Joe Biden dominates South Carolina Democratic primary
With over 95 percent of the vote counted in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina, President Joe Biden swept every county, garnering 96 percent of the vote overall and 95 percent or better in every county.
As The New York Times put it, “There was not much drama Saturday night.” Biden himself was in Southern California, reports Politico. At the watch party at the state fairgounds in Columbia, people were headed for the doors less than an hour after poll closing.
Self-help author Marianne Williamson edged out Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), with the pair earning a combined 2 percent of the vote.
With the Biden vote so dominant, the race so uncompetitive, and the vote count so low (a mere 131 thousand), the Times attempts to draw comparisons to past primaries, but comparables are slim:
The last time an incumbent Democratic president sought re-election, in 2012, President Barack Obama went unchallenged in South Carolina — and the state did not hold a primary.
Four years later, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the state’s primary, 370,864 people voted. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted.
The South Carolina Democratic Party said early vote data showed that the share of Black voters in the electorate was 13 percent higher than in 2020, when people of color made up about half of the voters in the Democratic primary and there was no Republican primary to siphon off voters.
In 2016, the last year in which both parties held presidential primaries in South Carolina, voters of color made up two-thirds of Democratic primary voters.
Biden and his allies moved South Carolina’s primary this year ahead of two states with less diverse population (Iowa and New Hampshire). Biden’s 2020 win there revived what appeared a flagging campaign. The campaign hoped “to counter a decline in approval for the president among some Black voters” and to underscore “actions the administration has taken to help benefit Black communities,” The Washington Post reports:
The incumbent’s team hoped a big win would springboard his campaign in the states ahead with a show of strength and quash intraparty doubts about some polling that has shown him trailing former president Donald Trump in a potential rematch. Saturday’s vote was also expected to provide a measure of Biden’s standing among Black voters, who helped propel Biden to victory and made up 56 percent of Democratic primary participants in the state four years ago, according to exit polls.
About polling. Use caution:
As far as what will motivates 2024 voters, I’m struggling to balance the need to defend our freedoms from (let’s face it) creeping fascism and Democrats’ conviction that what motivates voters more are kitchen table issues. I grew up in the Cold War when Birchers were screaming about the threat of creeping communism. Their red, white, and blue heirs today hunger for a fascist strong man. Do average voters see that threat or are they too busy fretting over paying for rent and groceries to notice?
Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering away at the threat to democracy. But democracy and fascism are too abstract for most voters. Freedom is not. But they can’t seem to get on board with that framing. Freedom is stability. Can Democrats walk the freedom walk and chew groceries at the same time?
Ezra Klein opined on people’s need to vote for stability in troubled times:
Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone. Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights, believes that the Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But she thinks they refuse to see that Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching, she said, is a “push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’” To that list one might add Trump’s skepticism of America’s support for Ukraine and many voters’ dislike of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election. But I think Soltis Anderson is right when she says that Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.
There are months to go before fall voting begins. That the broader economy is going gangbusters may finally reach people’s kitchen tables beforehand. But Biden and Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Don’t take the country’s temperature, people. Change it. Biden has to lead the way, and he’s doing too few interviews, Klein suggests, at a time when his age is an issue, like it or not.
Meantime, I’m still obsessed with turning out independents, unaffiliateds, NPAs, etc. whose votes will ultimately determine the fall elections in multiple states. They are overwhelmingly under 45 around here and turn out at ~12 percent below Democrats in North Carolina’s bluest, densest precincts. Out in red, rural Trump country, older independents turn out far more. For Republicans. State average indendent turnout is 6.5 precent below Democrats.
What are Democrats doing wrong where their support among independents is strongest? There’s some drama there, I’m sure of it.