South Carolina blows up the 2020 primary

The result was so lopsided that South Carolina was called the minute polls closed. For the first time in weeks, the presidential primary once again looked like a race.

Not only had Joe Biden resurrected his campaign and put a dent in Bernie Sanders‘ juggernaut, the poor performance of Biden’s centrist rivals prompted new calls for their withdrawal. One opponent, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, dropped out.

Saturday’s results laid bare the inability of several lower-performing candidates to appeal widely to black voters — a critical component not only of the South Carolina electorate but of the Democratic Party’s broader base, and a potential sign of trouble to come on Super Tuesday. Those candidates now must confront the possibility of their fundraising drying up.

If there was a best case scenario for Biden, this was it. And as a result, the primary has been reset.

“Americans know Joe Biden, and a lot of them are coming home,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the airport in Dallas on Saturday night after campaigning for Biden in that Super Tuesday state.

For other candidates, he predicted that after the South Carolina result, “I think there will be some soul searching.”

In one sign of Biden’s sudden momentum, Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor and former Democratic National Committee chair, and Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, both endorsed Biden ahead of the Super Tuesday contest in that state. And Sen. Tim Kaine, another recent addition to the Biden camp, was preparing to campaign with Biden in Norfolk on Sunday.

Yet it’s possible that in Biden, moderate Democrats have found their answer to Sanders too late.

Just three days away, the Super Tuesday landscape favors Sanders, with his hardened base and extensive organization. And any meaningful consolidation of the primary field is unlikely to occur until after that day.

Even in Biden’s victory, his opponents were signaling their intent to hang on until then — or long after — muddying Biden’s path.

Elizabeth Warren, pulling just seven percent in South Carolina, declared Saturday that her campaign is “built for the long haul.” She plans to campaign on Super Tuesday in Michigan, which holds its primary a week later, on March 10.

And Pete Buttigieg’s campaign — recognizing a looming defeat in South Carolina — suggested in a memo this week that the campaign’s goal is only “to minimize Sanders’ margins on Super Tuesday and rack up delegates in the March 10th and March 17th contests, which are much more favorable to us.”

“They want to be in a consolidated field,” said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “It’s all about being an option. When the music stops, who has a chair to sit on?”

But candidates will soon find it increasingly difficult to remain relevant. Other than Biden, Sanders and Steyer, no candidate finished above 10 percent in South Carolina.

Following Super Tuesday, said Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator and two-time presidential candidate, “I think there will be a groundswell of party regulars … people who care about the Democratic Party day in and day out and help keep it alive at the county level, they will turn their backs on those who linger without a purpose or a contribution.”

He said small-dollar fundraising could allow candidates to continue on, but that Democratic activists and the media “will begin to say, ‘OK, enough already. What are you trying to achieve?‘ And they may find the stage not very attractive.”

Steyer already succumbed to that calculation. Both Amy Klobuchar, who did abysmally in South Carolina, and Warren, who did only marginally better, on Tuesday will have to defend their home states of Minnesota and Massachusetts, respectively. Sanders is pressing them hard in both states.
 

And if Biden dealt a blow to the field in South Carolina, Sanders is positioned to do the same on Super Tuesday.

Advisers to Sanders’ opponents acknowledge that the landscape that day, in which about one-third of the contest’s delegates will be awarded, is well configured for Sanders. His small-dollar fundraising machine has allowed him to compete across the multi-state map, and he is far ahead in the largest state, California. 

Sanders is polling above 30 percent in California — more than 15 percentage points ahead of Warren, Biden and Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who‘s spent nearly a half-billion dollars in preparation for a campaign designed to launch that day. The advantage is so large in California that every candidate other than Sanders is at risk of falling below the 15 percent viability threshold required to win statewide delegates there.

But Sanders’ lead is narrower in Texas, Tuesday’s second-largest source of delegates, and Biden’s victory on Saturday could spill over for him there.

“At a minimum, places with large African American populations are going to be pretty teed up for [Biden],” said Bill Carrick, a South Carolina native who managed Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt’s 1988 presidential campaign and who now works in California.

In addition to Texas, Carrick suggested Biden could see gains in North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas — all states where more than a quarter of the Democratic primary voters in 2016 were African American.

“We are in a little bit of an illusion here in California, because [Sanders] has run a five- or six-year campaign here … TV, and lots of campaigning all over the place, and all that stuff,” Carrick said.
 

Looking at the broader map on Super Tuesday and in later March, he said, “So many of these people have reasonable viability. Stuff changes so quickly.”

Following Sanders’ blowout victory in the Nevada caucuses last week, it appeared that neither Biden nor any other centrist Democrat might have a chance, with the possibility that Sanders might even breach Biden‘s Southern stronghold. But South Carolina shrugged off Biden’s demoralizing performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, saw his second-place finish in Nevada as proof of life and enthusiastically backed his candidacy.

It was a critical result for moderate Democrats, who have seen Sanders steamroll the opposition in early contests in part because centrist candidates split the moderate vote.

In an effort to keep Sanders’ numbers down in South Carolina, outside groups aligned with moderates aired ads criticizing him and his signature policy proposal, Medicare for All. The center-left group Third Way warned of Sanders’ “extremist policies,” including in a memo to Democrats in the Super Tuesday state of California.

But such efforts seemed anemic compared to Sanders’ fundraising and displays of grassroots energy. Only Biden’s decisive victory Saturday holds the promise halting the Vermont senator’s march forward. 

In a different era, said Les Francis, a former Carter administration official and former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, “there’d be some closed-door meetings where there’d be some head-knocking and table-pounding and leverage exerted — not on Sanders, but on the other campaigns, saying, ‘Come on, guys, let’s get behind one or two [moderates].‘”

This year, he said, “even if you wanted [the party] to, it can’t. It doesn’t have the muscle.”

Had Biden only prevailed by a narrow margin in South Carolina, the imperative for other moderates to abandon their campaigns would have been less clear. Now, given the breadth of his victory, Biden offers the prospect of a vessel for the Sanders opposition. The effort was already afoot in his victory speech.