Hillary Clinton lays Obama ghost with big win in SC

They chose her over Mr Sanders by more than six to one, while white voters narrowly favoured her as well, according to exit polls. But Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination was in dire need of a major triumph after Sanders breezed to victory in New Hampshire earlier this month.

Sanders said he and his campaign found his lack of support among older African-American voters in SC “pathetic”. “We are not taking anything, and we are not taking anyone, for granted”. If he loses blacks by similar margins in the Southern states that vote Tuesday, Clinton would likely take a delegate lead hard for the senator to overcome.

Addressing her supporters in South Carolina, Mrs Clinton said: ‘Thank you so much, from one end of this state to another. “By the time we get to California, I think we’ll be winning Latino voters by a significant margin and I think we will not have these kinds of deficits with African-American voters”.

“We have to face the reality of systemic racism”, she told the enthusiastic crowd, on the campus of the University of SC, after the polls had closed. There is still a possibility that Sanders will take over Clinton who has won the first two Democratic race caucuses, if he wins the remaining ones.

Victory for Mrs Clinton was widely expected but it gives her momentum ahead of the “Super Tuesday” primaries in 11 states next week.

For Sanders, the roughly 50-point defeat crystalized his weakness with black voters, a crucial segment of the Democratic electorate.

Speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”, Sanders said his campaign “got killed” Saturday in the Palmetto State. “America has never stopped being great”, she said, referencing Mr Trump’s campaign slogan.

During her victory speech, she encouraged Americans to confront persistent racism.

The Sanders campaign believes superdelegates will switch their allegiance as he amasses pledged delegates, and his supporters have launched independent campaigns created to ensure that happens at the convention.

Eight years ago, she lost the SC primary overwhelmingly to then Senator Barack Obama.

Trump was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he rejected support from the former KKK Grand Dragon and other white supremacists after Duke told his radio followers this week that a vote against Trump was equivalent to “treason to your heritage”. A Clinton-Trump matchup, should that ultimately develop, could mean a new general election battleground, with states like New Jersey, Michigan and even Pennsylvania potentially competitive for Republicans.

With 53 delegates at stake, Clinton will receive at least 31. This time around, they divided the vote among women under 30, but 8 in 10 of those between age 30 and 44 said they voted for Clinton. Rubio, wherever you are right now, unlike the U.S. Senate, the president of the United States is not a no-show job.

But for South Carolina’s democratic voters, there was very little question. “Now it’s on to Super Tuesday”. To them, the limits of race-neutral policy, even when shaped, formed and influenced by a black president, have been made plain during the Obama years.