COLUMBIA, SC - Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden pulled out a do-or-die victory in the South Carolina primary, notching his first win in the 2020 presidential race and giving his uneven bid a much-needed jolt of momentum heading into Super Tuesday.
The Biden camp hopes the win resets the race, making it easier for the 77-year-old to argue he can build a diverse and powerful coalition of supporters and is the best alternative to Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, who easily bested Mr. Biden in the three previous nomination contests, where the pools of voters were less diverse and more liberal.
“To those of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign!” Mr. Biden said at his election night party at the University of South Carolina.
Mr. Biden said that his campaign had been left for dead, and now it is very much alive.
“If the Democrats nominate me, I believe we can beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Biden said.
He also took taking shots at Mr Sanders over his history as an independent and his far-left vision.
“Democrats want a nominee who is a Democrat,” Mr. Biden said, later adding that most Americans are more interested in results than they are in the promise of a political “revolution.”
News networks projected Mr. Biden as the winner as soon as the polls closed here at 7 p.m.
With 39% of the vote counted, Mr. Biden had collected 50.4% of the vote, followed by Mr. Sanders, 19.2%, former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, 11.6% and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 7.4%. Mr. Steyer later ended his campaign.
Mr. Biden powered to victory on the backs of black voters, undercutting lingering doubts over whether he had lost some of his appeal with a powerful voting bloc that Democrats say is key to defeating President Trump this fall.
Mr. Biden won 60% of the black vote, compared to 17% for Mr. Sanders, according to exit polls that showed African American voters comprised 55% of the primary vote.
Mr. Biden also carried half of those who identified as moderate or conservative, and bested his rivals among voters age 65 and older.
More stunning was close to half of primary voters said the recent endorsement from House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the most influential black leader in the state, was an “important” factor in their vote. A third of voters said they made up their minds over the last few days.
Mr. Clyburn told the audience here that Mr. Biden is a “good man” who “understands the fundamentals of fairness upon which this democracy is built.”
Despite the win, the jury is out on what it means for Mr. Biden going forward.
He has struggled to keep up with some of his rivals on the fundraising front and the strength of his national ground game has been called into question.
Before the final tally was known, Mr. Clyburn told CNN that a Biden win here would redefine the race and “give him the legs that he needs to go the distance.”
Mr. Clyburn, who is slated to campaign in North Carolina Sunday on behalf of with Mr. Biden, also acknowledged the Biden camp needed to tighten up its operation.
“We need to do some retooling in the campaign,” he said. “There is no question about that.”
Entering the night, Mr. Sanders held the lead in the race for the 1,991 delegates needed to capture the nomination on the first ballot when Democrats converge in July in Milwaukee for Democratic National Convention.
He also held commanding leads in many of the polls in several of the states that will hold their nomination contests on Super Tuesday when roughly a third of all the delegates up for grabs in 2020.
Most notably, he led in California and Texas, where 416 and 228 pledged delegates are up for grabs, respectively.
Mr. Sanders planned to hold a pair of rallies Sunday in California with singer Jack Johnson and Public Enemy Radio.
There were 54 delegates up for grabs here in South Carolina. Early estimates showed that Mr. Biden was poised to collect at least 25 of them.
Mr. Biden, on the other hand, is the polling frontrunner first in North Carolina and Oklahoma.
The other candidates, meanwhile, face more daunting challenges, and are certain to face more pressure to drop out of the race.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren told supporters at a campaign stop in Houston that the first four contests “haven’t gone exactly as I’d hoped” but vowed that her campaign was built for the long haul.
“Super Tuesday is three days away and we’re looking forward to gaining as many delegates to the convention as we can — from California to right here in Texas,” she said. “It might take days or even longer to know the full Super Tuesday results, but they will be critical in sorting out who our nominee will be this year.”
Mr Sanders’ deep-rooted strength has set off alarm bells within the less liberal ranks of the Demcoratic Party and triggered a slew of warnings that his brand of Democratic socialism would torpedo the party’s chances of winning the White House and controlling either chamber of Congress after the election.
President Trump came to a similar conclusion this week when he polled the crowd at a campaign rally in Charleston this week who would be the weakest Democrat to run against him.
“So who is easier to beat - Crazy Bernie or Sleepy Joe,” Mr. Trump said, weighing the reaction from attendees. “They think Bernie is easier to beat.”
Nina Turner, national co-chair, said Saturday that Mr. Trump is “shaking in his booths” and said that Mr. Sanders is beating the president in most head-to-head polls - including in the states - such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - that Democrats lost four years ago.
“He is really strong in those states, and those are the states that we need to win,” she said on CNN. “He is also building the type of coalition needed to win. That is a black, brown, white, indigienous and Asian coalition of the working-poor and the barely middle-class people in this country.”
South Carolina voters have a solid track record of picking the party’s eventual nominee.
Recent winners include then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in 1992, then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000, then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In 2004, Sen. John Kerry lost South Carolina to John Edwards, who was from neighboring North Carolina, but went on to win the nomination.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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