Biden looks to shore up lead in SC

Former Vice President Joe Biden is looking to shore up his edge in South Carolina ahead of Saturday’s primary after following up a well-reviewed debate performance with a high-profile endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

Biden’s presidential prospects are on the line in the Palmetto State, but Biden has reason for optimism after a series of new polls showed him with a solid lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who came under attack from every other candidate onstage during the Tuesday night debate.

An East Carolina University poll released on Wednesday showed Biden leading Sanders by 8 points — a healthy lead, though much less than the 18-point advantage he held in a similar poll conducted after the Iowa caucuses earlier this month.

Biden is counting on big support from black voters Saturday, something the Clyburn endorsement is intended to stoke. Clyburn is the highest-ranking black member of Congress and one of the most influential Democrats in South Carolina.

“I want the public to know that I’m voting for Joe Biden,” he said in a speech in North Charleston, attended by Biden, where he announced the endorsement. “South Carolina should be voting for Joe Biden.”

Biden will head into Saturday as the favorite in the primary, but even a big win might not be enough to take the nomination from Sanders, the early delegate leader after a big victory in Nevada’s caucuses.

Sanders will be the favorite in several Super Tuesday contests, and there will be little time for Biden to build on any momentum he might be able to generate from a South Carolina win. This year’s Super Tuesday is March 3, just three days after the Palmetto State contest.

Sanders has pulled ahead in recent polls out of California and Texas, the two biggest states holding March 3 contests.

Biden is competing with Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York flooding Super Tuesday states with advertisements, as well as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg for the centrist lane.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also remains in the race, providing another alternative to Sanders.

A survey of likely Democratic primary voters in Texas from the left-leaning firm Public Policy Polling released Wednesday showed Biden and Sanders tied in the Lone Star State at 24 percent each. Without Bloomberg on the ballot, Biden’s support jumped to 31 percent, while Sanders remained relatively steady at 25 percent, according to the poll.

Despite those challenges, Biden’s allies were upbeat Wednesday after a solid 24 hours for their candidate.

“After two disappointing finishes, he’s still showing historical strength in South Carolina, and he’s going to prove it on Saturday,” said Rufus Gifford, the finance director for former President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and a Biden ally. “And it actually sets him up pretty nicely for Super Tuesday.”

Biden confronted Sanders at the Charleston, S.C., debate on issues that could help him with black voters.

He raised Sanders’s mixed record on gun control legislation and accused him of plotting a 2012 primary challenge against Obama — a charge the Sanders campaign has denied.

Some strategists think Biden could win big Saturday, and suggest polls are underestimating support from black voters in South Carolina, particularly older ones who are among the most reliable in the state’s primary.

“People have a hard time polling black people and that’s just a fact,” said Bakari Sellers, a former state lawmaker who previously supported Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-Calif.) presidential bid.

He noted that both Obama and Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, won South Carolina by much larger margins than those foreshadowed by polls. For Biden, he predicted, “it’s going to be a considerable margin.”

One poll from Clemson University released Wednesday gave Biden his most significant lead in South Carolina in weeks, showing him with 35 percent support. Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, whose heavy spending in the state has resulted in polling strength there, placed second in the survey with 17 percent support.

Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Warren face an uphill battle in South Carolina. They have largely struggled to win the support of minority voters and recent polls of the state show them lagging well behind Biden and Sanders.

Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina-based Democratic strategist who is unaligned in the primary race, said that he expects candidates who don’t perform well in South Carolina to remain in the race on Super Tuesday.

“They’re going to have to make some decisions,” he said. “But it’s such a small window, I think they’ll go into Super Tuesday bumped up and bruised up.”

Despite the uncertainty, Democrats say that a win in South Carolina will be a necessary first step for Biden if he hopes to put himself back on track to compete for his party’s nomination.

“This is a place where people come to reset their campaigns and reshape what the rest of the process looks like,” Seawright said. “And I think this could be both of those things for Joe Biden.”