Why Not North Carolina as the First Primary State?
With all due respect to James Clyburn and the voters of South Carolina, I am not sure that their state should be the first to determine the Democrat candidate for President of the United States. President Biden obviously owes quite a bit to Clyburn, who literally saved his evaporating candidacy in 2020 with his endorsement. And Representative Clyburn, from all reports, is using his clout with the administration to advocate for the Palmetto State as the first primary. The Congressman’s influence with this administration is astonishing, even a little alarming to some.
How did this come to pass? Well, the South Carolina primary in February 2020, where the Biden campaign was all but dead. From David Smith of The Guardian:
Clyburn’s wife of 58 years, Emily, had died just five months earlier. “My wife had said to me before she passed away that she thought our best bet to defeat Donald Trump was Joe Biden.”
Two days later, Clyburn met Biden and told him he intended to make a public endorsement that would “create a surge”. He did so a few days later and followed up with video ads, robocalls and messaging on Black radio stations. It worked. Written off by pundits after defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden won South Carolina with 48.6% of the vote, well ahead of Bernie Sanders on 19.8%.
It worked. The rest is history. Within the three days after Clyburn’s endorsement and the South Carolina win a re-alignment occurred. The campaign donors had their marching orders ($10 million raised by the Biden team in 48 hours). Biden had secured all the big endorsements from the exits of the campaign trail (Pete Buttigieg; Amy Klobuchar; Beto O’Rourke) and most of the African-American leaders in the party had come around following Clyburn. By Super Tuesday, Biden had won 10 out of 14 states and all the headlines (“Joe Biden is the frontrunner again”) and momentum was his. Bernie was dunzo. But it all goes back to Congressman Clyburn.
And, of course, it is to the President’s advantage that South Carolina is the first primary on the calendar. Biden won the state by a landslide in 2020 (Biden 48.4 percent to Bernie’s 19.9 percent). He is close personal friends with the most powerful Democrat in the State and he has the strong support of African-American voters. Why wouldn’t Biden — personally — favor the Palmetto State. We won’t entertain the possibility that the President is exercising his power as the titular head of the Democrat Party to make things virtually impossible for anyone to challenge him in 2024. Further, it is not inconceivable that this curious flex by Biden on South Carolina is the strongest possible hint given, thus far, that he is definitely going to run for re-election. Not nearly enough has been written about this.
Also, the President and Representative Clyburn have a point. New Hampshire and Iowa are not nearly diverse enough. They do not represent the makeup of the Democrat constituency. They should not have such disproportionate power in determining the nominee, clearly. But is South Carolina — a state that the Democrats are, lets be clear here, not going to win in 2024 or any time in the near future — the best possible alternative? Or is this just more power securing its power? And if that is the case, what is a better alternative?
What about North Carolina? If the argument is that Iowa and New Hampshire are not diverse enough, why not North Carolina, which has 1.8 million African-American voters? The Democrat Party of North Carolina — a purple state to South Carolina’s scarlet reddish cheeks — is actually competitive. Barack Obama carried North Carolina in 2008. And Riding Obama's coattails, Kay Hagan was elected to the U.S. Senate over incumbent Elizabeth Dole, and Beverly Perdue was elected governor to succeed fellow Democrat Mike Easley.
Granted, the following years Democrat prospects in the state dimmed slightly as Obama lost the state to Romney in 2012. But Democrats retook the governor's office in 2016, a feat that towers over any Democrat accomplishments statewide in South Carolina. Democrats, I will repeat, are competitive in North Carolina; Democrats are not competitive in South Carolina. Making North Carolina the first primary state of party could possibly spark the embers that turns the state from magenta to a more amenable indigo, at the very least. South Carolina is a red state and there are no signs indicating otherwise in any data that I have seen.
I’ve been trying to puzzle out a logical reason other than mere power flexing by a couple of political bros that have been friends for decades about why South Carolina should trump a purplish state like North Carolina or even a Georgia and I cannot find any.
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