COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The Democrats' 2020 primary season enters a four-day stretch that will help determine whether the party rallies behind Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Only two things are going to happen: either Bernie or brokered," said James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist.
Carville is uncomfortable with a Sanders nomination but fears that a brokered convention -- in which party bosses or delegates in floor fights and negotiations decide the nominee after no candidate amasses enough delegates in the primary -- would inflict serious damage on the party, as well. "It's just hard for me to see beyond the two options," he said.
South Carolina's primary today stands as the first marker on the four-day crossroads. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his establishment allies hope to slow Sanders' momentum. But just three days later, Sanders believes he's positioned to seize a major delegate advantage when 14 states and one U.S. territory vote on Super Tuesday.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADoqdl2N4c0]
The senator from Vermont has had two consecutive victories and a tie for the lead in Iowa.
On the eve of South Carolina's primary, Sanders, 78, will host a concert in Minnesota, where home-state Sen. Amy Klobuchar is looking for her first win. Sanders also will host a midday rally today in downtown Boston, campaigning in the heart of progressive ally Sen. Elizabeth Warren's political turf.
Senior adviser Jeff Weaver said Sanders is aggressively hunting for delegates, noting that their campaign's experience during the 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton taught them that any candidate who finishes Super Tuesday with a significant delegate advantage will be difficult to catch.
"I'm confident we're going to do very, very well across the country," Weaver said of the coming four days. He also sought to downplay the importance of South Carolina's first-in-the-South primary, where "Biden is expected to win."
"Expectations can be broken," Weaver added. "But for the vice president, he needs an extraordinarily large win in South Carolina in order to convince folks he's going to be able to go the distance."
The Democrats' 2020 primary election is far from a two-person race.
In South Carolina, billionaire activist Tom Steyer has spent more than $19 million on television advertising -- more than all the other candidates combined -- in his quest for his first top finish in four contests. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is fighting to prove he can build a multiracial coalition, and with the help of super PACs, Warren and Klobuchar have vowed to keep pushing forward no matter how they finish today.
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is not competing in South Carolina, yet he has shattered spending records after investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Super Tuesday advertising backed by a horde of paid staff in virtually every state in the nation.
Still, today marks Biden's chance to shine.
"This nation isn't looking for a revolution like some folks are talking about," Biden said Friday in Sumter, slapping at Sanders' signature call to action. "They're looking for progress. They're looking for results."
Biden, 77, has racked up far more endorsements than his rivals throughout the year, and he added another big name from a Super Tuesday state, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, on Friday. That's just two days after he received the endorsement of South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn.
Indeed, South Carolina represents much more than the fourth state on the Democrats' monthslong primary calendar. It serves as the first major test of the candidates' strength with African American voters.
Roughly 3 in 10 people of voting age in South Carolina are black, according to census data.
In the short term, Super Tuesday features a handful of Southern states, like Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina, where the African American vote will be decisive.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump was looking to energize supporters and upstage his Democratic challengers by holding a rally on the eve of South Carolina's presidential primary.
"Some people say I'm trolling the Democrats and maybe I am," Trump said at the White House on Friday.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in South Carolina by more than 14 percentage points in 2016.
While voting technology was a concern in two of the last three primary contests, South Carolina uses a wide array of voting technology that presents unique challenges.
Today's election in South Carolina marks the first statewide test of the state's new fleet of electronic voting machines, a $50 million upgrade from an old and vulnerable system that lacked any paper record of individual votes. The new machines produce a paper record that can be verified by the voter and checked after the election to detect any malfunction or manipulation.
Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Will Weissert and Thomas Beaumont of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/29/2020