GEORGETOWN, South Carolina â The polls say Joe Biden is regaining a solid lead in South Carolina after a slump that followed dismal showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. In three new surveys, all taken in the last five days, Biden leads Bernie Sanders by 15 points, 16 points, and 20 points. (In two others, he leads by 8 points and 4 points.)
Biden’s support does not appear to be particularly deep, but that does not really matter if the vote Saturday aligns with the polls. He will win and survive at least for a few days until Super Tuesday.
Still, it is striking how tenuous some of Biden’s support in South Carolina appears to be. Yes, some wholeheartedly believe he is a great choice for president. But many others are making calculations, trying to game out the Democratic race and find the magic formula to beat President Trump. They’re guessing, hoping, that Biden might be the one.
“It’s a strategic vote for me for Joe because I do not want Bernie to win South Carolina,” said Mary DeVey, of Georgetown, after Biden spoke in this historic coastal town a day after the ugly Democratic debate an hour down the road in Charleston.
“I voted for him because I thought he was the best bet to win against Trump,” added Janice Coward, of Pawleys Island, who had just cast an early ballot for Biden.
Other voters are conducting their own internal debates. “Policy-wise, from a personal point of view, I would love to see Bernie Sanders be president,” said Jeremy Killian, a professor at Coastal Carolina University, in Conway, where Biden spoke Thursday night. Describing himself as not yet decided, Killian said he was concerned that Congress would kill the Sanders agenda. “So I worry about throwing away my vote.” From that calculation might come another vote for Biden.
“My politics are way more aligned with Bernie or Warren,” said Sara Rich, a professor who came to the Biden event with Killian. “I’m less concerned that once Bernie got into office that he would be ineffective â my concern is that he would not be able to get into office at all.” And from that calculation might come yet another vote for Biden.
By the way, some of the ones who felt most strongly that Biden did well in the debate, and that he is the best candidate, happened to have moved to South Carolina from earlier lives up north, especially in Pennsylvania. South Carolina’s population is growing rapidly, and a significant amount of that is from domestic migration â more than 400,000 people in the last decade. Pennsylvania is one of the main sources of those new South Carolinians. Biden, originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, before moving to Delaware, is a known quantity to them.
All of them, incidentally, were white. Another striking thing about some of Biden’s events is that, even though much attention has been paid to the role of black voters in South Carolina, and even though those voters have been described as Biden’s “firewall” after Iowa and New Hampshire, there don’t seem to be very large numbers of black voters coming to his events.
That is not always visible from videos of Biden’s speeches. In Georgetown, for example, Biden had Rep. Carl Anderson, an African American state lawmaker who is also a minister, deliver a rousing sermon-like introduction which ended with Anderson declaring the need for everyone to vote for Joe and moving around the room shouting, “Are you with me? Are you with me? Are you with me? Are you with me? Are you with me?” It gave the room a bit of the atmosphere of a black church, albeit with mostly white parishioners.
Some of Biden’s black supporters appear drawn to him for more old-fashioned and frankly political reasons than his white supporters. Some appreciate his eight years of service to President Barack Obama. But many said that as president, Biden will simply do more for their communities, whereas Sanders offers pie in the sky. Florence Linnen, of Brown’s Ferry, described her son’s work in dredging and her hope that he will be able to find a job close to home on a big project in the port of Georgetown. A vote for Biden might help with that. As for Sanders’s pledges of free college tuition, universal healthcare, and more, Linnen was unimpressed.
“It’s impossible for Bernie Sanders to give free education and free medical care,” she said. “It’s impossible. The United States just don’t have that kind of money. I could see you paying something. But free? I don’t see that happening. People want to work for what they need to have. They don’t want to always have something given to them.”
A few hours before Biden spoke in Georgetown, Sanders spoke at the convention center in North Charleston. It was a bigger crowd than Biden’s, with a different vibe. For example, where Biden began his events with the Pledge of Allegiance, Sanders chose another way. “My name is Emilio Vicente,” one of his warmup speakers announced. “I’m undocumented, queer, and unashamed.” The crowd cheered.
A lot of people expressed deep personal loyalty to Sanders; they weren’t doing any electoral math. “I just like the man’s integrity,” said Dave Telega, of Moncks Corner. “I just seem to trust him for some reason. Not your normal politician.” Telega said he voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 because “I didn’t like the way the DNC stole that election from Bernie.”
Victoria O’Byrne, from Folly Beach, said she, too, has supported Bernie since 2016. She watched the Democratic debate the night before â “I kinda thought it was a shit show, to be honest” â and none of it changed her mind. “I’ve been a Bernie supporter since the last election, so I’m not really going to change now,” she said. Originally from Glasgow, O’Byrne is a naturalized U.S. citizen for whom universal healthcare is the most important issue. “I believe in healthcare for everyone,” she said. “I believe in Democratic socialism. I come from a place that has all these things, and I know it can work.”
David Sarnoff, of James Island, said he had never contributed to any political candidate in his 68 years â until 2016, when he started giving to Sanders. The Vermont senator can truly address climate change, inequality, and other issues, Sarnoff explained, but he hoped Sanders would bring about even more fundamental change.
“He wants to make real changes to make America a good country,” Sarnoff said. “I mean, America has never been a good country, since the get-go. We’ve been brainwashed. Our founders are so great, right? George Washington and all these guys? What they did was they came and committed genocide against the natives, stole their land, kidnapped Africans and enslaved them, and founded our great nation. Our nation is rotten to the core. We need a good re-foundation. We need to have love among all people. We’ve got to start over again.”
The Sanders voters are not calculating. They are not transactional. They are deeply committed. Sanders’s rallies are bigger, the support stronger. But there are still the polls showing Biden going up and Sanders going down. South Carolina Democrats know what happened in Iowa, and New Hampshire, and Nevada. But many are still nervous about Bernie Sanders. They throw that into the equation, and also the possibility that Sanders cannot beat Trump, while Biden might.
That question, finally â Who can beat Trump? â looms behind all the calculations. One final example: At the Sanders rally, Carol Privette, from Summerville, fell into the category of a voter who defied the “lanes” theory of the election. For months, the pundits have talked about a “moderate lane” and a “progressive lane” in the Democratic race. Voters supposedly stayed within those lanes. If a moderate lane voter lost faith in Biden, for example, he or she would migrate to Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg. If a progressive lane voter lost faith in Sanders, he or she would move to Elizabeth Warren.
Not Privette. “I’m between Biden and Bernie,” she told me. “I’m trying to decide.” Her thinking was simple and straightforward. More than anything, she wants the “stronger in personality” candidate who will be able to defeat the president. “That’s the bottom line,” she said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
By temperament, Privette seemed to fit into the moderate lane. She characterized Sanders’ big-dollar proposals as “free that, free school, free whatever,” and said they are “not realistic to me.” But she still hesitated to commit to Biden. “He has the most even keel, but he just doesn’t have that ‘Bam!’ effect,” Privette said. That’s what she believes it will take to beat Trump, and that is why she is ignoring the pundits’ lanes altogether.
Biden versus Bernie. An even keel versus “Bam!” If the polls are right, more South Carolina voters are leaning toward the even keel. If that is what happens, Biden might win a new, and very short-term, lease on life to fight on through Tuesday.
