South Carolina catapulted Joe Biden to the top of the Democratic primary in 2020, and on Monday, the president returns hoping the state – and its Black voters – can help recharge his reelection bid.
The state’s February 3 Democratic primary is not competitive. But with many Black voters saying in polls and Democratic focus groups they feel disengaged and disenchanted with the political process, South Carolina – far from a battleground in the general election – will be the first electoral test of how deep a hole Biden is actually in.
“We have not been able to break through that MAGA wall in order to get to people exactly what this president has done,” South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, adding that he sat down with the president to make the case directly.
With his campaign trailing in early polling of the general election and some even in his administration thinking he is too weak to be mounting a reelection, Biden has been trying to get the country to agree with him that the future of democracy depends on his winning. He made that argument on Friday in an impassioned speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and his army survived a brutal winter and went on to win the Revolutionary War.
But by heading to the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, he is reaching for a very different and painful part of American history – and making a very explicit attempt to start winning back the Black support that has drifted away from him, in a place he will say has become a warning of what extremism can lead to.
With the pews filled by survivors and the families of the victims of the 2015 shooting, as well as clergy and interfaith leaders, a Biden campaign official said the president “will remind the American people that the same hate that plagued the…
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