After NH Thumping, Hillary Limps into SC

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday crushed Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, leaving her campaign reeling and putting her strategy to work the long game in doubt.

The Vermont socialist beat the former secretary of state, who is mired in controversy, by a massive margin — 60 percent to 39 percent. While her campaign believes it has a “firewall” in South Carolina, the next primary state, not everyone shares that faith.

“I don’t know that anybody’s got a firewall in this campaign, because in both parties, we’ve got a lot of unpredictability,” said Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina. “I’d be struggling to say that anybody’s completely secure … Yes, she’s ahead, but she’s been ahead other places.”

Clinton got trounced in South Carolina eight years ago by then-Sen. Barack Obama. Public opinion began to swing after Obama won in mostly white Iowa and black voters across the country began to think that a black candidate could be elected.

Hillary Clinton From New Hampshire [lz_jwplayer video=”BI7UYKCL” ads=”false”]

Sanders and Clinton will meet again Feb. 20 in the Nevada caucuses before a showdown in the first-in-the-South primary three days later. Clinton supporters long have believed that South Carolina’s large number of black voters would help stop whatever early momentum Sanders was able to build.

Some claim Hillary does indeed have a firewall in the state.

“Hillary has such a strong network in South Carolina,” said Kendra Stewart, a political science professor at the College of Charleston. “This is definitely her race to lose.”

There has been a dearth of public polling in South Carolina; no polls have been taken since the Iowa caucuses. The surveys that are on record, though, indicate that Clinton was holding a massive lead in the state even as Sanders was surging in Iowa and New Hampshire. That largely has been the result of rock-solid support among black voters.

“For right now, the conventional wisdom still is South Carolina is more of a help to her,” said J. Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina.

In 2008, Clinton managed to win 19 percent of the black vote in South Carolina against a black candidate who was on his way to becoming America’s first African-American president.

Bernie Sanders Wins New Hampshire [lz_jwplayer video=”pebTCh2B” ads=”false”]

To Gibbs Knotts, chairman of the Department of Political Science at the College of Charleston, that is an indication that Clinton enjoys a deep well of loyalty from black voters. Black voters made up 55 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in 2008, he noted.

“I think it’s going to be at least that high or higher than it was then,” he said, adding that he expects Clinton to win about 80 percent of that bloc. “African-Americans dominate the South Carolina primary … and that’s the group Clinton’s going to do really, really well with.”

There are some signs of trouble for Team Clinton, though. Last month, state Rep. Justin Bamberg, a black attorney who represents the family of African-American shooting victim Walter Scott, switched his endorsement from Clinton to Sanders. Since then, two more black legislators have followed suit. In addition, a national poll taken by Quinnipiac University following the Iowa caucuses indicated that Clinton’s lead had shrunk to a statistically insignificant 2 percentage points, which could suggest support in South Carolina is lessening, too.

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Stewart noted that in addition to having many more black voters than Iowa or New Hampshire, South Carolina’s Democrats also are not as liberal. Exit polls in 2008 indicated that 42 percent of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina considered themselves moderate, with another 10 percent conservative and 5 percent very conservative.

A candidate who calls himself a democratic socialist may be a tough sell to those voters.

“Voters in South Carolina all around are more conservative,” Stewart said. “That Bernie base is white liberals, and there just aren’t that many in South Carolina.”

Bitzer, of Catawba, said there is anecdotal evidence that Sanders is exciting younger Democratic voters just as much as he has elsewhere.

“That generational divide is still there,” he said. “You might start to see that play out with the college campuses in South Carolina.”

The question that Bitzer cannot answer is if black millennials will vote more like their white counterparts or their black elders. The answer could determine if Sanders has a shot at another upset.