Joe Biden Has Put Everything Into South Carolina, and it Might Not Matter If He Wins
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Joe Biden fled New Hampshire on Tuesday night, and as far as these decisions go, it looked smart—he was about to get trounced, finishing an embarrassing fifth place below the viability line, and a speech in front of his New Hampshire supporters after the results began to trickle in would have been a sad, dour affair. So he hit the road for South Carolina, the state he absolutely must win to have even a remote chance of eventually winning the nomination. The state of his race looks far different from a month ago, when South Carolina represented not a desperate last stand, but a firewall where his dominance would become clear, just as it served that function for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Instead, he suffered nothing short of a disaster in Iowa and New Hampshire, and watched his support take a nosedive both nationally and among African-American voters. He has basically no chance to win in Nevada, meaning he’ll have to endure more negative press before anything positive comes in, and that of course makes the road in South Carolina even tougher as he tries to fight off backward momentum.
He seemed to understand the problem when he spoke Tuesday night in South Carolina, and he did his damndest to make the race about…race. Watch him position himself as the candidate of African-American voters in these two clips:
Joe Biden speaks in South Carolina on the night of the NH primary: “We just heard from the first two of 50 states. Two of them. Not all the nation, not half the nation, not a quarter of the nation, not 10%. … That’s the opening bell, not the closing bell” https://t.co/RFEp5jkNZKpic.twitter.com/jzhPiNUbzx
— CNN (@CNN) February 12, 2020