South Carolina Sweet Tea Leaves

 

I spend way too much time on Twitter, but I know Twitter is not real life. Dean Phillips just finished 3rd in South Carolina. Despite polling that only had Joe Biden at 69%, he won SC with about 96%. (Maybe they were looking at the results upside-down?)

I see people online trying to say there was really low turnout. President Biden is the incumbent. Nobody expects him to lose. It isn't a sign of ,as far as I can tell, anything, and the spin people are putting on the low turnout takes me back to, um, former President Trump's numbers in Iowa. I also want to point out that SC isn't a state Biden would expect to win in the general (although, no kidding, I'd love to pretend Democrats were competitive everywhere) 

Here's the thing that is interesting to me--South Carolina has open primaries, but you can't vote in both and they are held on separate dates. So what I'm wondering is, what's going to be the turnout for the Republican SC primary, held after the Nevada contest (which looks like a dog's breakfast, and why would any political machine do that to themselves?)  

I'm not saying Trump is facing a competitive environment electorally--I'm not out of my mind. I'm saying he's facing a challenging environment outside of politics where real things intrude. Like him being nuts, about to lose all his money, and possibly facing time. We've never really seen a candidate with that kind of baggage before. Did you know Republicans are barely aware of the depth of legal trouble this man is in? 

I mean, I know they get their news from Fox, but damn! But when asked if they would support Trump if he was convicted, his support falls well away. 

And Biden's economy just keeps winning, and it's hard to argue with the scoreboard. Biden has improved people's lives in this country in ways he doesn't get credit for. This is happening because he  knows what he's doing. I'd would far rather have him running the show in a world where a responsible and non-corrupted hand is needed regarding foreign policy more than ever--

And I simply don't trust Trump on foreign policy, and we need more people to speak openly about why this man is simply a national security disaster. 

We're not sitting in a vacuum waiting for Trump to win. We're waiting on his fragile little mind to break when it's the 2011 WHCD every goddamn day.  What strongmen can't deal with is being put down, dismissed, isolated. Alienated from their people. And it's possible to do. It always has been. 

And that's the tea.