Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.
Joe Biden has convincingly won South Carolina, a state won by every Democratic candidate who ended up as nominee since 1992.
The Associated Press, CNN and virtually all other major networks have called the state for the former Vice President who is hoping to build a momentum for Super Tuesday in just three days.
In a victory speech in South Carolina on Saturday night, Joe Biden said those who declared his candidacy dead have been proven wrong.
He said he was back and back to defeat Donald Trump. He promised that Trump’s days of “divisiveness would soon be over”.
“For all those who have been knocked down, counted out and left behind, this is your campaign,” Biden said to the ecstatic crowd.
It was a much needed victory for Joe Biden, especially because every single Democratic candidate who won South Carolina primaries went on to win the nomination since 1992 starting with Bill Clinton.
That year in 1992, Bill Clinton, the man many people would come to know as the 42nd President of the United States was the governor of Arkansas when he went to Iowa for his primary election. He lost woefully, coming fourth with just about 2 percent of the votes.
He moved to New Hampshire and lost again. It was in South Carolina that black voters rescued him and he went on to win the nomination.
Since 1992, any Democrat who won in South Carolina eventually went on to win the nomination.
Bill Clinton in 1992, Al Gore in 2000, Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. The state canceled its primary in 1996, as Bill Clinton was running for re-election, and in 2012 Obama ran unopposed.
Joe Biden has lost everywhere else, will South Carolina rescue him tonight? Will history repeat itself?
![General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on February 6, 2020 [Twitter]](https://i2.wp.com/todaynewsafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Abdel-Fattah-Al-BurhanEQJPGmuU4AEVkRG.jpeg?resize=390%2C220&ssl=1 "General Abdel Fattah AlBurhan on February 6 2020 Twitter • Today News Africa")