Pablo PardoWashington Correspondent
Washington Correspondent
Updated Saturday, February 3, 2024-16:50
Polls Joe Biden announces that he will be a candidate for re-election in 2024
Wide angle One year until the United States elections: the struggle of two antagonistic worlds
When Joe Biden entered the
South Carolina
primary four years ago , his campaign was on the brink of collapse. The current president had been fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire, and second in Nevada. If he didn't win that state, Biden could pack his bags and return to Delaware.
Biden won in 2020, and he will win again in the primaries being held today, Saturday, in South Carolina. His victory is so discounted that since January 5, no one has conducted a survey on Democratic voting intention. More than winning, he should sweep, to clear up any doubt about his ability to mobilize voters, which, today, is the greatest danger to his re-election.
Biden's two rivals have no chance. One of them, Minnesota Congressman
Dean Phillips
, may go down in history as the perpetrator of one of the largest political suicides in memory. The other is
Marianne Williamson
, who could be defined as a
self-help and parapsychology guru
. Although it is almost axiomatic to say that American political life has deteriorated, she has not done so to the extent that someone like her can win a primary.
That's not a problem for Williamson either, since many of his books have been
bestsellers
, and are available in Spanish, such as
The Law of Divine Compensation and How It Works in Work, Money and Miracles
;
The Soul Diet: 21 Spiritual Lessons That Will End Your Weight Problems Forever
;
The Age of Miracles: A New Perspective on Midlife
; o
Light for the path: Thoughts, prayers, rituals
. These works of hers will not put her with
Faulkner
,
Poe
or
Twain
in the American literary canon, but they have guaranteed her a considerable fortune that already allowed her to run in the primaries in 2020 and, now, do so again.
Who is in danger of entering another pantheon - that of authors of political idiocies - is Phillips, who abandoned in October a promising career that might have led him one day to lead his party in the House of Representatives to challenge
Biden in the elections. primaries
. The result of his bet is evident in the fact that in the New Hampshire primaries this 55-year-old millionaire (by inheritance) found himself not once, but twice, in the uncomfortable situation of holding an electoral event and No one appeared, with the sole exception, of course, of the journalists to record the ridicule. In those primaries, which were not recognized by the party, Phillips was crushed by Biden even though the president was not running and, therefore, was not on the ballot. That was possible because voters wrote Biden's name in pen.
Phillips has been caught in the same dilemma as the Republicans who have challenged Trump: his political ideology is the same as that of his rival. So why vote for him? His argument is that Biden
is too old
. That is something the electorate agrees with. But what Democrats don't want is to replace the old Biden with Phillips. Saying his voters fit on a bus is literally an exaggeration: in New Hampshire he hosted an event where people could go on his campaign bus and ask him whatever he wanted. It was nobody.
Aside from the
weakness of his rivals
, for Biden, a primary in South Carolina is like playing at home. Already in 2020, he knew how to use the asset of his five decades in politics, which had allowed him to establish relationships with the political and social leaders of the state. And that counts a lot in South Carolina, where, to mobilize, you must have the support of the Protestant churches, which are the main civil society organization in the state, and with local leaders. And that's what Biden did. In reality, that's what every candidate does. The Republicans, with the whites, who are about two-thirds of the population; the Democrats, with the blacks, who make up a quarter.
There are few exceptions to that rule. One of the most famous was that of Barack Obama in 2008. To avoid the support of the churches for
Hillary Clinton
, the future president's team focused its efforts on all types of organizations and, especially, on some very specific establishments: the salons of manicures, which are especially successful among African-American women, whose fixation with nails is out of this world. With such an outrageous strategy, Obama struck down Clinton in the primaries.
So Biden won in 2020, thus saving his campaign. To thank the state, he has lobbied the Democratic National Committee to make North Carolina the party's first primary state for the first time in 52 years. The territory thus gains political relevance and, incidentally, the Democratic Party begins its race towards the White House with a message aimed at the black voter, to whom all the presidents of that formation except one -
Lyndon B. Johnson
, who won in 1964 - they owe him the position. In a time of political tribalism that is very important. Not in vain, the second state in which the party's primaries are held this year is Nevada, a state in which the population of Hispanic origin and unions - two other bastions of Democratic power - have enormous weight. An identity vote plus a well-oiled political apparatus is the key for the president. That, and having rivals like Williamson and Phillips.
The irony is that Biden won in 2020 and will win again in 2024 in a state where it is metaphysically impossible for the Democratic Party, due to its dependence on the black vote, to win an election, to the point that it is expected
that In the Democratic primaries, less than half of the citizens vote than in the Republican primaries
, which take place in three weeks. The state is one of the most racially divided in the US, and its history proves it. South Carolina was the first territory to declare independence from the United States and even attacked the Armed Forces of that country in 1861 to preserve slavery. Still in 2016, a 21-year-old white man,
Dylan Roof
, murdered nine black people in cold blood in a prayer group in a church shouting "you are raping our women, you are stealing our country." But that does not matter. The primary votes are what they are, and the president has them in the pot.