COLUMBIA, S.C. — Joe Biden thinks he can win South Carolina. And that victory, he believes, would hurtle his campaign into a rally toward the Democratic nomination no matter who has already taken Iowa and New Hampshire.
He thinks this because two political operatives no longer in the game — known Clinton-hater and former state Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian and the 93-year-old former senator Fritz Hollings — have told him it’s true.
Like so much of the musing inside the Biden 2016 exploration, it’s an assumption based on a wish based on a feeling. They’ve done no polls. They’ve raised no money. They’ve got no organization.
Vice President Joe Biden shares a laugh with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. before Biden administered the Senate oath during a ceremonial re-enactment swearing-in ceremony, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015, in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
And yet, top Democrats in the state are so unnerved by Hillary Clinton’s inability to get beyond her email controversy that they say Biden’s on-a-wing-and-a-prayer strategy isn’t hopeless.
“Joe Biden has a lot of support in South Carolina, always has,” said Rep. Jim Clyburn, arguably the most prominent and influential Democrat in the state, especially within the African-American community.
“If he were on the ballot and the voting were taking place this coming Tuesday, I’d think that Hillary Clinton would still survive. But the election will not be this coming Tuesday, and if he were to get into the race at this point, it all depends,” Clyburn said. “People are really concerned about those emails.”
Clyburn intends to stay neutral through the primary, and the Clintons know not to ask for his support until then.
But Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, a 40-year institution himself, said they have already asked him — and he’s told them he’d prefer to wait for Biden.
“I’ve told the vice president for some years that if he ran for president, I would support him,” Riley said. “If he decides to run, I will be in his corner.”
Neither of these South Carolina power brokers is convinced it’ll get to that. Clyburn says his own gut “tells me that Joe Biden does not have the fire in the belly at this point that’s required to be successful.” Riley hasn’t spoken to Biden for months, and not since the presidential speculation has flared up.
Indeed, rather than a professional turnkey operation, what’s waiting for Biden here is a collection of mostly graying Biden devotees and younger Democrats brought in by President Barack Obama but not sold on Clinton.
According to sources familiar with Biden’s deliberations, the vice president hasn’t gotten into details himself, but he’s asking questions about what that organization would look like. In the close Biden circle, a theory of a primary win has taken shape: the old Harpootlian and Hollings networks aren’t nothing, and those could be bolstered by Biden’s ties to the African-American and faith-based communities, with an emphasis on the African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist churches.
Plus, South Carolina has an open primary, so maybe Biden would get some Republican votes, Biden insiders guess, among people turned off by the GOP primary or who really hate Clinton or remember when Biden gave the eulogy for Republican icon Strom Thurmond that people here still talk about.
Biden’s boosters never fail to mention that Clinton got crushed here in 2008. And with polls showing her on the ropes in both Iowa and New Hampshire — even top operatives with close ties to the Clintons are beginning to acknowledge the possibility that she might lose both of those contests to Sanders — they think Biden could pick up the pieces in South Carolina. That win in a state with the most diverse electorate would fuel the argument that he’s best positioned to help his party hold the White House for another four years.
Clinton’s backers in South Carolina dismiss the Biden theory outright. Don Fowler, the former Democratic National Committee and state party chairman here, called it all “fanciful thinking” and “superficial boasting.”
“I don’t make light of Vice President Biden’s campaign, but having admiration for him and thinking people in South Carolina like him is a long way from thinking he could win the South Carolina primary,” he said.
The most critical variable of the Biden theory is his standing among black voters, who make up about half of the South Carolina Democratic primary electorate. Biden believes he has strong support among African-Americans that will only be intensified by his connection to the president. Obama, Biden’s team notes, crushed Clinton by 60 percent among African-Americans in the 2008 South Carolina primary.
Except Biden, of course, isn’t black. And Clinton, after all, has no shortage of connections of her own, not least a husband who remains beloved among African-Americans here.
She also has something else Biden does not — polling. Those surveys show her favorable numbers among African-Americans ranging from 70 percent to 80 percent.
“In South Carolina, unless the Constitution is changed and Barack Obama is allowed to run for a third term, I don’t see anyone beating her here,” said former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, an Obama campaign co-chair who has endorsed Clinton.
But some influential leaders in South Carolina are holding back their endorsements as they wait for a signal from Biden.
James Smith, a state representative working with Draft Biden, said he has a dozen fellow elected officials who would endorse the vice president immediately, not counting those African-American politicians who, he said, would switch allegiance away from Clinton. Some, he says, would have been with Biden but thought he wasn’t going to run, and some have just fallen out of love with Clinton.
To Smith, the evidence of Clinton’s weakness here is how few people endorsed her before Biden started toying with a run. “You can look at how deep and far into this campaign we are and see how many haven’t endorsed,” Smith said. “That says volumes.”
The Clinton campaign declined to comment on Biden’s prospects in South Carolina.
It’s been working South Carolina though, hiring Obama’s 2008 state director to run an operation that has had nearly 1,900 active volunteers reaching out to nearly 100,000 unique Democrats door-to-door, over the phone or at house parties, according to numbers provided by the campaign.
Still, on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, Clinton’s office in a small house on Richland Street was closed by lunchtime, all its signs packed away inside, none of the mess and clutter usual for a campaign in full swing. A few blocks away, Bernie Sanders’ office still a few days away from its official opening had more activity inside.
Smith says this is more evidence of how little Clinton’s penetrated so far.
“She’ll have a hired campaign,” he said. “He’ll have an inspired campaign.”
Kaye Koonce, a Charleston-based attorney who serves as the first vice chair of the state Democratic Party here, says bumper-sticker lines like that miss the energy she’s seeing for Clinton. Koonce said her inbox is filled with messages from people wanting to help the Clinton effort.
“There’s no lack of numbers or enthusiasm,” Koonce said.
But there’s also no lack of doubt.
The Rev. Joseph Darby, a presiding elder of the AME church and first vice president of the Charleston NAACP, said he hasn’t heard from the Clintons since 2007. Asked about Biden, he said: “I would be pleased to see him.”‘
