What’s the message from Joe Biden’s SC victory? The voters won as much as he did

If a candidate wins a presidential primary they were heavily favored to win, did they really put off a “comeback” by actually winning it?

No.

That’s why you should swallow any narrative that Joe Biden’s resounding win in Saturday’s South Carolina Democratic Party primary was a Rocky-like “rising up from the canvas” victory for the candidate — after previously underwhelming performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada — with grains of Charleston Sea Salt.

Lots of them.

As expected, Biden won the primary by riding a wave of heavy backing from South Carolina’s African American voters — support that was shaped by Biden’s legacy of eight steadfast years as former President Barack Obama’s vice president and capped off by a late endorsement from influential U.S. Rep. James Clyburn.

And, as expected, Biden vacuumed up wide swaths of votes from older moderate to conservative Democrats across our state who were:

▪ Unnerved by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ early run of primary and caucus victories.

▪ Unsure about the electoral viability of millennial former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

▪ Unimpressed by the billions of free-spending businessman Tom Steyer, who promptly announced Saturday night that he was ending his presidential bid.

▪ Unmoved by the campaigns of two accomplished female senators, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

Given all that it would be overstating things to view Biden’s South Carolina triumph as a truly transformational event in the race for the Democratic nomination; that’s more likely to happen during Super Tuesday on March 3 — when 14 states will vote to determine one-third of the total party delegates at stake.

But Biden’s victory does bring him effectively neck-and-neck with Sanders in the delegate count, and that ensures that the Democratic race will remain a highly competitive contest as more and more Americans get their opportunity to make their voices heard in voting booths.

The fact is that those voices were in real danger of being marginalized and negated — mere weeks into the Democratic nomination process — had Sanders somehow pulled off an upset victory in our state.

Speaking of Sanders, his distant second-place finish Saturday would seem to suggest that all of the much-hyped talk of Republican South Carolinians mischievously crossing over to cast votes for Sanders — in hopes of boosting a highly polarizing Democratic candidate they view as easier pickings for incumbent GOP President Donald Trump in November — was just that: a lot of bluffing hype and empty talk.

And that’s an extremely encouraging result from Saturday’s primary vote: our democracy is never served well when voting becomes an act driven by cynicism rather than civic duty.

Joe Biden has won the South Carolina Democratic Party primary.

That’s no surprise.

Really. It’s not.

But Biden’s conquest in our state has kept the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination an engaged and spirited one — which is exactly what it should be this early into the process. In reality, then, the voters won just as much as Joe Biden did Saturday night.

This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 11:28 PM.