In the first three contests of the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton underwhelmed against Senator Bernie Sanders, her self-described Democratic socialist challenger who scored a huge win in New Hampshire and kept it close in Iowa and Nevada, despite his rival's near universal support among the Democratic Establishment. But on Saturday, in the lead up to the all-important Super Tuesday primaries, Clinton managed to shift the race back in her favor, demolishing expectations with a huge win in South Carolina's primary.
After weeks of headlines about Sanders's upstart campaign, the weekend's victory seemed to confirm Clinton's inevitability as the Democratic Party's nominee. The former secretary of state pulled in nearly three-quarters of the vote in South Carolina, winning each of the state's 46 counties, as well as 39 delegates, compared to Sanders's 14.
In her victory speech, Clinton sounded more like a general election candidate than someone heading into Super Tuesday, congratulating Sanders for "running a great race," and pushing a message about "making America whole again." Tomorrow, she added, "this campaign goes national."
In fact, in the days before South Carolina's vote, Clinton seemed to almost forget she had a challenger, replacing attacks against Sanders with a new, loftier message about national unity. "I know with all my heart that our best years could be ahead of us, but that requires us to reject the kind of demagoguery and insults that we're hearing too much of in our political life right now," she told supporters in downtown Columbia Friday. "Tearing people down is easy—building them up is what we need to do."
Sanders, who flew to Minnesota Saturday night, admitted in a statement that Clinton had "won a decisive victory in South Carolina." But he refused to submit to her view of the Democratic race, adding that his campaign's "grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won't stop now." Democracy, he told supporters at a rally in Rochester that same night, "is not a spectator sport."
While the decision to flee South Carolina on the night of the primary suggested that Sanders had already given up on the state, it also belied his campaign's last-ditch efforts to make an impact there. On Friday, the eve of the vote, the Sanders team rolled out Killer Mike and other surrogates for a rally at Claflin University, an historically black college in Orangeburg, just a 10-minute walk from where Clinton was rallying voters at her get-out-the-vote event at South Carolina State University. Of Clinton's perceived strength with black voters, the Atlanta-based rapper proclaimed, "That goddamn firewall's got a crack in it."
In her speech Saturday, Clinton downplayed talk of this firewall. "We are going to compete for every vote in every state," she said at a primary night rally in Columbia. "We are not going to take anyone for granted." But exit polls showed that her overwhelming support among black voters remained very much intact. According to CNN surveys, black voters made up more than 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina—and that Clinton won and overwhelming 86 percent of their vote.
The results underscored underlying questions about the viability of Sanders's campaign, particularly as the race heads into Southern states on Super Tuesday. At Clinton's victory party Saturday night, voters said that while they liked the Vermont senator, they expressed doubt about his qualifications as a potential president. "Bernie is a good man, and I would have voted for him," Lucius Moultrie, a seafood-restaurant owner from Columbia, said. "I think that if he could become the vice president, it could be a winning ticket." Ultimately, Moultrie said, he decided to go with Clinton because of her position on criminal justice reform.
"I think is a good candidate, but I think Hillary would be better for the job of president," said Rita Johnson, a longtime Clinton backer from Spartanburg. "When I walked into the voting booth, I knew I would be voting for someone who was not only well-rounded on policy, but someone I could count on as far as community and family... She's someone you can depend on who's going to be there for the normal, everyday individual."
Even among young voters, Clinton's message of electability seemed to resonate. Sanders's "ideas are really cool and closer to the ultimate goal," said Lydia Harness, a twenty-something Clinton voter. "But I don't feel it's something that can be reached as quickly as he leads people to believe."
"As a young pregnant female, all of the health care modifications have helped me out," she added. "I just want things to keep going in the same direction."
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