Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley isn’t the only White House candidate counting on South Carolina.
President Joe Biden is looking for strong support from the Palmetto State on Feb. 3 to officially launch his reelection bid. As the first sanctioned primary contest on the Democratic side, Biden is seeking a boost from his base, especially among black voters, to temper voter concerns about his age and his handling of the economy and border.
To build momentum for the “first in the nation” primary, Biden will travel to Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday, one week before voters cast ballots in the 2024 cycle.
Biden proposed bumping up the Palmetto State in the primary order after the state, and its black voters in particular helped resuscitate the president’s 2020 campaign following poor showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada that year.
The Biden campaign sees South Carolina as the proper backdrop to counternarratives about his declining support from black and young voters and to downplay the imminent coronation of former President Donald Trump back atop the Republican Party.
“The President is excited to return to South Carolina and spend time with voters ahead of the historic, first in the national Democratic primary,” Biden campaign principal deputy campaign manager Quinton Fulks said in a statement. “President Biden has long believed that our nominating process should reflect our party’s rich diversity, and he’s following through on that commitment and on his commitment to black voters, the backbone of the Democratic Party.”
Still, failing to secure a total victory in South Carolina could portend a very real enthusiasm problem ahead of a likely rematch with Trump in November. Voters routinely sound the alarm about Biden’s age — he would be 82 when sworn in for a potential second term — and polls show that some Democrats are concerned about his economic stewardship and mishandling of the border crisis.
The president easily secured victory in the New Hampshire primary this past week over Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), thanks to a strong write-in campaign, but will not be awarded any delegates at the party’s nominating convention this summer after the Granite State declined to abide by the Democratic National Committee’s primary calendar.
“Success in November depends more upon a voting demographic like you find in South Carolina than that which you would find in Iowa or New Hampshire,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a co-chairman of Biden’s 2024 campaign and a critical ally in 2020, said in a statement.
On Saturday, Biden and first lady Jill Biden will take part in the South Carolina Democratic Party’s “First in the Nation” celebration and dinner. That trip follows multiple campaign stops from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), himself a potential future Democratic presidential candidate and Joe Biden’s top campaign attack dog this cycle.
Joe Biden last visited South Carolina on Jan. 8, where he delivered remarks at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the site of 2015’s racially motivated mass shooting that left nine members of the congregation dead.
Joe Biden’s remarks that day highlight the precarious status of his candidacy. The president had been introduced by Clyburn before pro-ceasefire protesters interrupted his remarks and urged the president to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease his military operations in Gaza.
Those protests have only escalated as Joe Biden ramped up his campaigning. The president again encountered activists during his remarks accepting a coveted union endorsement from the United Auto Workers in Washington, D.C., this past Wednesday, and Joe Biden’s abortion rights rally in northern Virginia the day prior saw 14 protesters interrupt his remarks 13 separate times.
The Biden campaign has previously suggested that the president hopes his performance in South Carolina will reenergize black voters across the South and the nation as a whole. Democrats now eye Georgia and North Carolina in particular as particularly winnable, with the Southeast representing a potential new “blue wall” Democrats can rely on in future elections.
The president entered office with greater than 80% support from black voters, but that number fell to just over 60% in polls published heading into the new year. Still, Biden campaign officials routinely suggest that “polls don’t tell the full story” and that Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s trips to the South “aren’t from a place of worry.”
“President Biden and Vice President Harris have delivered historic funding for HBCUs to the tune of $7 billion, brought Black unemployment to a record low, increased Black wealth by 60% since before the pandemic, and so much more,” Fulks said. “Our message is clear: we won’t take any voter for granted and will be showing up, investing, and earning every single vote to win this November.”
South Carolina also represents a test for Joe Biden’s political opponents in both parties.
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Phillips, who took the president’s decision to skip the New Hampshire primary as an opportunity to launch his own campaign, needs “nothing short of a miracle” in South Carolina to keep his long-shot presidential bid alive, a Democratic operative familiar with Joe Biden’s campaign strategy told the Washington Examiner.
On the other side of the aisle, Trump looks to squash Haley, his final opponent in the race for the Republican nomination and herself a South Carolina native, ahead of the state’s GOP primary later on Feb. 24. After placing third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, Haley has staked any chance of comeback on her home state.
