Pablo PardoWashington Correspondent
Washington Correspondent
Updated Sunday, February 4, 2024-03:12
USA Biden, on the way to his unstoppable coronation in the South Carolina primaries
As expected, Joe Biden has in practice had no problem winning the South Carolina primaries, which are the first held by the Democratic Party to name the candidate for the White House in the November 5 elections. With rivals that oscillate between the irrelevant and the bizarre,
the president has swept
to the point that just 25 minutes after the schools closed the Associated Press news agency had already proclaimed him the winner.
When 60% of the votes were counted,
Biden had 96.3% of the ballots, compared
to 2% for self-help and parapsychology guru
Marianne Williamson
and 1.5% for Congressman Dean Phillips. It is evident that Biden had no rivals. It is very unusual for a sitting president to face other serious candidates in a primary. When that happens - as happened to
Gerald Ford
in 1976,
Jimmy Carter
in 1980 and
George Bush 'sr.'
in 1992 - he usually loses elections.
It has been
an even greater victory than predicted by
the few polls that have been carried out in that state, in which the truly decisive primaries are going to be the Republican ones, which will be held in three weeks, and in which
Donald Trump can give the finishing touch to her rival Nikki Haley
and secure her nomination.
Biden has taken advantage of the victory to repeat his main argument for the November elections: fear of Donald Trump.
"Never have so many things been at stake in an election,"
said the president, in a statement issued while he was 4,500 kilometers from South Carolina, in the exclusive neighborhood of Bel Air, in Los Angeles, where he had an event to raise funds in a mansion valued at more than 40 million dollars (37 million euros) that once belonged to film director
George Lucas
and billionaire, presidential candidate and precursor of 'Trumpism'
Ross Perot.