Former Vice President Joe Biden at the Democratic primary debate in Charleston, S.C., February 25, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

After Joe Biden dominated in the South Carolina primary this past weekend, winning by nearly 30 points and raking in 33 delegates, conventional wisdom is that his campaign is back from the dead.

The former vice president had come in fourth in the Iowa caucuses in early February, followed by an abysmal fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, where he didn’t even meet the threshold needed to win a single delegate. Nevada was a bit better: Biden managed a distant second place to Bernie Sanders’s first, winning nine delegates to the Vermont senator’s 24.


There was a lot riding on South Carolina. Biden had consistently polled far ahead of the rest of the field in the state, leading by double-digit margins, and performed especially well among African-American respondents. But that lead seemed to be shrinking after the early caucuses and primaries, as if Democratic voters were scared off by his inability to rise to the top of the pack. After those initial contests, a few South Carolina polls even showed Sanders ahead.

That clearly didn’t end up being the case. Had Biden finished any lower than a close second in South Carolina, there would’ve been a strong case that he ought to end his campaign. As it is, he still has a long way to go. On paper, Biden makes obvious sense as the best alternative to front-runner Sanders, the pick for more moderate Democratic voters who are uneasy about the radically progressive direction Sanders wants to take the party.

But Biden isn’t running for president on paper. On the trail and in debates, he sounds unfocused and meandering, talking unceasingly about how he’s already done everything his opponents say they want to do. His weak showings in actual contests in every early state aside from South Carolina give voters plenty of reason to doubt whether he has what it takes. His win might’ve resuscitated a campaign on its last legs, but that isn’t much of a reason to celebrate.