Hillary Clinton scored her first convincing victory of the 2016 campaign with her win in the South Carolina Democratic primary Saturday.
“Tomorrow this campaign goes national. We are not taking anything or anyone for granted,” Clinton said in her victory speech.
The resurgent Democratic front-runner took 73.5 percent of the vote to Bernie Sanders’ 26 percent. Clinton won 86 percent of the black vote and carried 79 percent of women.
Bernie Sanders has mounted a surprisingly strong challenge to Clinton in the Democratic primaries, but the Vermont socialist senator has yet to prove he has a realistic path to the nomination. South Carolina is the latest indication that while Sanders attracts big, young crowds on the campaign trail and has generated a lot of enthusiasm among progressives, his coalition may not be diverse enough to beat Clinton’s.
Clinton now hopes to build on her success in the South Carolina primary with more decisive wins on Super Tuesday, where the southern states voting may form a “firewall” to protect the former secretary of state from Sanders.
For Clinton, this is a big reversal from 2008. Eight years ago, the South Carolina primary marked the beginning of her campaign’s unraveling. African-American voters made up 55 percent of the Democratic electorate that year and they went for Barack Obama over Clinton by 78 percent to 19 percent. She lost the white vote more narrowly to John Edwards.
Clinton’s black support collapsed after Obama won the Iowa caucus, as African-American voters became convinced he could become the first black president of the United States. Despite being the former first lady of Arkansas, these voters dealt her a string of defeats throughout the South.
Now Clinton is relying on black voters and the South to maintain her front-runner status and keep Sanders away from the nomination. This past week, she appeared with mothers whose children were killed by the police or in racially charged incidents and discussed her plans for racial justice. She also contrasted her record of supporting gun control with Sanders’ occasional votes against it, a key issue in a state where a gunman murdered nine people in a black church.
The 2016 race hasn’t always been easy. Clinton previously won two caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, but not by overwhelming margins. In Iowa, she was forced to win certain precincts by coin toss.
Clinton lost the New Hampshire primary to Sanders by 22 percentage points. She had managed to beat Obama there in 2008. Most damning, she has been overwhelmingly losing Democrats looking for an honest and trustworthy candidate.
Now she is already looking ahead to the general election.
“Despite what you hear we don’t need to ‘make America great again,'” Clinton said in a shot at Republican front-runner Donald Trump. “America has never stopped being great. but we need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls we need to tear down barriers. we have to show in everything we do that we are in this together.”
Clinton has now won three of the first four Democratic nominating contests of 2016 and she enjoys a healthy lead among superdelegates.
Sanders left South Carolina hours before the results were publicized in order to attend a campaign rally in Minnesota. Sanders reportedly called Clinton to congratulate her before the Palmetto State polls even closed.
Despite his large loss Sanders said that “this is just the beginning” and his campaign is already looking forward to the Super Tuesday states.
“Our grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now,” Sanders said. “When we come together, and don’t let people like Donald Trump try to divide us, we can create an economy that works for all of us and not just the top 1 percent.”
On Tuesday Clinton is favored to win Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. Sanders has the ability to compete in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont.
