The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Won South Carolina Primary. Does It Matter?

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

President Joe Biden ran away with the democratic presidential nomination in South Carolina. Biden won a resounding 96 percent of the vote. We discuss takeaways from the race and what, if anything it tells us about Biden's support among Black voters. This episode: Senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and All Things Considered host Juana Summers.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Madeline and Puneet, and we're waiting for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards to begin. This podcast was recorded at 1.36 p.m. on Monday, February 5th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll know who's won record of the year. Okay, that sounded like they were actually at the Grammy Awards, which is pretty cool, because that looked like quite the show. I mean, the Grammys were amazing. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House.

And today we are joined by All Things Considered host and old friend of the pod, not saying you're old, Juana Summers. Hey, Juana. Hi, guys. President Biden won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina on Saturday. It was his first time on the ballot this primary season. And no big surprises there. He won. Yep.

So he won by a huge margin, 96 percent of the vote in total. And there were two other Democratic candidates on the ballot. That's author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips. They combined earned only about 4% of the vote. Turnout, I will say, was not great. There were fewer than 150,000 people who voted. That translates to less than 5% of the electorate. But I do think it's important to keep in mind that this was not seen as a competitive race in South Carolina. You've got an incumbent president who was on the ballot, as to be expected. Yeah, and the other two didn't campaign much, if at all. It was not

a heavily contested race by any stretch of the imagination. We will talk more about, you know, what can be extrapolated from any of these numbers. But Juana, you were there in South Carolina this weekend. You were covering the primary. What was it like? And were people even aware that there was an election taking place? Yeah. So interestingly, I mean, look, we've covered a lot of elections together. And I have to tell you all that it didn't really feel like election season when I was in South Carolina, driving through the state with our All Things Considered team. I didn't see a lot of yard signs or billboards.

There were some ads on TV, but it wasn't that huge influx that we've all sort of come to expect. I mean, part of that, of course, is due to the fact that the state holds its primaries in different dates. Democrats held theirs on Saturday. Republicans will have theirs in just a few weeks. But it did feel a little surprising. And there were some people I talked to that even 48 hours, 24 hours away from the Democratic primary didn't know who all was on the Democratic ballot other than Joe Biden. And

some were still making up their minds as to who they were going to vote for. So Asma, Black voters get a lot of attention in South Carolina because South Carolina propelled President Biden to the nomination in 2020. And black voters in particular were a big part of that. You were there with President Biden, I guess, about a week and a half ago. Yeah. The weekend prior. Yeah. And here's the president of the United States campaigning in a state that, as we just said, was not particularly contested. So can you explain what was what's going on there? You know, this is the question I've had on my mind a lot, I will say for the last month, because we've seen a number of administration folks, surrogates travel down to South Carolina, the vice president, the first

lady, the second gentleman, Biden himself was down there multiple times. And you wonder, well, why? Because South Carolina is not a competitive primary. And there is nobody who reasonably expects that a Democrat will win the state in a general election. And my sense of this was that it was messaging. It was partly that the Democratic Party wanted to show that they are invested. Biden himself advocated that South Carolina should get bumped up to the front of the calendar. I also think that there have been a lot of questions from outside the administration about how strong Biden's support is from Black voters. In fact, I talked about this with a guy, Terrence Woodbury. He's with Hit Strategies. He pays attention, focuses a lot on where Black voters are.

And he told me this. We see that generation gap between older and younger voters in every race. But it has been very and much more concentrated in the Black community. And so I do think that is going to continue to be a primary priority for the Biden campaign. And that's what they're going to be looking at in South Carolina. Are they moving those numbers specifically with Black men and with Black voters under the age of 50? So I will say, I think there was a desire to kind of quiet some of that criticism. But at the same time, Terrence told me, and maybe, Juana, you have a sense of this, that the folks who vote in a South Carolina primary are your traditional establishment

always voters. They're not the low propensity voters that are actually the ones that are ringing alarm bells in these polls. Yeah, I heard a lot of the same things when I was talking to state elected officials and strategists who work in the state of South Carolina. And one of the things that they pointed out that kind of dovetails with that, I was talking to State Representative Campbell Garvin, who is a young Democratic representative himself. He's in his early 30s. And he was telling me when we met with him in Blythewood, South Carolina, that he doesn't see the president's challenges about his agenda or his record. It's how the campaign communicates that. He says that he does believe that the Biden campaign does have challenges really attracting

people like himself, a young Black Southern male. But he thinks that it's really about figuring out how to tell that story and how to reach those voters where they are. And that probably means not on NPR, not on cable news, getting online, meeting them in the ways that they're communicating and they're getting their information. Well, and you were particularly focused during your trip on young Black voters, interviewing them in various locations. What did you hear from them about what they care about? You know, what issues are motivating them in this election year?

So the first thing I will say is that no matter whether the young Black voters we talked to plan to support the president and Vice President Harris or not. There was a big distaste for the political climate right now. People do not like sort of the vitriol that they are hearing. And another thing that we heard repeatedly is that no one is particularly psyched for a potential rematch between President Biden and former President Trump. So there were a couple of issues that kept coming up over and over again when we asked these young voters. The first one was college affordability and student debt. Lots of people cared deeply about that in that under 35 set. We also heard a lot of talk about abortion. Multiple people brought up to us the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade. Healthcare broadly came up, access to healthcare,

things like being able to afford healthcare. And then the other thing that came up often, particularly among people who said that they were members of a union, was the issue of workers' rights. So, Anna, if you gave me that list, that issue set, I would say, wow, Joe Biden has these voters wrapped up based on all of his policies, all of the things that he has worked on, the things that he's put a lot of emphasis on, like helping with student debt, putting his support quite visibly with striking workers over the last year, focused on health care in many ways, et cetera, et cetera. So how do these voters feel about President Biden? So it's not always the case that their support lines up for him as naturally as one might think, given the list of issues that we've been talking about. And I want to introduce you guys to one voter that I met. He was still undecided, and he told me that he was open to voting for candidates in either the Democratic primary on Saturday or the

Republican one in a couple of weeks. His name is Tamandre Robinson. He's 24 years old, currently a student at Midlands Technical College. And when I asked him about the issues he cared about, he named the exact things we've been talking about, college affordability and health care were at the top of his list. But he also told me a big issue for him was character and unity. Am I looking at a person for their character? Does character truly change America or does good policy change America? None of those questions are being answered. It's just choose me, no choose me.

So it's complicated. Wanda, did he say where he gets a lot of his information from? This is like one of the perennial questions I've had about voters is where do you get your bits of political news from? Yeah, he, like a lot of the young people we talk to, is extremely online, getting almost all of his information from social media, some news websites. But social media was the big thing that kept coming up. All of these voters that we talked to were talking about the messages that they were seeing on Instagram reels and on TikTok. I guess the reason I was asking, Juana, is it seems like it's really hard to break through with messaging for any campaign, for any candidate, if a lot of voters are getting their messages from self-selected groups that are going to reinforce what they're already thinking or from like friends or friends of friends. And I don't think that this is unique to Biden, but he is like a candidate of the times in which so many voters now get their information that way. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I fully appreciate that

challenge for President Biden's campaign. But for candidates running for any office, it's really hard to break through. I spoke to some Democratic strategists in the state as well, and they were telling me that's why it's so important to invest in local validators. It's that it's powerful when you see, for example, like a young Black person on Instagram talking about why this election matters to them and why there is a choice. And that's going to go a lot farther than, say, an ad on cable news telling people why they should support President Biden and Vice President Harris. So it is really tricky. And I think it's going to be interesting to see as the campaign moves into the Super Tuesday states, as we focus on the general election, what kind of new tools these campaigns use to reach a voter group that is notoriously hard to message to. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, more on what we can learn from the South Carolina primary.

And we're back. And as we said at the top of the pod, turnout was pretty low, really quite low in the South Carolina presidential primary for Democrats. It was also largely uncontested. So what can we, if at all, learn from the primary? Juana, you have spoken to people from the Biden campaign and inside the Biden cinematic universe. What do they think should be taken from this? It's so funny. I was talking to someone who is not affiliated with the campaign, but is a Democrat who was organizing young voters in particular in the state of South Carolina in the week leading up to the election.

And I asked them this exact question. OK, I take that it is a largely uncontested primary. So what should I be watching? What are the lessons we learned? And this person, this was Cliff Albright, the executive director of Black Voters Matter. He told me, I don't think you should take much away from this at all. There's not another thing on the map on the calendar that we can compare this to. So there's not much to say. And he said, it's kind of funny, you know, he's a group that focuses on Black voters. And he's saying, don't pay much attention here. But he said that we can compare this to. So there's not much to say. And he said, it's kind of funny, you know, he's a group that focuses on Black voters, and he's saying, don't pay much attention here. But he said that we shouldn't make much of it. And when I talked to the campaign, when I

talked to other national Democrats, they said something similar. They expected the president to win. That happened. They were able to test out some messaging to Black voters and to show the nation the importance that the president and the Democratic Party put on Black voters, those same voters who really breathed life into his campaign in 2020 when things were not looking great for Biden. But there's not much more to it than that, in their opinion. You know, I went back in history and I was like, OK, what would be the closest analogous year? OK, 2012, when former President Obama was running for reelection, what was turned out in 2012 in the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina? There wasn't one. He was completely uncontested. So Asma, we have been talking about the challenges that the Biden campaign has in communicating

about what the president has done in a way that people will take on board and say, thank you, Joe Biden. Do you have a sense of what the Biden campaign is trying to do? There is a belief that they need to go out and more effectively message on some of the, quote, wins that he has had, right? I hear specifically around messaging on the economy. I think the challenge is that, you know, take a message like this Bidenomics phrase that they've had for a really long time. I mean, I did a story on this months and months ago that it wasn't resonating. Some folks would say it is resonating in some ways, but what does it mean? And I think the real big challenge is that it is such a vague word that incorporates people's perceptions of all things on the economy.

And some folks are still frustrated that prices are high. Sure, inflation is dipped, but prices, as certainly in some communities, have not really gone down to pre-pandemic levels. So I think the real challenge that Biden has is that there is a lot of noise right now around a whole bunch of issues. And for whatever reason, and I can't exactly put my finger on why, it doesn't seem like his positive messaging, whether it's on the economy, whether it's on aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act or like, you know, lowering the cost of insulin for some seniors, that doesn't seem to fully be translating at a mass scale. At the same time, I will say when I have seen Biden or Harris individually message on those issues in rooms, they are massive applause lines. They get like standing ovations.

And so part of this, you could say, is just a vision of like it will take time for these messages to resonate. I think there is a belief amongst the Biden campaign that when there is a real viable choice on the other side, like Donald Trump being the actual opponent, not kind of an ambiguous guy that maybe their support will come around. I don't know. I just don't know. I think that this is one of those questions where, Tam, I genuinely feel more unsure heading into this election cycle than I felt in a lot of the previous general elections I have covered.

And Juana, you talked about how voters you talk to are like, oh, please, no, don't give us this rematch. And we've certainly also heard that a lot as we've been out reporting. Do you have any sense of how they're responding to this increasingly becoming a reality? Do people think it's really happening. And the response that I heard, quite frankly, was kind of a sense of dread. There was a young woman that I met in Orangeburg, South Carolina named Delisha Pickens. And I should say, she is a supporter of President Biden. She plans to this, looking forward to what that rematch is going to be like. And she told me that she thinks that the fact that so many people are not really into a Trump-Biden rematch, she thinks it might actually have an impact on turnout. I think more young people could be more active when it comes to voting and politics. And I feel like if we had more options and choices, that more young people would be more involved. And that would be the we had more options and choices, that more young people would be more involved. And that would be the South Carolina State University drumline that you hear behind her because of course, it is campaign season in South Carolina. You got to see a drumline. I did indeed. I've missed them. You mentioned South Carolina State University. Was that the

event where Vice President Harris was speaking? I know it's a historically Black university there in the state. Yeah, that's right. It was not a huge event, maybe 100 or so people, many of them students, on the Friday before the election. And I have to tell you, I hadn't been out with Vice President Harris in a while. And in her speech, she was really focused on the things that the administration had promised and delivered, like canceling some student loan debt, lowering the cost of insulin, increasing federal funding to HBCUs like South Carolina State University, which she name-checked specifically. And

people were really into it. The young students that I talked to there were incredibly excited, A, just to be in the same place with the vice president of the United States, who is also an HBCU alum. But they seem to really have a better grasp on the things that the Biden administration has done that actually benefit their lives. You know, it's interesting to hear you say that, Juana, because there is a belief in the administration that the vice president is kind of the youth whisperer, that she is able to more effectively talk to younger voters, voters of color that perhaps are not as energized by Joe Biden himself. Yeah, that's right. And I think that was really on display in Orangeburg. You know, she was calling out and waving to the Alpha Kappa Alphas in the crowd in their pink and green and pearls. She was able to talk about her connection to the HBCU community

in a way that seemed to resonate with these students. And this, of course, is just one event in one state that's a snapshot in time. but at least among the half a dozen or so young voters that I spoke to after the event, she really seemed to click with them. They seemed to like what she was saying, but they also seemed to like her as a messenger. And I think that's the important part here is whether she is an effective messenger. And in this case, I think she was. All right. We are going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. And Juana Summers, thank you so much for joining us on the pod today.

Thank you. Let me come back soon. Bye, Juana. It was great to have you. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.