As Democrats seek support from black voters, apathy vies with old loyalties on the ground. For the Republicans, meanwhile, this could be Jeb’s last stand

At a tired-looking service station in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Shante Richbow steps off a Greyhound bus and sits down to lunch from a polystyrene container. In the coming election, the black single mother prefers Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders – but not enough to go out and vote for her.

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“It’s a big joke,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to matter. I don’t see any action so I won’t be voting.”

Richbow, 30, has three children, including an 11-year-old son, Deshawn, who has cerebral palsy. She said she gets no help from the government except a wheelchair every five years, which he quickly outgrows.

“If one of the candidates talked about that, I would listen to them,” she says.



This most extraordinary of US presidential elections is hitting its stride with 14 state votes in the coming three weeks.

For Democrats, the question is whether Sanders’ momentum following his victory in New Hampshire can penetrate Clinton’s “firewall” of support among African Americans and Hispanics in the south and west.

For Republicans, there are half a dozen candidates left and numerous subplots within the main talking point: can anyone stop Donald Trump?

South Carolina, where Republicans vote on Saturday and Democrats a week later, is by tradition “Bush country” and “Clinton country”: on Monday, former president George W Bush will make his campaign debut on behalf of brother Jeb, while Bill Clinton can also be expected to bat for Hillary.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Resident Jasie Kinard waits to get into a school to see Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speak in South Carolina. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The state is bigger and more diverse than the first two to have their say, Iowa and New Hampshire. It is home to rich and poor, black and white, young and old, entrepreneur and student, Christian evangelical and military veteran. It is a place where slavery thrived, where the first shot was fired in the civil war and where a statue of Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in US history, notorious foe of racial integration, stands outside the state house – near a monument to African American history.

Keefer Crosby, a 53-year-old from Sumter, is black and has been unemployed since 2001.

“Right here, African Americans don’t get a fair chance,” he said. “They can’t get a decent job. Because of the history. There is definitely still racism in the state of South Carolina.”

He does not believe Sanders is the solution, however.

“Hillary is the better person because she’s more intelligent. Bernie is old school; he’s too old to really get out there. He’s not going to be able to handle the pressure.”

Sanders, 74, a leftwing insurgent who has energised millions of young people angry about the economic status quo, is pouring agents and money into South Carolina, to make the case that he can also heal America’s racial divisions. They will remind voters that he attended the 1963 march on Washington, at which Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech, and defied criticism as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, to endorse Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1988.

In Charleston, where southern charm and historic homes draw tourists while the homeless camp out under highway bridges, a handful of Sanders signs can be seen. But truck driver Charles Jones, 41, who is African American, said: “I’ve always been a Clinton supporter. I’m not really impressed with Sanders. I don’t think he’s talking about the things I want to hear. He has a problem connecting.”

I’m not impressed with Sanders. I don’t think he’s talking about the things I want to hear. He has a problem connecting Charles Jones, truck driver, Charleston

African Americans made up more than half the voters in the 2008 Democratic primary. If that trend is repeated, it is expected to favour Clinton because she and her husband, Bill, have commanded loyalty in the black community since his days as president.

Rae Kwon, 20, a student, said: “If I vote, it will be for Hillary, because my mother voted for Bill Clinton and we felt positive changes for people living in poverty and living in the middle class. Someone close to Bill would have the same mentality. Sanders tells people what they want to hear and he’ll back it up, but it’s real hard versus the Clintons because he doesn’t have a strong background here.”

Kevin Lorenzo, 42, working as a cook at Chick-fil-A, said: “I’d take Hillary Clinton any day. Even when her husband did wrong, she stuck with him. We need diversity; we need change. Hillary is a woman and we all come from women.”

His anger towards Trump, meanwhile, was raw: “He says, ‘I want to send all Mexicans back and put blacks back on the bus.’ If I were to meet this dude, I’m going to slap the toupee off his fucking head. It’s just big business to him.”

But the disaffection with the political establishment that has been evident in both parties also poses a challenge to Clinton. Robert Robinson, 62, jobless and living off $1,200 a month social security, said: “I hope she wins but I won’t vote for her. I last voted for Obama in 2008 and there hasn’t been a day of benefit for me. They all make promises they can’t keep.”

‘More harm to black communities than Reagan’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Voters listen to Clinton in Denmark, South Carolina. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Nationwide, the battle for the black vote is intensifying. In an essay published last week in the liberal magazine the Nation, Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the black vote, academic Michelle Alexander argued that Bill Clinton “caused more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did”, presiding over the biggest increase in the prison population in American history and record unemployment among black men in their 20s without a degree, all while shredding the welfare safety net.

Sanders has gained the backing of singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte and the daughter of Eric Garner, whose death at the hands of police in New York in 2014 became one of the key causes of the Black Lives Matter movement. But civil rights hero John Lewis joined the Congressional Black Caucus in endorsing Clinton and played down Sanders’ involvement in the early movement, saying pointedly: “I never saw him. I never met him.”

The morning after his thumping 22-point defeat of Clinton in New Hampshire, the senator had breakfast with the Rev Al Sharpton in Harlem, New York. Sharpton, who will meet Clinton this week, said he had impressed upon Sanders that inequality – his defining stump issue – has a specific racial dimension.

In an interview with the Guardian, Sharpton said he told the candidate: “I’m more concerned about where you are with those issues of criminal justice, voting rights, in terms of what we’ve been leading on with voter IDs, than I want to hear about what you did 50 years ago.

If I were Senator Sanders I wouldn't write it off. Clearly it’s an uphill battle but sometimes uphill battles can be won Al Sharpton

“I want to know about now and, though I think that what you’ve done years ago gives me a hint of your character, what you’re doing now is what’s going to move or not move the voters of today, young and old.”

Sharpton added: “To have them both competing for the black vote is only to the benefit of blacks. The Clintons have a loyalty but that does not mean that [Sanders] cannot make a serious impact. Let’s not forget she lost in ’08 [to Obama] and they had a lot of loyalty, so if I were her I wouldn’t take it for granted, and if I were Senator Sanders I would not write it off. Clearly it’s an uphill battle but sometimes uphill battles can be won.

“The key for him in South Carolina and Nevada [where Democrats caucus on Saturday] is going to be can he bring out the new voters like he did in Iowa, because loyalties are harder to change. But if he can excite new voters and be specific, I think that’ll make the difference on whether he can close the gap.”

‘This will be a national security primary’

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Another upshot of the New Hampshire primary is that millions of Republicans are realising the Trump phenomenon is real, not a polling anomaly. He won resoundingly and is leading surveys in South Carolina, a state where, traditionally, the gloves come off. On Friday he traded barbs with conservative Ted Cruz and launched a TV ad featuring Jamiel Shaw, whose son was murdered by an undocumented migrant.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Doretha Jackson, centre, voices her support for Bernie Sanders in Ladson, South Carolina. Photograph: Randall Hill/Reuters

Cruz is working hard to court the big Christian evangelical population, just as he did to win the Iowa caucuses, while Senator Marco Rubio is trying to show a human side after his disastrous debate performance in New Hampshire.

Jeb Bush has a different take, hoping to appeal to the state’s large population of military veterans. He explained to reporters in Columbia: “Our belief is that this will be a national security primary, that it’s a commander-in-chief election, if you will, that people here want to know you’re going to support the veterans, support the troops, rebuild the military, modernise the military.”

Bush also hopes to reactivate the family’s old patronage networks. Last week he made a pitch to the party’s establishment wing, or “country club Republicans”, before a crackling fire at an upmarket community hall in a suburb of Charleston. The former Florida governor, who has cut a well-funded but forlorn figure on the campaign trail (“Please clap,” he told one audience), seemed re-energised as took swipes at Trump, presented his education credentials and sold himself as the voice of reason on foreign policy.

He was joined by his godfather Jon Bush, brother of former president George HW Bush and uncle of ex-president George W Bush, both of whom won South Carolina primaries twice. Courtly and courteous, the 84-year-old told the Observer: “Now we’re getting into Jeb Bush country. Way up north, that’s not his forte. Now we’re coming to his strong suit and I think he’s going to have a big victory here in South Carolina and then do really well on Super Tuesday.”

His early poll ratings were based on … a debate where a whole lot of clowns were seeking attention for themselves Jon Bush, on Jeb

Reflecting on his godson’s struggles in the campaign so far, Jon Bush, a veteran fundraiser for the family, added: “The whole thing was such a farce.

“His early poll ratings were based on a couple of answers in a debate where a whole lot of clowns were seeking attention for themselves and diverting away from the main issues. Now we’re into the main issues and who’s the best qualified and he’s started to make his move now because he’s clearly the best qualified …

“I don’t think there’s ever been a candidate who’s more knowledgeable about more issues than he is.”

But Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant and pollster, believes evangelicals and a discourse around faith-based values will be more important.

“I think Jeb will struggle,” he said. “It’s more conservative and ideological and that’s not Jeb; there are other candidates. But George W will be a help: he’ll give Republicans another reason to look at Jeb.”

The next three weeks are expected to winnow the field down decisively in one of the most confounding, turbulent and zany American elections in living memory. When South Carolina, Nevada and Super Tuesday – 1 March – are done, it is fair to assume the House of Clinton will have taken a hit or two but still be standing, ready for the battles ahead.

The House of Bush? Not so sure.