I wrote the following just after the South Carolina primary but before the Super Tuesday reversal that anointed Joe Biden as the Democrats’ choice. I hesitated to publish this on-the-ground account because I had a sneaking feeling that I wasn’t putting my finger on anything substantive.
In the aftermath of the disappointing showing by Bernie and the truly astonishing mopping up operation by the figurehead Biden, many astute commentators have parsed what I consider the main conclusions: that the Sanders call for revolutionary change is not resonating with the Democrat base as needed for him to win; that voters place a huge priority on defeating Trump; that the Obama glow still illumines its alumni; and that the media-establishment narrative on the need for a consensus figure is persuasive.
Prediction is treacherous, and I was as surprised as anyone as the revival of the hollow Biden campaign. That said, Biden’s candidacy is just as hollow now as it was in Iowa when the Bernie offices were flooded with enthusiastic youthful volunteers and Biden’s looked like canasta night at the senior center (when they weren’t closed entirely). Biden won huge majorities in states he never visited and had no “ground game” or door-knocking and calling squads. He’s a construction of the political/media class, an entity still enjoying sufficient credibility to draw in the bulk of Trump-loathing voters.
I don’t think the upcoming primaries will change much, and though I encourage everyone to continue pitching in, I’ll be turning my primary attention back to my issue-based activities, public education about single-payer healthcare, judicial reform, housing, and whatever other topics that arise among the organizations I belong to. I’ll watch Biden pursue the White House and, should it occur, his presidency from the sidelines. Those who insisted Bernie should not be the candidate can now step up and pitch in to convince the electorate, including those 100 million who don’t bother to vote at all, that Joe is their man. I don’t envy them the task.
(MARION, SC) -- The late polls were right though too conservative about Biden’s blowout victory in South Carolina. No way around the fact that it was a defeat for Bernie’s strategy and a sharp disappointment to his volunteer platoons. (There will be more.) In retrospect, we saw plenty of evidence on the ground about where things were headed.
Local South Carolinians told us—and we quickly confirmed—that people here prefer not to disclose their political inclinations or their voting choices unlike the Iowans who are much greater enthusiasts of the candidate yard sign. Canvassing, therefore, is quite different as the key datum, i.e., how sympathetic an individual is to your guy on a scale of 1 to 5, is hard to extract in the few seconds people permit for the front porch exchange. As voting day approached, we were handed lists of supposed “1”s and “2”s, meaning people committed or leaning towards Bernie. They turned out to be wildly optimistic.
People smiled graciously and said they would certainly consider voting for our guy, saying “Yes sir, he sounds great, that’s certainly right,” etc. But after two decades in Latin America, I know how easily people can make you think they agree with you when they don’t. It’s not fibbing when too blunt disagreement is considered a bit rude.
Furthermore, I’m told that race is pretty important in this state, how about that? Turns out that a white guy knocking on the door of African-American households is not a guarantee of warm fuzzies though people are rarely impolite. Younger people, especially men, often took an interest in the campaign and Bernie’s positions, and the exit polls suggest that Sanders did okay with them. But the level of disconnection, disbelief, skepticism, and enforced ignorance about the entire electoral process was pretty stunning.
In addition, black South Carolinians have been massively criminalized if our anecdotal experience is at all typical. We would routinely encounter two or three formerly incarcerated citizens in the course of a morning, and nearly all of them assumed they could no longer vote at all. (They can in South Carolina if their parole is completed, and they re-register.)
After a week of roaming the back roads of the state, I return to a key component of Bernie’s campaign and his theory of social change: getting elected is just a step and perhaps not even the most important one. Before and after any polling takes place, permanent, relentless, and well-informed mobilization of large numbers of people around concrete demands is required for there to be any chance of achieving reforms, much less revolutionary changes.
South Carolina, as we were repeatedly advised, has little tradition of civic activism, and the historical reasons for that aren’t hard to guess. The state’s Democrat base, African-Americans, are gerrymandered into safe black-majority districts, as few as possible, and have far less influence on state or national politics than they should despite the presence of a black politician here and there. A good number of potential voters told us that they don’t think much of elections or their results and stay away from the whole process. I suspect many more of those who promised to go to the polls yesterday feel the same way.
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