COLUMBIA, S.C. — Joe Biden delivered the rout he promised here.
Now, his campaign advisers and allies say their challenge is to seize on the performance by locking down the moderate wing of the party and making the race a choice between him and Bernie Sanders.
It won't be easy.
Under-resourced and lacking organization in Super Tuesday states, Biden over the next three days is counting on momentum, free media and surrogate work to give him a fighting chance at remaining in the delegate hunt.
“We just won and we won big,” Biden said to a roaring crowd here as he celebrated a victory that placed him some 30-points ahead of his nearest rival. “We’re very much alive.”
Biden will begin lapping up the free publicity Sunday morning. He’s already booked on four Sunday cable shows, where’s he’s expected to hold up his appeal to African-American voters and lean into a line he’s betting will resonate with Democrats: that, in reference to Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, he is neither a socialist nor a plutocrat.
The campaign is also immediately leaning heavily on Jim Clyburn, the powerful South Carolina congressman whose endorsement helped deliver Biden’s resounding victory. Though Clyburn made remarks on Saturday that questioned the campaign’s organization and fundraising efforts, he later backed away from them and will campaign in North Carolina for Biden. Clyburn is also in discussions to cut a radio ad for the campaign. He has already held a highly-visible media campaign, appearing on cable news panels for several days leading into the South Carolina primary to plug Biden.
Biden’s team is painting South Carolina as a clarifying moment in the 2020 primary — one they hope transforms the contours of a race where the party was in search of an alternative to Sanders and his brand of democratic socialism. On Saturday, Biden was the first candidate to decisively beat Sanders in any early state contest.
“The vice president is being propelled by a diverse coalition into Super Tuesday … his momentum is undeniable,” said Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn. “We’re at an inflection point in this race.”
The campaign is also planning to announce a raft of new endorsements in coming days, attempting to signal to moderate Democrats it’s time to consolidate behind the former vice president.
Biden's campaign points to polling showing him leading or in second place in many of the 14 Super Tuesday states. Yet while Biden advisers insist he will play across the board, his campaign has struggled to maintain infrastructure in California, a state where Bernie Sanders is expected to dominate. And polls are already showing billionaire Michael Bloomberg eating into Biden’s numbers in Texas.
But surrogates point to Alabama and North Carolina as possible strongholds for Biden.
“Tonight the race has changed, permanently and inexorably,” said Larry Rasky, treasurer for Unite the Country, the super PAC backing Biden. “It’s a sea change for Super Tuesday. Everyone in the country is seeing this story and it will resonate across every medium for the next 72 hours. It doesn’t matter what Mike Bloomberg spends. Money can’t buy you love. And tonight, people have seen that Joe Biden is still beloved among the core of the Democratic party. And so they can see that there is a clear choice that they have to make as voters.”
Surrogates privately acknowledge Sanders is likely to dominate in California on Tuesday. Biden’s delegate strategy has long focused on locking down congressional districts with large minority populations rather than pushing for statewide wins. But even that effort stalled after he suffered debilitating losses in the first two early states and his fundraising began drying up.
While money began flowing again to the campaign and super PAC in the last week after strong debate performances and an uptick in polling, it’s coming too late to create a demonstrable effect in the 14 states headed to primaries on Tuesday. The super PAC has spent $1 million in digital advertising across Super Tuesday states, pocket change compared to the hundreds of millions Bloomberg has dropped, as well as Sanders’ organizational and spending advantages.
As Biden’s polling numbers started ticking back up here this week, behind-the-scenes efforts were underway among his campaign and his top surrogates to consolidate support behind him. On Friday, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine announced his endorsement, and later in the day former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did the same. On Saturday, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe formally endorsed Biden.
On Saturday, Clyburn voiced frustrations with the handling of the campaign to the Wall Street Journal and CNN, saying it needed “some retooling.”
“If [Biden] has a relaunch, I think we will have to sit down and get serious about how we retool this campaign,” Clyburn said on CNN. “I’m all in, I’m not going to sit back idly and watch people mishandle this campaign. We are gonna get it right.”
But after Biden was declated the winner Saturday night, Clyburn insisted he was not calling for heads to roll.
"No. I have no problem with management. I never even used the word," he told POLITICO. I am a guy who believes in on-the-ground stuff, and my only problem is — my emphasis is on door-to-door" get-out-the-vote operations.
Biden campaign co-chair Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) said he planned to connect with Clyburn about any issues he has with Biden's operation.
“I think you have to keep recalibrating in the campaign, the campaign should always be fluid. But I also don’t panic, either. Everybody said our launch was absolutely phenomenal and it was great,” Richmond said. “I think we’ve had a great week and a great weekend, we shouldn’t be initiating stories that are negative. Jim and I will be together tomorrow, we’ll eat dinner and we’ll go from there.”
Marc Caputo contributed to this report.
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How Joe Biden plans to capitalize on his big win - POLITICO
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