout the world, he said, and the “United States cannot be completely immune to that.”
Trump said that officials are also considering restrictions on the Southern border.
Trump previously took steps to restrict travel from China when the outbreak began.
In January, the State Department issued a level 4 travel advisory for all of China. The CDC recommends travelers avoid nonessential travel to China, a level 3 warning, also its most severe warning. This excludes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
Contributing: David Oliver and Dawn Gilbertson USA TODAY
As a result, the investigations that animated the House’s Trump-focused oversight work since taking the majority in 2019 has gone relatively quiet — just as Trump has embarked on a government-wide retribution campaign and appeared less restrained than ever before.
The change in posture is an acknowledgment, House Democrats say, that in a world where Senate Republicans are bear-hugging Trump, and the courts are declining to operate at the speed of the congressional calendar, there are very few options that a single chamber of Congress can pursue short of withholding funds for agencies like the Justice Department — particularly when impeachment is no longer in their election-year arsenal.
“There is nothing that Donald Trump can do that would cause [Senate Republicans] to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee. “So that has caused everybody in the House to take a deep breath and figure out what our next steps are.”
“That leaves us legislative and political answers,” Raskin added.
In other words, the end of the impeachment process has become the advent of a new, narrower focus on what Democrats say is a crucial theme revealed by their efforts: Trump’s indifference to, or even encouragement of, foreign interference in the 2020 election. It’s a throughline, they say, of Trump’s behavior toward Russia, his treatment of Ukraine and his public comments on whether he would reject foreign help in future elections.
Now, rather than revive the smashmouth impeachment approach that they adopted throughout the fall and winter, Democrats say they intend to use their investigative weapons to highlight these election security themes and keep pressure on Republicans who chided Trump for his behavior in Ukraine but ultimately acquitted him for it.
“I would argue that impeachment actually served its purpose. It highlighted for people what we’re dealing with here and what the stakes are,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “I would say it set the table for people to take a good hard look at what I think impeachment helped to remind us of, what a threat that represents, and conveniently for us his behavior subsequently has only made our case for us.”
Democrats are pondering whether to pass new election security measures, putting them in the Senate’s court as the primary gets underway. And they’re planning to drive a consistent election security message as the nation’s focus shifts toward the November election.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a March 10 intelligence community briefing for lawmakers, and she’s slammed Trump for what she says is politicizing the intelligence community, in part by installing Richard Grenell, a loyalist ambassador, as the acting director of national intelligence. News reports that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming election have returned the issue to the fore.
Separately, Democrats on Friday dusted off their Trump oversight tools and took the first steps to confront the president’s campaign of post-acquittal retribution. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) requested testimony from a slew of high-profile Justice Department officials about political interference in criminal cases — including four career prosecutors who quit the case of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone earlier this month after the president intervened in his sentencing.
Since the near-party-line Senate acquittal vote, Trump has embarked on a government-wide effort to oust perceived opponents and install loyalists in senior national security roles. Trump also almost daily has assailed the judge and jury in Stone’s case as he seeks a new trial but faces a 40-month jail term for lying to House investigators. And Trump recently insinuated that New York state should drop investigations of him and his administration in order to receive more favorable treatment on national security matters, a comment one of the House’s impeachment prosecutors said proved Trump was “expanding his abuse of power to blackmailing U.S. states.”
Still, the absence of a focus on Ukraine, along with some Democrats’ urging to leave the president’s fate to the voters, is a shift from House Democrats’ forceful argument during the impeachment process that their focus on the issue must continue even in the event of a Senate acquittal. During the Senate trial, Democrats insisted that if Trump were acquitted, the integrity of the 2020 election — and indeed American democracy itself — would be at risk at the hands of a president thirsty for vengeance and believing himself free of accountability.
“For precisely this reason, the president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House’s top impeachment prosecutor, argued on the Senate floor.
The House Intelligence Committee is declining to discuss the status of its Ukraine probe — or any others that may have begun since the impeachment trial — leaving open to prospect that its Trump-related work is continuing even though it has taken no public steps. That includes any actions to confront a series of loose ends.
“While we won’t specifically comment on any ongoing or new investigations that have not been publicly announced, the committee is continuing to pursue a number of investigations, along with the committee’s important oversight work focused on ensuring that our intelligence community is protecting the nation and our upcoming elections are free and fair,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for the Intelligence Committee.
Six Democrats, including two Intelligence Committee members, on Wednesday wrote to the World Bank head David Malpass about a trip he took to Ukraine in late August, while military aid was on hold and Trump’s allies continued to press Ukraine for politically motivated investigations.
But there are other indications that the Ukraine matter has moved off the frontburner.
When one witness to the Ukraine scandal, White House budget chief Russ Vought, came before the House Budget Committee earlier this month, no Democrats asked him about why millions of dollars in aid were withheld from Ukraine, even though he had defied a House Intelligence Committee subpoena to testify in November. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo faced questions from the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday about coronavirus and the administration handling of Iran policy, but no Democrats inquired about Ukraine, despite Pompeo defying demands for documents from House impeachment investigators last year.
In recent days, three of the House’s top lawyers leading the impeachment drive — Judiciary Committee lawyers Barry Berke and Norm Eisen, as well as Intelligence Committee counsel Dan Goldman – have left their posts to return to the private sector. All three helped drive the House’s Ukraine investigation and impeachment strategy and know the intricate details of the case.
Similarly, though Democrats focused the bulk of the Senate trial on convincing Republicans to call former national security adviser John Bolton as a witness, the House has taken no post-trial action to force Bolton’s testimony on their side, even as the ex-Trump aide has spent recent days giving public speeches. During Trump’s impeachment trial, the New York Times reported that Bolton wrote in his unpublished manuscript that the president told him that aid to Ukraine would remain frozen until the country helped with investigations into his political rivals.
One reason, Democrats say, is Bolton has made clear he would resist any such demands for his testimony from the Democrat-led House even though he said he’d testify to the Senate if subpoenaed, likely leading to a lengthy court battle that would extend well past the 2020 election. Bolton is slated to publish his book next month on his tenure in the White House, and Democrats have indicated the notes he took while working at Trump’s side could be valuable new evidence.
And Democrats absorbed a huge body blow to renewing its Mueller-related investigation Friday when a federal appeals court rejected its effort to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn, a star witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In the 2-1 ruling, the court rejected the suggestion that Congress can sue to resolve this type of dispute with the Executive Branch, suggesting instead that Congress turn to its other tools: withholding appropriations, blocking nominations, censure, marshaling public opinion — and even impeachment. It’s unclear if the House will appeal that decision.
Another ruling is expected any day on the House’s suit to force the Justice Department to turn over Mueller’s grand jury material to congressional investigators.
In both cases, the House has argued that they need the testimony because they could form the basis of additional articles of impeachment against Trump, including for obstruction of justice. In fact, House lawyers had initially suggested that McGahn could have been made to testify during the Senate impeachment trial to provide evidence of a pattern of efforts by Trump to obstruct probes of his conduct.
Similarly, several House attempts to access Trump’s personal financial records are pending before the Supreme Court. The House filed a brief in that matter Wednesday but is unlikely to see a ruling until June.
A landmark deal between the United States and Taliban aimed at ending the US’s longest war may already be facing obstacles as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced that his government had not agreed to a clause set out in the deal.
Ghani objected to arrangements within the deal that would see the Afghan government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a condition for direct talks between the armed group and the government.
“The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners,” President Ghani told reporters in Kabul on Sunday, a day after the accord was signed in Qatar’s capital, Doha.
After 18 months of negotiations and nearly 20 years of war, the US and the Taliban signed an agreement set to pave the way for the withdrawal of all US and NATO troops from Afghanistan and a commitment by the Taliban that Afghan territory will not be used to launch attacks on other countries.
There are high hopes that the agreement will be followed by intra-Afghan talks between all major stakeholders and aiming to chart a course for peace in the country.
The Taliban had long refused to sit down with the Afghan government, calling it a “puppet regime”.
The four-part agreement sets March 10 as the date for an intra-Afghan dialogue with Ghani’s government as well as a prisoner-swap which would see the government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the Taliban release 1,000 captives.
However, Ghani said: “It is not in the authority of the United States to decide, they are only a facilitator”.
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, said: “What we are seeing now are actually all the problems that were existing before coming to the surface again today.”
“Everybody would agree, ironically, on the fact that the deal between the Taliban and the US – as difficult as it might have been – has probably been the easiest part in trying to bring peace to this country.”
While the prisoner swap could turn into a stumbling block for peace to return to the war-torn country, Ghani also said that a seven-day “reduction in violence” (RIV) would continue, possibly until a full ceasefire can be negotiated.
The RIV, which saw a drop in violence and casualties across the country, had been a condition for the signing of the US-Taliban deal.
The Taliban now controls or hold influence over more Afghan territory than at any point since 2001 and has carried out near-daily attacks against military outposts throughout the country.
The US and the Taliban had been on the verge of signing a peace agreement in September 2019 when US President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled the talks after a Taliban attack killed an American soldier in Afghanistan.
Trump has long expressed eagerness to remove US soldiers from Afghanistan and end the country’s longest war. He is seeking re-election this year.
More than 100,000 Afghans have been killed or wounded since 2009 when the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began documenting casualties.
Charles McClam cheers at a primary election night rally for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden in Columbia, S.C. Saturday
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Charles McClam cheers at a primary election night rally for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden in Columbia, S.C. Saturday
Gerald Herbert/AP
Former Vice President Joe Biden had a big night in South Carolina, showing his promised strength with black voters.
If he had lost, Biden’s campaign was likely dead. But he far exceeded expectations with a 30-point win in the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
“And we are very much alive,” Biden said during his victory speech Saturday night.
Biden lives to fight another day — some would say a super day — and he helped make the case for himself as the principal alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But he’s still the underdog heading into Super Tuesday because of his structural disadvantages.
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Can he gain enough momentum from his big win to help propel him? Attempted answers to that and more with these four takeaways:
1. It may now be a two-person race
The Biden who showed up Saturday night during his victory speech in South Carolina is the Biden a lot of establishment and moderate Democrats were hoping to see.
If he earlier made a lot of them indecisive about whether he should be the Sanders alternative — after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and his lack of a focused message — he probably reassured a lot of them Saturday to get behind him.
“It is fast-emerging as a two-person race,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said Saturday during NPR’s live coverage.
And she’s not the only one.
“I think this is a two-person race right now,” former Obama 2008 Campaign Manager David Plouffe said on MSNBC. “There’s only two people I think are going to accept our party’s nomination. It’s either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.”
Wealthy venture capitalist Tom Steyer dropped out Saturday night, which might help Biden’s margins with black voters in the half a dozen states that have significant black Democratic populations Tuesday.
But it doesn’t look like any of the other candidates crowding the moderate lane are getting out before then. Biden has to hope that moderate voters, who don’t want Sanders to be the nominee — and are thinking about casting their votes for former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar — reconsider and go with him.
2. Endorsements (can) still matter
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at Biden’s Democratic presidential primary rally in Columbia, S.C., Saturday.
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Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at Biden’s Democratic presidential primary rally in Columbia, S.C., Saturday.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Biden got the endorsement this week of South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democratic leader in the House and the highest-ranking African American in Congress. He’s venerated among Democrats in South Carolina.
“My buddy Jim Clyburn,” Biden said during his victory speech, “you brought me back!”
Literally. He’s not joking, folks.
Half of South Carolina Democratic voters said Clyburn’s endorsement was an important factor in their vote — and Biden won them overwhelmingly, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by some of the major TV networks.
Clyburn endorsed Biden Wednesday, and 37% of voters said they made up their minds in just the last few days. Biden won them by a huge margin.
Do any other bold-faced names in key states come out for Biden ahead of Super Tuesday — when he needs them most?
3. Biden has to hope he doesn’t wind up too far behind on Super Tuesday
Biden will come out of Saturday with the most votes out of the first four contests and be very close to Sanders in the overall delegate count. So then why would Biden be the underdog on Super Tuesday?
A few reasons — he’s being badly outspent on the airwaves in the 14 Super Tuesday states; he has fewer staffers organizing on the ground; and Sanders’ strength with Latinos.
Sanders is spending 25 times what Biden is in Super Tuesday states — $15.5 million to $600,000, according to Advertising Analytics. To put that in context, Biden spent more on ads in South Carolina ($1 million) than across the 14 Super Tuesday states.
The most critical thing about Biden’s paltry Super Tuesday spending — he’s not competing on the airwaves in California. California is the crown jewel of Super Tuesday with 415 delegates, 30% of all the delegates at stake Tuesday.
Biden needs money — a lot of it to have any hope of catching up to Sanders. Politico reported Saturday that Biden is gaining at least one major donor and a pro-Biden superPAC raised $2.5 million Thursday.
But it might be too late to make a real difference for Super Tuesday. Here’s this forehead-slapping nugget from the Politico piece:
“It was too late, by Friday, to create a TV ad and get it on the air, according to the PAC — and it remains unclear whether the help is coming too late for Biden’s campaign, which largely abandoned delegate-rich California, for example, in the run-up to Super Tuesday.”
Latinos are a crucial voting bloc in California and Texas. If Sanders runs up the score with them Tuesday, he’s going to be tough to catch in the pledged-delegate race.
4. Sanders figures to do well on Super Tuesday, but he needs to do better with black voters to quiet the naysayers
Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event in Massachusetts Friday. Massachusetts is one of the states that vote on Super Tuesday. On Saturday, Sanders was in another Super Tuesday state, Virginia.
Jessica Hill/AP
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Jessica Hill/AP
Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event in Massachusetts Friday. Massachusetts is one of the states that vote on Super Tuesday. On Saturday, Sanders was in another Super Tuesday state, Virginia.
Jessica Hill/AP
If Biden needs to do better with Latinos and the white, working-class voters he also promised to do well with, then Sanders needs to do better with black voters.
In Nevada, Sanders ate into Biden’s margin with black voters, but that didn’t happen in South Carolina. As expected, African Americans were a significant portion of the electorate Saturday night — 56%. Biden won them by 44 points over Sanders, 61% to 17%.
With that kind of loss with black voters, “how can he legitimately be our nominee?” former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, a Biden supporter, said of Sanders on NPR Saturday.
Sanders has shown strength with younger black voters in polls, but Sanders didn’t turn out young voters or new voters in South Carolina. Just 11% of the electorate was under 30 and just 19% were first-time voters.
Sanders is still in the driver’s seat for the nomination, but if he doesn’t do better with black voters on Super Tuesday, expect Hodges’ line to grow into a chorus with party stalwarts.
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