Biden is paying back his debt to South Carolina
Being a state-level political official is typically thankless work. But not this year for the Democrats in South Carolina.
The state was home to President Biden's political renaissance during the primaries four years ago, and now the state is reaping the rewards and becoming the first official primary on the Democratic presidential calendar. And state party chairs and partisan activists are enjoying the attention.
Biden spent the night in the state last weekend. Vice President Kamala Harris will make her third trip here in the past month on Friday. A slew of A-list Democrats, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, have also made pilgrimages to heavily black and rural areas.
They've all come to sing the praises of the voters who saved Biden's fortune during a tough 2020 presidential race. And of course, they're being asked to do it again.
The role Black South Carolinians played during the 2020 campaign has become political legend. Spurred by a well-timed expression of support from Representative James Clyburn, they turned out en masse to revive Biden's then faltering campaign. Six months later, he won his party's nomination for president, and ultimately the White House.
As president, Biden promptly reshuffled the Democrats' presidential primaries to put the Palmetto State first.
From ethanol to HBCUs
As he travels the state on a county-by-county “bus tour” along the same roads he traveled during his 2020 U.S. Senate campaign, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison has reminded voters of all things that reward comes with.
“Instead of talking about ethanol right now in Iowa, guess what we're going to talk about? These are historically black colleges and universities here in Orangeburg,” he told a group of black voters at a barbershop in his hometown last week. “We're going to talk about the black infant mortality rate. We are going to talk about the fact that black farmers have not gotten what they are entitled to.”
As I sat with Harrison in the cafeteria of a community center in the small town of Seneca, SC, he told me that Biden's call to reshuffle the primary calendar was more an act of justice than a political favor.
The president “wants to make sure that the most loyal bloc of the Democratic Party, which has historically been the most excluded in this country, is represented and that they have a seat at the table and they set the agenda for what's important,” he said. said. “That's part of the reason why South Carolina was ranked first in the nation.”
A testing ground
Democrats have poured a lot of money and effort into South Carolina — a state that Biden's Republican rival, Donald Trump, won by 12 points in 2020 and is expected to easily win again. No Democratic presidential candidate has won the state since Jimmy Carter.
But as I wrote a month ago, South Carolina is also a testing ground for Democrats. The party is using the state to test a national message to black voters here that they hope will resonate in cities like Milwaukee, Philadelphia or Detroit.
Biden will not be in South Carolina for the night of the primaries on February 3 – a reflection of the fact that the vote is not particularly competitive. But he did spend last weekend in the state, where he stopped to talk to men at a local barbershop, gave a speech to party faithful at the Democrats' First in the Nation dinner and addressed congregants at two black churches in Columbia .
Clyburn's status as a pivotal Biden ally is on display. Harris will gather students on the campus of South Carolina State — Clyburn's alma mater — on Friday. The campaign has also hired several homegrown political operatives with close ties to Clyburn as senior advisers.
Biden made it very clear during his visit how he feels about South Carolina during a speech Saturday to more than 700 Democratic Party leaders, organizers and county chairmen in a ballroom at the South Carolina Fairgrounds.
“I wouldn't be here without the Democratic voters in South Carolina,” he said. “You're the reason I'm president. You are the reason.”
Trump and Biden as 'grumpy old men'
Two mean old rivals are marching towards a confrontation that many people actually wish wouldn't happen. If that's the plot of a slapstick comedy, it's also Nikki Haley's final blow against former President Donald Trump and President Biden as she fights for oxygen ahead of South Carolina's Feb. 24 Republican primary.
In a new series titled “Grumpy Old Men,” the Haley campaign will begin unveiling online videos, digital ads and emails from voters. Episodes like “Stumbling Seniors” and “Basement Buddies” capture her rivals' signs of mental turmoil and their light presence on the campaign trail, among other things.
The push is part of a shift in strategy Haley began after the Iowa caucuses, portraying Trump, 77, and Biden, 81, as belonging to the same bygone era of politicians, an era she sees as deeply at odds with needs of the country. It also follows her more aggressive stance toward Trump as the two engage in a heated confrontation in South Carolina, the state where she was born and raised and which she led as governor.
But the series, with its reference to a movie from 1993, could prove a risky gamble as she seeks to court a Republican base that is largely graying, white and Christian. Polls show her trailing the former president by double digits in her home state. Attacks on Biden's age did not play well during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
Haley, 52, has consistently presented herself as a “new generation leader” for her party and called for mental competency tests for candidates who are 75 or older. Yet, until recently, she has taken a careful approach to both men and their age.
Her most pointed attacks on the issue have been against Biden, though she often tells her audience she is not being disrespectful. “We all know 75-year-olds who can run circles around us,” she often says on the tree stump, “and then we know Joe Biden.”
Until recently, she was even less likely to go after Trump. She directly criticized him for entering mental decline for the first time this month after he appeared to confuse her with Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. On Saturday, she called his response to her momentum in New Hampshire “completely unhinged.” —Jazmine Ulloa
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