CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, SOUTH CAROLINA- Black voters in South Carolina brought former vice president Joe Biden a victory Saturday relative to its Democratic presidential primary, his first primary win in fact, and a blow out that comes just three days before Super Tuesday, which is March 3 when 14 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, will all hold their presidential primaries.
CBS News exit polls had Biden winning with 60% of Black voters over 65-years-old.
Fifty-four pledged delegates were up for grabs in South Carolina, the delegates split among the top candidate based on the percentage of votes received.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, after winning in New Hampshire and placing second in Iowa, and following his second place finish in South Carolina, still leads in delegates overall, with 52 delegates nationwide to Biden's 43, momentum obviously increasing for the former vice president in the race for 1,991 delegates — the majority needed to win the nomination.
Before South Carolina, Sanders had 45 delegates to Biden's 15.
Vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nations' first Black president, Biden, also a former long time U.S. senator who lost the front-runner status to Sanders earlier this month, needed the win Saturday in the southern state to reinvigorate his flagging campaign.
And he got the win, overwhelmingly.
The projected winner by CNN, Biden was leading at press time with 64 percent of the vote counted at 50%, followed by Sanders with a distant 19%, and billionaire Tom Steyer, who has since suspended his presidential campaign, at 11%, the remaining other closely watched candidates, including former South Bend, Ind. mayor Pete Buttigieg, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen Amy Klobuchar, in single digits, Buttigieg lagging in third place and Warren coming in fourth.
Introduced by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, who endorsed him and is a Black seasoned federal lawmaker who represents South Carolina's largely Black sixth congressional district, Biden spoke at a post-primary win rally Saturday night in Columbia, South Carolina.
"For all of those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign," said Biden, 77, to an elated crowd of supporters. "Now thanks to you, the heart of the Democratic primary, we just won and we've won big because of you."
He pushed the overall Democratic political platform and said that the Democrats must "build on Obamacare, not scratch it."
The former vice president told the audience that South Carolina voters launched the campaigns of former Democratic president Bill Clinton and Obama, and that "now you have launched our campaign on the way to beating Donald Trump."
And he called Obama the nation's greatest president, and said Democrats must win back the Senate in November and are "fighting for the soul of America."
He sounded a little Black, an indication that the Black vote is becoming increasingly pivotal in the fight for the White House, pundits said.
The incumbent president, Trump, who won South Carolina in 2016 over then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he went on to defeat in the general election, does not face serious opposition for the Republican nomination for president
A state with some 5 million people that is roughly 30 percent Black, and a state that incumbent Republican President Donald Trump won in 2016, South Carolina is a swing state, and as the state where the first African descendants were brought on South Carolina shores as slaves by wealthy white planters from Barbados, it has history, and was pivotal during the Civil War.
A socialist and activist who lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has since won the hearts of Democrats, young voters, a cadre of Blacks and women, and a vast amount of grassroots voters, Sanders, 78 and a longtime Vermont senator, leads in the polls nationally and is projected to win Super Tuesday.
The big question is whether Biden can jump hurdles and catch up to Sanders with so little time left and the last Democratic primary June 6.
A Feb 19 Quinnipiac University poll has Sanders leading the national race for the Democratic nomination was conducted after his first place showing in New Hampshire and his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses a week earlier behind Buttigieg. The poll has him with support from 32% of Democratic voters, a 16-point lead over Biden, who is at 16% and continues to struggle to regain his front-runner status.
In third place nationally is Bloomberg at 14%, followed by Warren at 12%, and Buttigieg, who won the Iowa caucuses, at 8 %.
Sen Klobuchar is at 7% nationally, with the remaining five candidates polling at less than 3%.
