Gone is McLeod Plantation, tragic frozen story as a souvenir from another era, of black slaves and free whites owners of cotton seas. Highway 171 begins, leaving the city of Charleston to end up in the Atlantic Ocean. Leaving and entering that almost straight asphalt line, in the populated areas on the margins of the 171, electoral posters with a name at the doors of the houses: Biden 2020. In South Carolina, this Saturday, for the travel companion President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, 77, will die or, perhaps, change the course of this unusual competition for the Democratic nomination in the primaries of this State.
It's time for Biden. After several weeks of unfortunate political results, the man fighting for this, his third commitment to be the candidate for the presidency of the Democratic Party, is the final one, is so optimistic about his future that it almost seems an act of faith more than a visit to the polls of his followers. Asked up to three times in the Democratic debate this week in South Carolina if he planned to retire if the result he was getting was not good, he kept on answering three times: "I will win in South Carolina."
The latest polls do not contradict him. After spending many months being the virtual winner of the primary in South Carolina, when Bernie Sanders had not yet become the overwhelming force capable of being the man to fight for the White House title against Donald Trump, the caucuses of Iowa and the New Hampshire primaries punctured Biden's demonstrative bubble and their digits sank into the first Southern State to vote for the Democratic nomination.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn endorses Joe Biden: "Our challenge is making the greatness of this country accessible and affordable for all. ... Nobody with whom I've ever worked in public life is any more committed ... than Joe Biden "https://t.co/7G0toYlQsa pic.twitter.com/NQf04n29Yg
- CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 26, 2020And yet, Biden lives a good week now. Two different polls give him a margin of victory against Sanders of eight and 18 points. That one of the most prominent black Democratic politicians in the country, James Clyburn, has given his support would seem to pave the way for victory in South Carolina. Nothing is written.
Everything is yet to be seen. But the South is not the Iowa corn plains that chose the young Pete Buttigieg or the independent New Hampshire voters who opted for Bernie Sanders, but who in 2016 voted for another candidate, perhaps Donald Trump. Nor is the Nevada immigrant paradise that also turned to the senator who defines himself as "democratic socialist" of Vermont. South Carolina granted more than 55% of the vote to Barack Obama in a historic primary in 2008. Here the black vote counts, as the motto of a bus that has been touring the State under that same mantra says: “ Black voters matter [The Black lives matter] . ”
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Sanders fights in South Carolina for the black vote that resisted him in 2016- Primary Results
About 30% of the population of the so-called Palmetto State is African American. And with that sector of the population Joe Biden has ties that there are those who consider condescending, but who play in his favor: having been the vice president of the first black president in the history of the United States. Aware of that affinity, Biden elegantly derives revenue from it. At each meeting, at each meeting in a senior center or in a church, the former vice president recalls that he was there, next to "a great man, with courage and a vision for America." "An extraordinary man whose legacy I intend to defend, protect and expand when I am president," Biden proclaims raising cheers from his followers.
Biden spoke this long and extended week about his relationship with the former South Carolina senator between 1966 and 2005, Ernest F. Hollings, who died last year. After the brutal attack perpetrated by a white supremacist in 2015 against faithful African-Americans in a church in Charleston, the former vice president has continued in close contact with their families.
What remains to be seen now is whether winning in a territory as friendly as South Carolina can serve Biden as a stimulus at the national level and before the next big date: the famous Super Tuesday, where 14 States are at stake, including California and Texas. South Carolina may be the beginning that Biden has not yet had in this 2020 race. Or if the statistics fail, the final final.
The black vote counts
Most Democratic voters, whatever their race, believe that Donald Trump, president of the United States, is a racist. With another survey data, it is known that 65% of African Americans consider it a "bad time" to be black in the United States. White Democrats consistently point out that African Americans appreciate and bet on Joe Biden because the latter was vice president with Barack Obama. The black voter does not want experiments, he wants a candidate who is able to kick the current tenant out of the White House. That is why African-Americans are reluctant to risk a candidate as far left as Bernie Sanders. They bet on eligibility. And according to polling months, today, the man who can leave Trump's presidency in just one term is Joe Biden.
