CHARLESTON, South Carolina — In South Carolina, Hillary Clinton is finally the candidate she always wanted to be.

Gone are questions about her authenticity. Here, black voters say Clinton’s history as a civil rights stalwart -- she first visited the state as a college grad investigating the problem of youths incarcerated in adult jails for the Children’s Defense Fund -- trumps any trust issues that dog her elsewhere.


The script has been flipped, for the first time, in her favor.

Her stories about her own mother’s abused and abandoned childhood resonate deeply with African-American women -- and there are about 100,000 more black women than men of voting age in the state. And to them, it is Bernie Sanders who is viewed as an unknown quantity, whose big ideas of free college and healthcare are greeted with skepticism.

“She’s dealt with African-Americans,” said Gloria Major, a retiree who has been working as a campaign volunteer. “She knows the struggle. She knows what poverty is. It’s not like someone who just come in our lives who tells us these big ideals. Her mother’s story resonates. I’m raising a granddaughter right now, my daughter is in her life now but she’s not wanted. I know the hurt and the pain they go through.”

Murray Beaufort, a former mayor of a small town in Williamsburg County, attended Clinton’s town hall in Kingstree and was incredulous about what he has heard of Sanders. “I can’t figure out how he’s going to pay for some of the stuff he’s talking about, because in reality it’s not there,” he said. “We know what she stands for and we are obligated to support her.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, who is supporting Clinton, added that “when you watch Bernie, it’s like he’s taking a cram course in how to communicate in churches, it doesn’t feel natural. Nobody disputes he’s being earnest, but there’s a feeling he doesn’t quite get it. She’s very natural in settings talking about issues of race, with African-American women in particular.” Clinton likes to remind voters that her first major policy speech back in the spring was about criminal justice reform.

Here, older African-American voters who have struggled with racism and poverty are pragmatic, and believe in the incremental change Clinton espouses. “They don’t have the luxury of an Iowa college student” to vote for ideals, Hodges added.

Many voters say they would have been happy to support her eight years ago if it wasn’t for the historic nature of Barack Obama’s candidacy. Clinton’s support for Obama since then has only increased their desire to help her this time.

“The feeling among voters here is they have a job to do and that’s to nominate Hillary,” said Boyd Brown, a DNC executive committee member and super-delegate who is supporting Clinton after originally backing Martin O’Malley. “They see it as a duty. They’ve got a proven candidate and she might not be the greatest candidate in the world, or the most enthusiastic candidate, but you know what? She’d be a good president and they realize that.”

Even Sanders' best demographic -- the young, white voters who propelled him to victory in New Hampshire -- aren’t available to help him close the margin in Saturday’s Democratic primary.

“White millennials, we call them Republicans in South Carolina,” said Hodges. “They vote no different than their parents. They supported John McCain over Obama.”

Clinton operatives are feeling optimistic for the first time in months, and many of her allies on the ground are predicting a comfortable double-digit win.

For Sanders, that means his path to the nomination is narrowing.

After losing Nevada last week -- a brutal blow for Sanders’ campaign in a state where the caucus system was supposed to give him a built-in advantage -- the pressure is mounting on the liberal Vermonter to show he can recover ground by outperforming expectations with black voters on Clinton turf. But Sanders has spent less time than Clinton campaigning here in the days leading up to Saturday’s primary.

Sanders chief strategist Tad Devine admitted that it’s the campaign’s unique small donor fundraising juggernaut that is allowing them to continue to soldier on at all.

“In the old narrative, you didn’t win Nevada and the campaign had to come to an end,” Devine admitted. “The bundlers didn’t give you money anymore. The television ads would come down, staffers would be fired and the campaign would come to an end.”

“We don’t have bundlers,” he added. “The people who are supporting us are still supporting us. That’s what’s different here. We designed a fundraising mechanism that would not compete with our message.”

But the calendar doesn’t get easier for Sanders on Super Tuesday, which is March 1. A recent Monmouth University poll has Clinton up by 34 points in Texas; in Georgia, polls have her leading between 28 and 52 points; Clinton is up by double digits in Virginia and leading in Florida by 26 points. Devine said they have opportunities to post big wins in Kansas, Nebraska and Maine, caucus states which vote in mid-March.

By the time the race gets to the Michigan primary on March 8, Democratic operatives expect it to act as Clinton’s final firewall -- or Sanders’ last stand -- depending on the results of Super Tuesday.

The Nevada victory that made Sanders lose altitude at exactly the wrong time came as a relief to Clinton campaign staffers -- they were so concerned with the prospect of a loss that many didn’t know what to do with themselves in hours after the victory. Operatives from the Brooklyn headquarters joined a press plane flying to Houston the night after the caucus, expecting to have to spin a loss to the reporters covering the campaign. Back then, South Carolina was going to be the next firewall -- now it’s viewed more as a glide state into March. And Clinton allies are speaking optimistically about the trajectory of the race.

“I think it will be big,” Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge said of Clinton’s expected victory in South Carolina.

Fudge, a past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has made four trips to South Carolina to campaign for Clinton, targeting the 46 chapters of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in the state, a powerful network of African-American women.

“If we win South Carolina, I think it does start to make people look at the race a little differently,” Fudge said in an interview. “I think Sanders will stay in the race for a while, but I think as we start to go into more states where the population is more diverse, it’s indicative of where the campaign is going.”

So, too, were the smaller crowds that came out to see Sanders at a rally in a large gymnasium at Claflin University in Orangeburg Friday night. There, bleachers sat mostly empty while surrogates like Killer Mike and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner tried to fire up the crowd.

“Fired up! Ready to Bern!” Turner chanted, a somewhat unhelpful reminder of the once-in-a-generation excitement that fueled the Obama campaign here eight years ago. Sanders then delivered his shortest stump speech to date, clocking in at just under 30 minutes.

The tepid rally showed Sanders’ challenge moving forward -- not only has he been unable to win the states where he enjoys a built-in advantage, but he has not yet shown he can make inroads in states that are not tailor-made for his campaign.

For her part, Clinton was in good spirits in the final days of her campaign here. On Friday morning, she popped into the Saffron Cafe and Bakery in Charleston. “I love having men at my feet!” she joked when a groom and his groomsmen got down on their knees to pose for a picture with her. She left with two slices of Greek tort and a cappuccino to go.

On Thursday night, she took the stage at the Music Farm in Charleston with R&B star Charlie Wilson, waving her arm in the air, smiling and swaying to the music.

“Go, Hillary! Go, Hillary!” Wilson chanted. “Go, Hillary!”