As best as I could ascertain the thinking inside the Sanders campaign, they thought that if Bernie could do better than 35% in South Carolina it would indicate that he had a fighting chance to win in some other southern states. Well, he barely topped 25% and now he has to abandon the entire South to Clinton.
Super Tuesday could easily now became a wipeout that effectively eliminates Sanders from serious contention. As Nate Cohn notes in the New York Times, even in the increasingly unlikely event that Sanders pulls off multiple wins on Tuesday in states like Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Vermont, the delegate math is going to look much worse for him at the end of the night. If he doesn’t pull off these wins, his campaign will no longer be something that should be considered a threat to win the nomination.
It seems to me that black folks got the message loud and clear from the president that he prefers Clinton to Sanders, and anyone who thinks that they aren’t going to come out in huge numbers to protect his legacy is completely delusional.
She has won South Carolina in a rout, 73.5 percent to 26 percent, exceeding Mr. Obama’s own 29-point victory in 2008. She did it the same way that Mr. Obama did: with overwhelming support from black voters, who favored Mrs. Clinton over Bernie Sanders by a stunning margin of 87 to 13, according to updated exit polls — a tally that would be larger than Mr. Obama’s victory among black voters eight years earlier. Black voters represented 62 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls, even higher than in 2008.
The county’s most progressive and loyal Democrats have spoken.
Maybe you agree with their decision or maybe you don’t, but you ought to respect it.