Today is the South Carolina Primary and it’s significant as if Biden loses his campaign is all but over while a Sanders win could all but end the race. Luckily for Biden he’s the favorite but still desperately needs momentum heading into Super Tuesday where 1/3 of the delegates are up for grabs. As always here’s the State of the Race right now in 1 picture to start:
Bernie Sanders enters as the sole frontrunner after going 3/3 to start the Primary season. A win here in South Carolina would seemingly end the race but even without a win, he could still pick up an insurmountable lead after Super Tuesday where he leads in states like California and Texas.
For Joe Biden the thing he needs most, beyond a win, is momentum. He needs to excite people in S.T. states and needs a lot of money for those contests. It might be too late for Biden already though as he’ll have to ramp up staff and organizing in these states in about 72 hours. Here’s a look at Biden’s operation on the ground in the biggest prize, California:
Even an idiot like me knows it’s probably not a good sign for a campaign when the sole campaign office in the state is padlocked shut on a Friday. (And that’s doesn’t even touch on the fact that he only has 1 office for the entire state of the California…..for comparison Bernie has 23). It’ll be interesting to see if a Biden wins allows him to take a lot of Bloomberg support on S.T. where 15% is needed to get delegates so the worst case scenario for everyone (but Bernie) is for Biden/Bloomberg to split votes and end up at 14% in a bunch of these states. This could happen in California which would officially give Sanders a metric fuck ton of delegates.
Back to South Carolina, which could also be the last stand for Tom Steyer and Tulsi Gabbard. Without a strong performance, both of these candidates should be out. Steyer has spent most of his money/time in South Carolina and he’s been in 3rd in the polls but he needs keep his support here after he failed to in Nevada. He did however have a hilarious clip go viral last night of him dancing on stage while Juvenile performs the classic “Back Dat Azz Up”
Candidates like Elizabeth Warren. Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg probably won’t do well in South Carolina but are relying on Super Tuesday. If any of them do surprisingly well it could give them a life-saving spark. Massachusetts and Minnesota vote on S.T. and if Warren and Klobuchar lose their home states that should be a wrap on their campaigns. It’s hard to convince people to keep giving you money (or that you could get the nomination at a brokered convention) if you can’t even win your home state. Mayor Pete has been doing his best Obama cosplay so far but still has yet to attract support from people of color. I guess his message of a new face for old ideas isn’t catching on as well as his consultants/focus groups hoped.
Michael Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot in South Carolina but I’m sure he’d like to see a big Biden win. Yes they would share a lot of support in S.T. states but it seems like Bloomberg’s only play is a contested convention and that can’t happen unless him and someone else get above the 15% needed to win delegates.
It seems we’re getting to a point where everyone, but Bernie, thinks their only chance is at a contested convention….If you wanna read how a brokered convention would be the worse thing to happen to the Democratic Party, click here.
District of Clowns 