During the almost two-hour flight, Sanders’s office issued a statement congratulating Clinton and vowing to fight on. “We are not taking anything and we’re not taking anyone for granted”, Clinton said at a rally in Columbia. These openings come after Sanders only received 26 percent of the votes in the SC primary. That’s a reversal from New Hampshire, where more said they’d be satisfied with Sanders (79 percent) than with Clinton (62 percent).
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After the win, Clinton appeared to be looking ahead to a general-election matchup with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, the billionaire whose campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again” and has called for building a wall on the border with Mexico. Soon after polls closed she told supporters: “You sent a message – in America when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to break”.
More black voters turned out in 2016 than they did in 2008 for Barack Obama’s campaign, 61-55 percent, respectively.
Sanders responded to the defeat with grace.
“I think we do have a path to victory”, he said, adding that California and NY later in the primary season are also potential wins.
“They all lost children, which is nearly unimaginable”, she said. Seven in 10 voters also want to continue Obama’s policies, versus moving in a more liberal direction. This campaign is just beginning.
The former secretary of state bested Sanders by particularly wide margins among black voters and women, while Sanders narrowly led among white voters and young people. Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton, the former US President, along with their daughter Chelsie have spent the last few days in SC, where she is highly popular.
Clinton and Sanders will both hold rallies in Boston tomorrow, the day before Super Tuesday, when MA will be one of 11 states holding Democratic primaries.
The Economist reports on the SC vote and where it leaves the Democratic primary race.
Her campaign now hopes her strong showing in SC foreshadows similar outcomes in states like Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia that vote on Tuesday and have large minority populations. “Now it’s on to Super Tuesday”, Sanders said.
So as tempting as it might be for Sanders, and his supporters, to draw a line under the debacle and move on to greener pastures-as indeed the Senator himself began doing even before the voting began-that would be a potentially fatal mistake.
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While Super Tuesday awards more than half of the delegates Trump needs to win the Republican nomination, there’s a good chance he could emerge as the presumptive nominee and be unstoppable in a short amount of time.
