Decisive S.C. win boosts Clinton
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Hillary Clinton routed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday, giving her campaign a decisive boost and demonstrating her advantage with the minority voters crucial to winning the party’s nomination for president.
The crushing victory of more than 45 percentage points reaffirmed Clinton’s strength as a candidate and suggests she is poised to build her lead over Sanders considerably in the next few days. The election in South Carolina, which has a majority black Democratic electorate, may serve as a harbinger of what is to come when 11 states vote this week on Super Tuesday.
Many of the next group of states also have a large African-American electorate. Clinton won 85 percent of the black vote here, according to the exit poll of the state’s voters.
“Today you sent a message,” Clinton said in an emotional victory speech that touched on the Black Lives Matter movement, systemic bigotry and the polluted drinking water that has poisoned residents of the largely African-American city of Flint, Mich. “In America, when we stand together there is no barrier too big to break. Tomorrow this campaign goes national.”
Although she insisted she was not taking her nomination victory for granted, Clinton already seemed to be looking ahead, striking a contrast with the Republican she expects to face in the fall.
“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again. America has never stopped being great,” she said, as the audience roared at the clear reference to Donald Trump.
“But we do need to make America whole again,” she said. “Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers. We need to show by everything we do that we really are in this together.”
The victory Saturday was redemption for Clinton in a state where she endured a bitter loss in 2008, when early enthusiasm for her among African-American voters withered as Barack Obama picked up momentum. Dismissive comments about the South Carolina electorate by Bill Clinton after that loss had threatened to strain the couple’s relationship with black voters.
But there was no sign of strain Saturday. Black Democrats, in South Carolina at least, stuck with Hillary Clinton in a big way.
She won decisively with the youngest black voters, a group Sanders had aggressively courted, and she won almost every black voter — 96 percent of them — older than 65, according to exit polling conducted for the major television networks and The Associated Press. Her strong performance, winning every county in the state, exceeded even that of Obama in 2008.
Sanders, who delivered a subdued speech Saturday night to supporters in Rochester, Minn., conceded the race minutes after the state’s polls closed, congratulating Clinton on her victory, but pledging that he would continue to campaign.
“Let me be clear on one thing tonight. This campaign is just beginning,” Sanders said.
Sanders has taken a very different approach to reaching out to minority voters than Clinton, who is more comfortable with the politics of identity and speaks repeatedly and forcefully on the ills of white privilege. Sanders has kept his focus on the economy, arguing it is rigged for the benefit of the 1 percent.
But he still struggled to make headway against a Clinton machine that had strong relationships with the state’s African-American community for decades. The Vermont senator did not have much in the way of a visible campaign in the state until recently.
“You don’t see him. You don’t hear from him,” said Cleveland Sanders, 39, who cast his ballot for Clinton in North Charleston. “A closed mouth don’t get fed.”
Enthusiasm for Sanders among some black celebrities and activists was no match for the loyalty Clinton had won from a much of a larger and more influential coalition of African-American leaders, including Rep. James Clyburn, a former House majority whip and the dean of the state’s black leaders.
“We tonight have started Hillary Clinton on her way to the White House,” Clyburn said Saturday night, praising her for staying “loyal to the administration that got this economy out of the ditch.”
As Sanders struggles to win over minority voters, the delegate math is looking increasingly in Clinton’s favor. Polls show Clinton with a commanding lead in high-delegate states, including Texas, Georgia and Virginia, as well as in several other Southern states.
Yet Clinton’s momentum is also running into the impressive Sanders fundraising machine. “Hillary is moving with a lot of wind at her back,” former Pennsylvania Gov. and Democratic National Committee Chairman Ed Rendell said. “But it isn’t over for Bernie because Bernie will have the money to contest her all the way to California, if he so desires.”
That election is still three months away.