Don’t believe the Democratic National Committee’s official storyline—the DNC’s decision to make South Carolina the first Democratic presidential primary in 2028 isn’t about introducing more racial diversity into the early contests. It’s actually about keeping power in the hands of the party establishment, the people who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, and who are likely to wind up supporting Kamala Harris in 2028.
The fix is in.
South Carolina was the establishment’s firewall against Bernie Sanders’ left-wing insurgency twice over. In 2016, Sanders nearly beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus, in Iowa, and went on to defeat her in the New Hampshire primary. Four years later, there was a brief moment when Sanders looked like the frontrunner—until he got clobbered by Joe Biden in South Carolina.
It’s true that the black voters who make South Carolina’s primaries more racially diverse than the contests in Iowa or New Hampshire are also less politically radical, so it’s easy for the DNC to say it’s not trying to choke off support for the socialist wing of the party, it’s just giving black voters more of a say.
The Democratic Socialists of America, the left fringe of the party, is disproportionately white—even its New York City chapter is 60 percent white, according to DSA’s own membership polling.
That’s astonishing considering NYC itself is only 34 percent white.
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