With about 3% of the votes counted, Joe Biden has been projected to win the South Carolina primary. Given that the result was called almost immediately after the polls closed, it looks like he will have a big margin of victory over the currently second Bernie Sanders.
Currently Biden has about 50%, Sanders 19%, Tom Steyer 12%, Pete Buttigieg 8%, Elizabeth Warren 6%, and Amy Klobuchar 4%. Michael Bloomberg was not on the ballot here, staking everything on the 16 contests to be held in three days time on Super Tuesday.
These numbers will change as more votes come in but usually not by more than a few percentage points.
The large margin of victory will undoubtedly give a boost to the flagging Biden campaign going in to Super Tuesday and revive the hopes of the Democratic party establishment that he can stop the rise of Sanders. It will be bad news to those who were hoping to pick up the centrist mantle from him if he should falter.
The democrats are cheerfully ignoring one of their important constituencies -- the same constituency that Clinton ignored: the voters who are not loyal to the democratic party. I’m one of those, by the way. 3 million of us came out and voted for Obama because we alternately fell for his hope and change message, or hated Bush that much. When they ran Clinton, some of us came out anyway (I did) because we thought Trump was a jackass, but about 2.5 million not-very-loyal voters who voted for Obama either stayed home, voted for Clinton, and a few voted for Trump. That’s the “not very loyal swing vote.” Clinton lost in Pennsylvania by 50,000 votes; a fraction of the “not very loyal swing vote” many of whom stayed home. All that shit about Russians or Bernie splitting the vote is just unwillingness to face how the democrats invited defeat, and got it, because they didn’t run a candidate that people could get excited about the way they did about Obama (or hating Bush).
Now, they appear to want to run Biden, on the strength of how much voters hate Trump, which is pretty strong, but there’s a very good chance that the “not very loyal swing vote” is going to stay home or not get excited and vote independent or just be pissed off if the dems sideline Sanders again. The democrats appear to be ready to ignore that not very loyal swing vote while tapping on the black voters in the south and treating them as though they’re a captive and loyal constituency. That could be a huge shock for the democrats that they don’t see coming until it’s too late. Then, naturally, they’ll blame Russia. When really the problem is that they’re leaning on what they believe are reliable constituencies, just like Clinton did.
I’d be quite happy to see the democratic party burn to the waterline. But I’d be happier if the republicans burn first. The idiotic democrats look at the electorate and see loyalty. They’re that stupid. They’re looking at the same kind of insurgency that brought Trump onto the republicans.
There are 2-3 million more voters that can be brought off the benches and who will vote if there is a candidate that can fool them into believing in them, like Obama did. Or, better yet, a candidate who is the real thing, if such a thing can be found. Relying on fear of Trump will go so far to get the “eh, meh” voters off the bench and into the polling place, but if they really want to win they need to embrace change and embrace the liberal “green tea party” that’s forming right in front of their eyes.
The pundit message from 2016 was that everything’s different now and the old rules don’t apply. So why are they still trotting our those old rules in 2020? Voter motivation is a huge factor. Given the low voter turnout, there hasn’t been a president elected in my lifetime who received 50% of the available votes. The trick is always getting people out to vote. Trump won for a simple reason: over 80% of white evangelicals who voted, voted for him, and they voted in large numbers. Thus their influence on the outcome is large in spite of representing a minority of all potential voters.
Second, the whole “socialism” thing is a red herring. It doesn’t matter who the dems run, the GOP will scream that they’re a socialist. Have people forgotten that they labelled Obama as a socialist? Biden, Mayor Pete, Bloomberg, every one of them will be labelled a socialist. Mind you, I don’t think that the average voter could give a coherent definition of “socialism”. It’s merely a synonym for “bad” in GOP-speak, and that’s because the modern dems ran away from the term and let the GOP do with it as they will. And that’s the thing about Sanders- he won’t back down. He’ll attack straight on. I’ve heard many more moderate dems complain that he’s rough-sounding or combative, that he’s not “civil” enough. That’s exactly what’s needed this time around. Trump and the GOP are not going to be civil, they’re not going to sit around and have a proper, well intentioned, calm debate of the issues. The past several years of their behavior ensures us of that. We need a fighter who will energize voters. That’s not Biden, or Mayor Pete or Bloomberg. They’re about as exciting as Wonder Bread.