Nevada was the beginning of the end of the Democratic primary. Now that end looks very much in sight after Saturday in South Carolina. The state delivered the unequivocal victory the Clinton campaign has been waiting for — and provided further evidence that Sanders can’t match her in a diverse electorate.
As exuberant Clinton took the stage in Columbia to shouts of “Hillary!” and “Madam President!” she was beating her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders roughly 3-to-one in the polls. It’s a loss the Sanders campaign can spin as anything but what it is. In a state where 61 per cent of Democratic voters are black, Clinton cast herself as the person best positioned to carry out the legacy of a popular President Obama, and played up her history of fighting to surmount the obstacles life throws in ones way.
She led with a promise to help poor minority children in the so-called “Corridor of Shame”, a stretch of dilapidated schools along South Carolina’s I-95 corridor. That was something President Obama made a benchmark of is 2008 campaign when he beat her in 44 of the state’s 46 counties.
Clinton is not making that mistake again — now it’s she who’s at the forefront of the issue. “This victory tonight is for the parents and teachers in South Carolina, they showed me crumbling classrooms”, Clinton said to cheers. And she promised the federal government would work with state actors to give children the “education they deserve”.
But she also embraced her identity as a fighter, a role that she can inhabit with tremendous authenticity. “Let’s break down the barriers that sideline people in our country, especially women”, she said to a roaring crowd. “Don’t you think it’s time we had equal pay for equal work?”
But she didn’t stop with surmounting barriers for women and children. She also called for “facing realities of systematic racism”. It’s something her Democratic opponent, who hails from one of the whitest states in the nation, has struggled to do convincingly. And it’s a message of dire importance in South Carolina, where race and class continue to inform educational and economic opportunity in profound and disconcerting ways.
“Let’s break down the barriers holding back our young people”, Clinton continued, as she veered into the topic of student debt. College students are a demographic Clinton has been losing handily to Sanders, but she quickly turned the topic to her plans to set aside funds for Historic Black Colleges and Universities, playing back to her strength with minority students.
In a statement Saturday night, Sanders — who by the time results rolled in was already in the faraway, relatively friendly refuge of Minnesota — didn’t try to deny he’d been defeated handily. But he did try to preemptively combat the narrative that the primary may be winding down rather than up ahead of Super Tuesday. “Let me be clear on one thing tonight”, he wrote. “This campaign is just beginning. We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina. Now it’s on to Super Tuesday”.
But Sanders thus far has only been able to win in overwhelmingly white states, and there aren’t enough of them to propel him forward long-term. Wins in states like Vermont and Maine are no match for Clinton-friendly states like Texas, which has more delegates than many other states combined. And Clinton, for her part, didn’t seem too interested in proving herself against Sanders, instead saving her fire for the man she seems increasingly likely to face in a general contest: Donald Trump. “Instead of building walls we need to be tearing down barriers”, she said in a not-so-subtle allusion to the wall Trump has campaigned on building between the US and Mexico.
At another point, she took a swipe at Trump’s trademark slogan. “We don’t need to make America great again, America has never stopped being great”, she said, adding. “We do need to make America whole again.” It’s a positive message which, in this election, is a rare commodity. Clinton delivered a strong performance that proved her appeal to a multiracial America. It’s too early to write off Bernie Sanders — he has, after all, already defied the pundits by getting much further than expected. And his campaign still claims he can chart an ever-narrowing path to victory by stringing together wins in smaller (predominantly white) Super Tuesday states like Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Colorado and Oklahoma. Still, his path to victory looks highly unlikely.
South Carolina was not the nail in Sanders coffin — though that day might not be far off. Rather, this was the contest in which Clinton found her stride. And that is just what she needed at this moment.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Lucia Graves is a Guardian US columnist. She was previously a staff correspondent for National Journal magazine and a staff reporter at Huffington Post.
