In South Carolina, Hillary Clinton emphasized that she "will not promise you something that I cannot deliver." | AP Photo Clinton: Sanders' policies won't help African-Americans

DENMARK, S.C. – Hillary Clinton, making her first appearance in South Carolina on Friday since her blowout loss in New Hampshire earlier this week, did not sound like a candidate sitting on a big lead.

Clinton’s pitch here was tailored to African-American voters, who made up a majority of the Democratic primary electorate eight years ago, when Barack Obama catapulted over Clinton following a resounding victory in this state.


She wasn’t campaigning in vote-rich Columbia or Charleston – she was here in majority-black Bamberg County for a town-hall meeting before jetting off to Nevada for the final week before the caucuses there.

The former secretary of state opened her remarks inside an elementary-school gymnasium, decrying underfunded schools and infrastructure in the Interstate-95 corridor and comparing it to the plight of the largely African-American residents of Flint, Michigan, where Clinton visited earlier this week.

“I went to Flint, Michigan, on Sunday, because there we have children being poisoned by lead in the water as a result of the governor of their state trying to save money,” Clinton said.

But she quickly pivoted to a spirited critique of Sanders, with whom she sparred Thursday night in a primary debate in Milwaukee.

“Here’s what I want you to know: I’m not a single-issue candidate, and this is not a single-issue country,” Clinton said, adding that she and Sanders largely agreed on increased regulation of the financial services industry.

She also suggested Sanders’ policies wouldn’t help the event’s mostly African-American audience. “[Even] if we enacted our toughest plans to rein in Wall Street and shadow banking,” Clinton said, “I’d worry that we’d still have lead in the water in Flint, and we’d still have deteriorating schools here in South Carolina.”

“I will not promise you something that I cannot deliver,” Clinton added. “I will not make promises I know I cannot keep. We don’t need any more of that.”

Clinton rolled out a $125-billion proposal “to expand jobs and to invest in infrastructure and housing in communities of color and rural communities” that she said was modeled on a plan put forth by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the only Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation and a long-time political leader here.

The funding, she said, would come from “a tax on the largest and riskiest financial institutions.”

“Those that contributed to the great recession are going to contribute to bringing back the communities that were the hardest hit by the great recession,” she said.

The South Carolina primaries are split. While Republicans are gathering upstate this weekend for the final televised debate before the Feb. 20 primary, Democrats have another week of campaigning before voters head to the polls, with Nevada coming first.

But while the low-turnout Nevada caucuses are a test of organization, the first-in-the-South Democratic primary on Feb. 27 is a test of Clinton’s firewall: minority voters, who haven’t yet jumped on the Sanders bandwagon.

In order to hold onto a significant edge in polls conducted last month, Clinton needs to sustain her initial base of support among African-American voters as Sanders attempts to broaden his appeal and make inroads in minority communities, especially among younger voters, who have backed him in big numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire.

One irony of places like Denmark as Clinton’s base: These weren’t Clinton Country in 2008. She won just 28 percent of the vote in Bamberg County in the 2008 primary, as more than 63 percent of Democrats chose Barack Obama – about 8 points greater than his statewide percentage.

Indeed, the loudest cheers at Friday’s town-hall meeting were when Clinton invoked the name of her one-time rival for the nomination – and when she hit Sanders for the Vermont independent’s Democratic apostasies during the Obama administration.

“As I pointed out last night, he has called the president weak, a disappointment, he tried to get some attention to attract a candidate to actually run against the president when he was running for reelection,” Clinton said. “He does not support, the way I do, building on the progress the president has made. And that includes building on the Affordable Care Act.”

Clinton’s final appeal, before taking questions from the audience here, was on electability.

“In the next two weeks, people here in South Carolina are going to get the chance to express your opinion,” she said. “You are choosing someone you want to be the Democratic nominee to be president and commander-in-chief – and able to take on and defeat whoever the Republicans put up. Because we must keep the White House.”