This week’s conventional wisdom is that Hillary’s best, perhaps her last, hope resides in South Carolina, whose primary is Feb. 20 and whose voters are more “moderate” and “diverse” than the too-white Sander-istas of Iowa and New Hampshire. A few typical examples:
- “The bigger, more diverse, more moderate electorates in the contests to come,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote the day after Clinton’s New Hampshire debacle, “might be more receptive to Clinton’s arguments.”
- Under a photograph of a triumphant Sanders in New Hampshire, U.S. News & World Report asks, “Can he do it in a more diverse state?” For Clinton, the article continues, quoting a Janet Ross article in the Washington Post, “more diverse states offer one bit of modestly uplifting news.’”
- ABC News: Meeting with Al Sharpton, “Bernie Sanders Looking Ahead to More Diverse Electorate.”
- The Atlantic: “A couple weeks ago, the thinking among most pundits had been that after a narrow win in Iowa, [Clinton] could weather a defeat in New Hampshire because of her ‘firewall’ in Nevada and South Carolina, where the diverse electorate is more favorable to her.”
- Slate: “Nevada’s caucusgoers and South Carolina’s primary voters tend to be more moderate and far more racially diverse than either of the first two states on the calendar, making them the first significant test of Bernie’s ability to expand a base that skews white and liberal.”
- Washington Post, Feb.11: “Tonight’s debate will likely see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders looking to connect with black and Hispanic voters ahead of the next primary contests in Nevada and South Carolina, whose diverse populations contrast with the mostly-white electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire.”
- New York Times: “Senator Bernie Sanders’s idealistic message, which inspired a decisive victory in New Hampshire over Hillary Clinton, faces a sharp test in South Carolina, where Democrats are more moderate and demographically diverse.”
- Huffington Post: “The shift to more diverse states raises the stakes for Thursday’s debate.”
There is a nice irony in South Carolina being latched on to by Northern liberals as a bulwark of diversity and moderation, since liberals generally regard the Palmetto State as a hotbed of racism and intolerance. See, for example, CNN — “Choose your adjective: Hardball. Bare-knuckle. Down-and dirty” — and this state by state analysis by the New York Times that found South Carolina “ranked among the least tolerant in the U.S.”
Aside from the irony, however, the fact is that South Carolina’s Democratic voters are not really that diverse. What Hillary Clinton hopes to rely on, and Bernie Sanders must somehow overcome, in South Carolina is not an electorate that is diverse but one that is heavily black. “Black voters represent a solid majority of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina,” the Associated Press reports, citing a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll showing that Clinton’s “74-17 advantage among South Carolina’s black voters explains her overall 37-point margin.” Similarly, Bloomberg News quotes Phil Noble, a South Carolina Democratic operative who advised Obama’s 2008 campaign, commenting that “I’ve been told that the quintessential Democratic primary voter is probably a 62-year-old black woman, and I think that’s probably true.”
South Carolina Democratic voters in fact are far from diverse, at least according to the traditional meaning of that term. Modern liberals, however, much in the manner of the first Clinton’s refusal to be bound by traditional meaning (“It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”), have by now largely redefined “diverse” to mean “black.”
By that definition, of course, South Carolina Democrats are “diverse” in the exactly the same manner that black applicants to selective colleges are “diverse.” Asian applicants, by contrast, are not regarded as “diverse,” just as the very, very small number of Asian American voters in South Carolina does nothing to make that electorate less “diverse” in the eyes of liberal Democrats. For Democrats, black is the new “diverse.”
