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Opinion | Biden Is Putting South Carolina First. I Won’t Vote for That. [1]

['Faiz Shakir']

Date: 2022-12-05

Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and then Michigan would all hold early February elections to help narrow and winnow the Democratic field. All four of these states have the distinction of being among the 10 closest states in the 2020 presidential election.

Why does it matter that general election battlegrounds are placed so early in the process? This is a Democratic team effort to invest in voter outreach, voter contact and voter enthusiasm at a much earlier stage, for a longer period, with more resources. The icing on the cake just happens to be that those battleground primary voters also get to select the nominee they think could best win their critical state in November.

The ultimate goal of this process is to win; the Biden reform proposal honors that by moving these four key states, from different regions of the country with their collectively diverse electorates, to the front of the line. And if that’s all it did, we could wrap up this essay here and declare victory.

But the Biden nomination calendar contains a fundamental, dooming flaw: the replacement of Iowa with South Carolina as the first state. The change would be comical if it weren’t tragic.

We all know why South Carolina got the nod. President Biden, Representative Jim Clyburn and many of his top supporters were buoyed by their campaign’s comeback in February 2020 when the state delivered Mr. Biden his first victory of the season — and a big one at that. The media attention from that victory, and the consolidation of the Democratic field that it yielded, helped catapult him to winning a majority of the following Super Tuesday states. And when Covid spread through the nation shortly after, the rest of the primary contests were effectively quarantined, and Mr. Biden iced his victory. None of that story is a reason to put South Carolina first, however.

South Carolina is not a battleground state: Mr. Trump carried it by double digits in 2020. It is way more ideologically and culturally conservative than our party and our nation. And the state is not trending in any way toward the Democratic Party. Just two years ago, we witnessed Jaime Harrison — now the chair of the Democratic National Committee — spend the eye-popping sum of $130 million to try to defeat Senator Lindsey Graham. After outraising and outspending Mr. Graham, Mr. Harrison still lost the 2020 Senate race decisively. Let’s not compel all other Democratic campaigns to waste more money that could be better spent elsewhere. If we really want to pick a diverse primary electorate, look to South Carolina’s neighbor to the north — an actual battleground state.

It bears repeating: Being first is a special honor. The state chosen for the task is rewarded in myriad ways. Iowa’s economy has benefited greatly over the years from the high level of campaign spending and travel. Aware of the process’ economic power, many of our Democratic campaigns employed union-friendly hotels, restaurants and vendors when we were active in Iowa. Good luck finding that in South Carolina, one of the fiercest anti-union, anti-labor states in the country. In fact, South Carolina is already first in the nation at something that it shouldn’t be proud of; it is the lowest-density union state in America. It should thus never be in contention to be first on our calendar.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/opinion/iowa-caucus-south-carolina-primary-democrat.html

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