COLUMBIA, South Carolina — President Joe Biden campaigned heavily in Columbia last weekend ahead of the state’s Feb. 3 primary.
But he will not attend the Democratic National Committee’s victory party celebrating what is expected to be an overwhelming win for the president in Democrats’ “first-in-the-nation” results for 2024.
The Biden campaign has long looked to South Carolina as an opportunity to shut down concerns regarding the president’s age, performance in the White House, and a noticeable slide in support among black voters, so the president’s decision not to personally step foot in Columbia might raise some eyebrows.
Still, voters in the state capital were unfazed when they discovered the president wouldn’t be there on Saturday.
The Washington Examiner spoke with roughly two dozen South Carolinians voting early this past week about the president’s decision not to attend a Democratic National Committee, none of whom said Biden’s travel plans would affect their votes in any shape or form.
“Wasn’t he just here?” one man, who asked not to be named, posed to the Washington Examiner while waiting in line to vote at an early voting location in Richland County.
“I’m sure President Biden is very busy,” a woman, who was also waiting in line and also asked not to be named, added. “This is just something y’all are just trying to pull out of thin air, making a big stink about nothing.”
The woman asked not to be named but said she had attended one of the two church events Biden spoke at last Sunday. During that trip, the president also visited with customers at a black barber shop and delivered the keynote speech at the state Democratic Party’s “First in the Nation” dinner.
Furthermore, the president sent Vice President Kamala Harris, who has emerged as the president’s top surrogate on issues like abortion and student loan debt relief, to cap off the campaign’s week in South Carolina. Harris, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, and others delivered remarks at a Friday rally at South Carolina State University, a historically black college located roughly one hour south of Columbia.
Harris delivered a typical stump speech, complete with a forceful denunciation of former President Donald Trump.
“The former president openly talks about his admiration for dictators and has vowed that he will be a dictator on day one,” Harris stated. “As the great Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Well, the former president has told us who he is, and it is on us then to recognize the profound threat he poses to our democracy and our freedoms.”
The president’s Republican opponents were also in South Carolina this week, even though the state’s GOP primary won’t take place until Feb. 24. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley held a trio of events Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and has a fourth planned for Sunday in Charleston.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is holding a rally on Saturday featuring Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), though Trump himself won’t be in attendance.
The Biden campaign did not specifically comment on why the president won’t be in state celebrating the South Carolina results Saturday night but pointed to Biden’s recent two days spent in the Palmetto state. Biden also delivered a speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church in early January, his second campaign event of the year.
Dr. Danielle Vinson, a political science professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, suggested there’s a very simple reason Biden isn’t coming back on Saturday: It isn’t a swing state.
“In South Carolina, we know who’s going to win in November. I don’t even need to know the nominee,” she told the Washington Examiner. “We know which party is going to win in South Carolina in November.”
The president did campaign heavily in the week following his stint in Columbia, just not in South Carolina. On Tuesday, Biden traveled to Trump’s home state of Florida to hobnob with donors in Jupiter and Miami.
“You’re the reason Donald Trump’s the defeated president,” he reportedly said during remarks at the Jupiter event, less than an hour’s drive from Trump’s private club near West Palm Beach. “And you’re the reason we’re going to make him a loser again.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Biden next jetted up to Michigan on Thursday for an event with the United Auto Workers, a powerful union that just endorsed the president’s run in late January. Michigan has the highest population of Arab Americans in the country, and though the president did not meet with any leaders from that community amid rising calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the White House is sending a policy team back to the state next week for such conversations.
And on Saturday, he will head to the West Coast for events in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, just days before Republicans are set to caucus in Nevada. Biden is also peppering campaign stops in New York and Virginia into his schedule for the coming week.
