Four years ago, reeling from losses in the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses, Joe Biden headed to South Carolina to make his last stand for the Democratic presidential nomination.
His decisive win in the Palmetto State helped give his lagging campaign the boost it needed to capture the 2020 Democratic primary.
"We are very much alive," then-candidate Biden said in his victory speech at the University of South Carolina in Columbia at the time.
On Saturday, President Biden will once again be on the ballot in South Carolina, the site of the first official contest of the Democratic presidential primary, in the hopes that the coalition that jumpstarted his last campaign -- notably Black voters -- can give this one a boost.
“You’re the reason I am president,” Biden told voters last weekend at South Carolina’s First in the Nation Dinner in Columbia, the state’s capital. “You’re the reason Kamala Harris is a historic Vice President. And you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president. You’re the reason Donald Trump is a loser, and you’re the reason we’re gonna win and beat him again.”
Democrats upended their primary calendar to make South Carolina their first-in-the-nation contest, a move the incumbent president backed in part to reflect the diversity of the party’s voters.
While South Carolina, a ruby red state that last picked a Democrat for president in 1976, likely isn’t in play for the incumbent in November, it does underscore the inroads the president is aiming to make with Black voters, a group that fueled his 2020 win but has shown slight signs of waning support, per some recent polling. In the 2022 midterms, Black support for Republicans increased slightly, though they overwhelmingly backed Democrats, according to AP VoteCast data.
On Friday, the day before the primary, Vice President Harris spoke at a get out the vote event at South Carolina State University, a historically Black university in Orangeburg. Also Friday, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, herself a two-term governor of the Palmetto State, held a rally in Lancaster, S.C., ahead of the state's Republican presidential primary at the end of the month.
Biden last weekend highlighted his efforts to boost Black Americans during his term in office, while also taking jabs at his likely opponent in November, former President Donald Trump, including his recent lapse where he appeared to confuse former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his rival for the GOP nomination.
“Have you noticed that he’s a little confused these days?” Biden quipped. “He apparently can’t tell the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley.”
Biden also stopped at a barbershop in South Carolina, greeting employees and customers, including those who were in the middle of getting haircuts, and visited two churches before returning to Washington.
The weekend stops marked Biden’s second campaign visit to the Palmetto State. He visited Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of a racially motivated mass shooting in 2015, earlier this month, where he condemned the “poison” of white supremacy.
The president comes into South Carolina’s primary from a position of strength after a dominant win in New Hampshire earlier this month. Even though it wasn’t an official contest as far as the Democratic National Committee is concerned, and its delegates won’t count toward his total to clinch the nomination, the president won as a write-in candidate beating challengers Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson.
The event last Saturday marked the first time Biden and Phillips appeared at the same event. The Minnesota Democrat urged the president to “pass the torch” to a younger generation. At times, Phillips struggled to keep the audience’s attention.
“I’m here to tell you the numbers do not say things are looking good,” Phillips said of Biden’s polling numbers. “My invitation to President Biden, a man I love, a man I respect, a man who saved this country, a man who did a lot of good in the last four years, my invitation to President Biden is to pass the torch to a new generation ready to take the stage.”
Polling does not suggest a tremendously competitive contest — the most recent poll of the Democratic primary from earlier this month put Biden at 69%, eclipsing Phillips (5%) and Williamson (3%), with 22% undecided — but the former president’s campaign is looking to, as deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks put it, “blow this out of the water,” dispatching top surrogates to South Carolina, including Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, themselves possible candidates for the 2028 election.
In an interview with ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday in South Carolina, Newsom made the case that Biden has “delivered” on the economy while making the case that Trump is “the weakest candidate to run a major party in my lifetime” due to his legal issues.
“I take the threat of Trump and Trumpism very seriously, I’ve never been on the other side of that argument,” Newsom told anchor Jonathan Karl. “That said, this is the weakest candidate to run a major party in my lifetime. He's coming in deeply damaged. Democrats, we win. We keep winning.”