President Joe Biden won handily and unsurprisingly on Saturday his first electoral test in his quest for a second term in the White House, during the Democratic primary in South Carolina, according to American television projections.
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Mr. Biden, who counts on a large black electorate in this conservative state in the south of the United States, won the primary against two other candidates with a very large majority, according to these projections.
The American president, who was himself in California on Saturday evening before going to Nevada (west) for the next vote on Tuesday, immediately estimated that in November he would beat his probable Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.
“In 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have put us on the path to winning the presidency again and losing Donald again Trump,” he said in a statement.
During this first official vote in his race for the Democratic nomination, which Mr. Biden is almost guaranteed to win, it is above all the participation rate, particularly in the African-American electorate, which had to be scrutinized.
In 2020, African-Americans in South Carolina, numerous in proportion to the population of this former slave state in the southeast, allowed Joe Biden to save his campaign during the primary, helping him open up a way to the White House.
Facing the 81-year-old president was a little-known elected official from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, heir to a wealthy ice cream company, and Marianne Williamson, author of best-sellers on personal development.
On Saturday the president made an appearance at his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, in his home state of Delaware, assuring that he was “on a mission”, before leaving to campaign in California and Nevada.
“It’s not just a campaign. It’s more of a mission. For the good of this country, we must not lose (…) And I say it from the bottom of my heart. It’s not about me, it goes well beyond me,” he insisted.
The day before, he had ordered strikes against elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for the death of American soldiers in Jordan, in an already explosive context in the Middle East.
If the black electorate in the United States traditionally leans Democratic, several recent polls show that their support for Joe Biden is crumbling, particularly among young people, who believe they were not heard enough during his mandate.
Although South Carolina is expected to remain in Republican hands in the November presidential election, as it has since 1980, the president has made it clear that he views the state as an important test. He has already been there twice since the start of the year.
“I think the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, you know, people are talking about our democracy being under attack,” said Samuel Bias, 31, a Biden supporter, after a public meeting Friday with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“President Biden like myself, we are counting on you (…) to vote and encourage everyone you know to vote, to send SMS, to knock on doors and to make your voice heard,” insisted Friday Ms. Harris, during a fiery speech in Orangeburg.
Ms Harris, the first black woman vice-president in US history, also launched a virulent attack on Donald Trump.
“For years, the former president stoked the fires of hatred, bigotry, racism and xenophobia for his own power and personal political gain,” she said.
Mr. Biden is thus focusing his strategy on the threat to democracy that, according to him, the American billionaire constitutes.
“As an aside, foreign leaders tell me one after the other: ‘You must win,’” the president slipped in Wilmington on Saturday.
According to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in November, 71% of black voters in six key states support Mr. Biden – compared to 91% in the 2020 election – and 22% would vote for Mr. Trump.
“I was a Democrat for 20 years. I even participated in the Obama campaign,” said Regina Sidik, 56, a black caregiver who attended a news conference of the former president’s supporters in Columbia, the state capital. , this week.
“But today, after seeing what this world will become, I opt for Trump,” she confided.
In South Carolina, the Republican primary at the end of February promises to be more spectacular than that of the Democrats, because Mr. Trump will try to deal a fatal blow to the former governor of this state, Nikki Haley.
