“Jim Crow is sneaking back,” Biden tells South Carolina crowd

FAN Editor

Columbia, South Carolina — Former Vice President Joe Biden rang the alarm that “Jim Crow is sneaking back” at a campaign rally in South Carolina, the south’s first primary state that is seen as key to clinching the Democratic nomination. Biden launched his third bid for the presidency on April 25 in Pennsylvania, and crisscrossed Iowa before heading to South Carolina this weekend. 

Biden held a campaign rally Saturday in Columbia, the Palmetto State’s capital and home to the University of South Carolina. Bidden added to his usual fighting-for-the-middle-class stump speech by calling for protecting voting rights and ending “systemic racism.”

Biden cited numerous states’ voting laws which he said are “mostly directed at people of color.”

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On systemic racism, Biden gave the example that if two men named “Jamal” and “John” applied for the same job, “John” would easily get the gig.

Rally attendee Jessica Ellmore, 33, said before the rally her top issues were criminal justice reform, the maternal mortality rate and gun violence.

Ellmore said she attended the rally because she likes Biden but does not want to pigeonhole him only as former President Obama’s second-in-command. 

Biden received one of his loudest applause lines when he vowed, like at other rallies, to repeal the tax cuts passed by the Trump administration.

Ruby Hall, who described her age as “60-plus,” said before the rally that repealing the tax cuts was one of top issues because she paid an extra $500 this year and attributes this to the tax cuts.

Hall clapped and found a Biden sign to wave when she heard Biden’s promise to repeal.

During the 2018 midterms, Biden stumped for other Democratic candidates across the state, boosting his popularity.

“I think he enjoys favorability, likeability, and favorability through the party,” Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina and a CBSN contributor said. “It was pretty evident in the 2018 midterms that he was one of the most — if not the most — requested surrogates for Democrats up and down the ballot, across the country.”

After the rally, the former vice president will go to a “finance event” organized by State Sen. Richard “Dick” Harpootlian, who told CBS News the gathering will be a “well-appointed, well-attended event.”

Harpootlian said Biden’s pragmatism makes him the right candidate for next year’s election.

“We have issues like Medicare for All and the Green [New] Deal and they are great ideas and I think Joe Biden will support the general sense of all of these things,” Harpootlian told CBS News. “However, somebody is going to have to beat Donald Trump to make these things happen.”

“We have a president who looks straight to the camera and lies and makes things up,” Harpootlian added. “So you need somebody who is adept at responding to that. Nail him down.”

Harpootlian said he has already raised “a bunch” of money for Biden but would not cite a specific amount.

Biden’s connections to South Carolina go back years and are bipartisan, as seen with his eulogy for long-time Democratic South Carolina Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings in April and his eulogy for Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond in 2003.

The former vice president has thrown his support behind a national $15 hourly minimum wage and greater healthcare coverage by presenting options for Americans to opt into a “public option” health plan through either Medicare or Medicaid.

According to a jobs report released Friday, the United States has an unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, the lowest in 49 years.

This story will be updated as the rally on Saturday gets underway. 

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