South Carolina is Berning. Will Sleepy Joe Awaken?

One of the questions that all of the boys are asking is whether or not Joe Biden can still win South Carolina. In some ways this is amazing and in others it is not surprising at all. At the end of 2019, a lot of people were yapping about how we were probably at peak Joe Biden due to the fact that he was probably going to get creamed in Iowa and New Hampshire. I sold almost every share of Biden YES I owned to get ready for this reckoning and am feeling like a genius for making that call. But I should not get too feisty because I also bet that Bernie that would lose California at the very same time.

But now that we are just a few days away from the South Carolina Primary, it is time to nut-up or shut up. One of two things is probably going to happen in the Palmetto State: Joe Biden will win and get the juice to pick up a handful of Southern states on Super Tuesday, maybe get his neck back into the Texas Primary, and re-set this campaign as a two-man race with Bernie Sanders. This would be a big reversal from the current narrative, which goes like this: Bernie Sanders is a polar bear and everyone else is a baby seal.

If Biden can win South Carolina and show Bernie Sanders that he is more than just a prison bitch to be devoured on the Iowa and New Hampshire ice sheets, then lots of markets are going to pump in his favor. In fact, some of them already are doing this in anticipation of a win.

But if Biden loses South Carolina, then he is basically going to go extinct quicker than arctic species due to climate change.

THE OPPORTUNITY

If you believe that Joe Biden is going to win South Carolina, then you also need to be thinking about buying into his campaign in similar states like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. As your pro-Joe-Mojo increases and you start thinking he might be a winner after all, you should possibly consider Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas as reasonable targets. And if you are a serious alpha, then you also understand that political machine states like New York and Illinois, where big city bosses who have never been Bernie Sanders fans can crank-out votes by hook-or-by-crook, are targets of opportunity. We’ll also see price adjustments in Rust Belt states but IMO, those are the hardest to predict right now since they have a political history and demographic profile that has gotten more mashed-up from de-industrialization than my liver has from Bush Light.

Lastly, there are states like Kentucky, which votes late in the primary cycle, and is not likely to vote for a socialist like Bernie Sanders as long as a strong Joe Biden is still in the race. I don’t want to start a new tangent but Biden vs. Bernie is a different race than the close Hillary vs. Bernie contest that happened there in 2016.

So truly, if Joe Biden can recover from the absolute butt fumble that he began this campaign with in Iowa and New Hampshire–

…Then there is a whole river cash to be harnessed. The next few days could be a rare chance to double-up your stack between now and Super Tuesday.

Or it could be a trap for cucks throwing good money after bad re: Uncle Joe, who has 30 years of history when it comes to blowing it in presidential primaries.

THE RISK

If Uncle Joe loses South Carolina, his campaign is over. That’s it. Biden has been able to claim that Iowa and New Hampshire were road games for him and that South Carolina is the first contest on his home turf — one where there are lots of black voters who are the backbone of his support. If his strongest supporters don’t show up for him, then it’s game over and all your Biden shares are basically worth zero.

What do the numbers say?

I personally am not that good at math. But one of the great things about having a blog that gives free money away to people is that sometimes they repay you the favor. Reader “Brice” sent me the following table that transposes the results of the Nevada Caucuses — Bernie’s largest win so far — onto the South Carolina Primary. BTW, we are using data from a New York Times entrance poll last week; and a CNN exit poll from 2016. Don’t make me write a paragraph about how this information isn’t perfect. Just take my word for it. But here is what came out:

So without making any corrections for the region (South vs. West, caucus vs. primary, etc.), Joe Biden immediately narrows Bernie’s advantage in South Carolina by 10 points. But obviously, there are lots of differences to account for. For example, South Carolina is so different from the rest of the USA that in 1861 it seceded from it and began the Civil War.

Then there is the fact that turnout in South Carolina is probably going to be way bigger than in Nevada. This year 105,000 showed up to the Nevada Caucuses, which was up from 84,000 in 2016. But in 2016, some 371,000 Democrats voted in South Carolina. To put this in perspective, South Carolina is 40 percent more populous, but had more than four times the turnout. That is probably not a partisan thing either. In Nevada, Democrats have a slim registration advantage over Republicans. South Carolina doesn’t publish registration stats but a survey by Pew estimated that the electorate there favors Republicans by 9 percentage points compared to a 4 percent advantage for Democrats in Nevada.

So let’s review:

— Demographically, South Carolina is 10 points more favorable to Joe Biden.

— Culturally, there is a huge difference between political attitudes in these states that you can’t ignore.

— To that end, the difference between Biden and Bernie’s margin is 10 points without making any regional adjustments. Is it unreasonable to think that one out of ten Democrats in South Carolina have different biases and cultural views than Democrats in Nevada? Especially on a subject as divisive as socialism? And I am not trying to get arrested by the PC Cops but the whole Jewish socialist from Brooklyn thing is not usually a good act in the South.

— Turnout is guaranteed to be way higher in South Carolina than in Nevada.

And then, just a basic fact of politics. If you don’t know this one, just repeat it to yourself until you never forget — CAUCUSES ARE DOMINATED BY PSYCHOTICALLY WELL-ORGANIZED CAMPAIGNS. The closer a campaign is to a cult, the better its odds of winning in a caucus. This advantage narrows in primaries because more people vote in them.

What about Tom Steyer?

What about him? This whole campaign has basically been built on fake news. Whoever is “up” is the candidate of destiny, whoever is down is a total loser who should be arrested for soliciting donations for their zombie campaign. Steyer underperformed in Nevada and in my mind, his momentum is going to be taxed by Biden perceived rebound.

My position?

Needless to say, when I look at all of this, I am very excited to be holding YES shares in South Carolina on Biden at an average cost of 52 cents. I would be comfortable paying up to 62 cents for more with the actual probability of Joe Biden winning being somewhere in the 65-70 percent range, according to my gut.

I am also betting YES Biden in MS and GA.

No, I don’t just hate Bernie

And just so you don’t think I am a flunky who is in the can for anything against Bernie, I am holding YES on him in these states and will say more about it later: UT, ID, ME (just sold), WA, ND, MA (gonna unload these tho).

Lock it in. I promise to post about these other states later on.

KEENDAWG.