also see: pre-primary press releases

Reactions to the Feb. 29, 2020 South Carolina Primary

South Carolina voters delivered a much needed win to former Vice President Joe Biden.  Congressman Jim Clyburn's endorsement was seen as the key to Biden's success.  Despite running an engaged campaign in the state, Sen. Bernie Sanders obtained just under 20-percent of the vote, a smaller share than he had obtained in 2016. Tom Steyer spent big; Advertising Analytics reported that through Feb. 25 he had spent more than twice as much on advertising (broadcast, cable, digital, radio and satellite) as the other candidates combined ($23.6 million to $2.8m for Buttigieg, $2.3m for Bloomberg, $1.8m for Warren, $1.8m for Klobuchar, $1.1m for Biden and  bit under $800,000 for Sanders). Steyer also put a lot of time into the state.  He finished a distant third and ended his campaign.

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Biden for President
February 29, 2020

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Vice President Joe Biden in Columbia, South Carolina

Thank you, South Carolina!
 
We are back!
 
To all those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind: This is your campaign.
 
Just days ago the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead.
 
Now, thanks to you — the heart of the Democratic Party — we haven’t just won. We won big, and we are very much alive.  
 
And the state that launched Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to the presidency has now launched our campaign on the path to defeating Donald Trump.
 
This campaign is taking off, so join us. Go to JoeBiden.com – sign up, volunteer, contribute if you can.
 
We need you. We want you. There’s a place for you in our campaign.
  
But as we celebrate tonight here in Columbia, let me speak directly to Democrats across the nation, especially to those voting on Super Tuesday. 
 
The moment to choose the path forward for our party has arrived. Maybe sooner than anyone guessed or wanted. But it’s here.
 
And the decisions Democrats make all across America in the next few days will determine what this party stands for, what we believe, and what we will get done.
 
If Democrats want a nominee who can beat Trump, keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, and hold the House — and take the U.S. Senate and state legislatures — Join us.
 
If Democrats want a nominee who will build on Obamacare, not scrap it; take on the NRA and the gun manufacturers, not protect them; stand up for the middle class, not raise their taxes and make promises that can’t be kept — join us.
 
And if Democrats want a nominee who is a Democrat — a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat — join us.
 
We can win big or lose big. That’s the choice.
 
We need to build on the coalition and legacy of the most successful president of our lifetime: Barack Obama.
 
And we do this by bringing together Americans of every race, ethnicity, gender, and economic station — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents of every stripe.
 
Like we did right here in South Carolina.
 
Like we can do across the entire country on Tuesday and beyond.
 
Win big or lose big. That’s the choice.
 
Most Americans don’t want the promise of a revolution. They want results.
 
They want to give all Americans access to real opportunity — to have affordable and available health care for all Americans.
 
An environment with clean air and clean water; an education system that funds our schools, pays our teachers, and makes community college free; a nation where we stand up to and beat the NRA; reform our criminal justice system; and mobilize the world against climate change.
 
An economy that rewards work not just wealth — a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about dignity, decency, respect. It’s about your place in the community.
 
For all of our families. For all of our communities.
 
Because it’s the right thing to do. 

We’re Democrats.
 
Talk is cheap.
False promises are deceptive. And talk of a revolution isn’t changing anyone’s life.
 
You need real results right now. 

I’ve done that my whole career. And I’ll do it as President.
 
So, this isn’t the election to spend all our time on a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
 
This is a battle for the soul of America. 
 
And in this most perilous moment, winning means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger.
 
It means not only fighting but healing this country. We must beat Donald Trump and the Republican Party — but we can’t become them.
 
We must heal our divisions and repair our democracy.
 
Above all, it’s time for America to get back up.
 
And once again, fight for the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men and women are created equal. Endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
 
We’ve never lived up to it, but we’ve never walked away from it.
 
I believe that with every fiber of my being.
 
I saw it a few days ago at a town hall in Charleston.
 
I spoke with Reverend Anthony Thompson whose wife, Myra, was studying the words of her bible with eight other parishioners of Mother Emanuel four-and-half years ago.
 
It was their weekly routine — reading scripture and finding purpose in faith in God and in each other.
 
In an instant, hate’s vengeance pierced their faith, lost forever.
 
But what’s remarkable about Reverend Thompson and the families of the “Emanuel 9” is that through their pain and grief — they forgave.
 
And in their forgiveness, change that had been fought for over 100 years in South Carolina occurred.
 
The Confederate flag came down and real change began to take place.
 
That’s why I came back to Mother Emanuel on Sunday services after the funerals for the victims. Because six weeks earlier, we had lost our son Beau, and we needed to be healed.
 
And with every day of every season that has passed, they have gotten up and found purpose to live a life worthy of their loved ones — worthy of the blessing to live in this remarkable country of ours.
 
You’re the reason I’m in this race. People like you here tonight and all around the country.
 
The days of Donald Trump’s divisiveness are soon to be over. We can build a more perfect union, because the American people have seen the alternative.
 
To all of you here in South Carolina — and especially to Jim Clyburn, my friend — 
you lifted me and this campaign on your shoulders.
 
I will never forget what you have done for us.
 
And we need to stand behind Jaime Harrison – the next United States Senator from South Carolina.
 
And we need to send Joe Cunningham back to the House of Representatives.
 
To the loves of my life, Jill and Ashley. Thank you for everything.  
 
Folks, so let’s get back up.
 
We are decent, brave, and resilient people.
 
We can believe again.
 
We are better than this moment!
 
We are better than this president!
 
So get up!
 
Take back our country!
 
We are the United States of America!
 
There is nothing we can’t do – if we do it together!
 
May God Bless you all. 
 
May God protect our troops.
 

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Tom Steyer Suspends Campaign

Hey you guys.  So let me say this.  I got into—

I got into this race for really really good reasons. I got into this race, because I thought that people weren't adequate, adequately addressing racial injustice in this country. And it's true. And it's true.

And I thought that we were at risk as a country, in terms of climate, and that that expressed itself. In terms of environmental injustice and we've certainly seen that and that's true.

And that we live in a country that's deeply unjust economically where rich people have been profiting at the expense of everybody else. And that's really true.

And my family and I have been working on those things for decades. And I didn't get into this race and start talking about things to try and get votes. I was in this race to talk about things that I care the most about and that I continue to care the most about.

And what, let me just say this. I think the team that we have—more than half people of color, more than half women, 30% LGBTQ. I am so— that is the team that I want to ride into battle with. That is the crew; that's the crew I want on my side.

So let me say this. I've never worked with a better group of people who've worked harder or in a more dedicated way. The endorsers from South Carolina, are some of— I want to say, some of the most outstanding human beings I've ever met, standing up for what's right. I am so proud to be with them. And the group of people in South Carolina—I'm looking at some of them right now—are a team of people who I am, I mean people use these words, but I am humbled to be working side by side with those guys. I'm working, humbled to be working side by side by some of the women from South Carolina. And honestly, the people who have been, who've endorsed me ,have stood up in a very red state where I have seen things, honestly that have broken my heart.

Because as much as I've loved the people here and I've said, I'm not leaving. You may want me out of here. I'm not leaving. We're already figuring out ways, in fact, to make sure that we stay in South Carolina. And I have loved the people, and I feel as if this, their fight is my fight and I want to make sure that's true going forward.

But there's no question today that this campaign we were disappointed with where we came out. I think we got one or two delegates from congressional districts, which I thank South Carolina fo,r and the people. But I said if I didn't see a path to winning. I'd suspend my campaign. And honestly, I can't see a path where I can win the presidency. So am I going to continue to work on every single one of these issues? Yes, of course I am. Because I've never stopped. That's what I'm here for.

And let me say, I kept trying to say this during the campaign, I'm a huge grassroots person. I'm a turnout, registered engaged turnout person, young people, black people, Latinos, people who are overlooked; let's make sure their voices are heard, their votes are counted. And I promise I'm going to do that, because I've been doing that.

And let me say this, I of course will be supporting—I've said from the beginning—every Democrat is a million times better than Trump. Trump is a disaster.

And let me say this, I mean we're in South Carolina. Lindsey Graham's a disaster. So of course I'll be working on that.

And let me say one last thing. When the Lord closes a door, he opens a window. I will find that window and crawl through it with you, I promise you that.

 I love you very much. This has been a great experience; I have zero regrets. Meeting you and the rest of the American people is the highlight of my life. We love, I love you right back. I love you right back. Thank you so much.

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Warren for President
February 29, 2020

Elizabeth Warren Delivers Remarks in Houston

“We are picking a president -- and we need someone whose core values can be trusted, who has a plan for how to govern, and who can actually get it done. 
 
“I will be that president. I’ve been at the center of this kind of crisis before”
 
Watch her remarks live here.

Houston, TX - Elizabeth Warren delivered remarks tonight where she discussed the coronavirus as a public health crisis and global economic threat. 
 
She offered her concrete solutions to address the coming economic shocks of coronavirus, building off of her comprehensive plan to prevent, contain, and treat infectious diseases outbreaks like coronavirus that she released more than four weeks ago --- before any of the other candidates, or the incumbent in the White House. And she discussed her prescient leadership ahead of and during the 2008 financial crisis. 
 
Elizabeth also addressed the results of South Carolina and looked ahead to Super Tuesday at the top of her remarks.
 
Below are her remarks as prepared for delivery: 
 
Hello Houston!
 
Results from South Carolina are coming in and I want to say congratulations to Vice President Biden. I’ll be the first to say that the first four contests haven’t gone exactly as I’d hoped. And if you want to help change the outcome of the next contests, go to ElizabethWarren.com right now and chip in and get involved. Super Tuesday is three days away and we’re looking forward to gaining as many delegates to the convention as we can -- from California to right here in Texas. It might take days or even longer to know the full Super Tuesday results, but they will be critical in sorting out who our nominee will be this year. Our campaign is built for the long haul -- and we’re looking forward to these big contests.
 
Thank you for welcoming me back to Texas. I did some real growing up here. Finished college at the University of Houston (Go Coogs!), had my first job as a law professor at UH and then UT (Go, Longhorns!).

Usually, I begin my events talking about how we’ve become a country that works better and better for those at the top and worse and worse for everyone else, and I love to talk about plans for making this country work for everyone.
 
But tonight I’d like to use our time together a little differently. I’d like to skip my usual stories, and instead first talk about a crisis that is upon us. And then I know some of you came to hear about a lot of other policies. I’ll take a few minutes near the end to talk about things like immigration and climate. Then cut to the all-important selfie line.
 
Now: the crisis that’s upon us. For nearly a year, I’ve expressed concern about weaknesses in our economy. I’ve called attention to a manufacturing sector tumbling into recession. Talked about debt loads that were unsustainable. Discussed an economy dependent on household and corporate borrowing instead of rapidly rising wages. The data make it clear that our economic foundation is shaky. A number of smaller shocks -- or one big shock -- could cause it to crumble. But despite these warnings, the Trump administration has failed to act.  
 
And now that shock has arrived. The coronavirus is spreading worldwide and here in the United States. The stock market had its worst week since the crash of 2008.  
 
The impact on our families, particularly on babies and elderly people and people with other health challenges could be severe. The impact on our economy could also be brutal, putting jobs at risk, threatening savings, undermining economic stability, and even potentially destabilizing our giant, globally intertwined banks.  
 
The time to start preparing for a public health crisis was years ago. And the time to prepare for the coronavirus specifically was months ago. We can’t go back, but we also can’t afford to waste any more time.
 
This is a time for honest leadership that respects science, that draws on serious experts and that delivers real results. This is both a public health crisis and a potential economic crisis, not just here in the United States but worldwide. 
 
In the coming days I will be releasing an expanded plan to deal with the public health and economic effects of coronavirus. These are steps that Congress and the President should take immediately to keep our people and our economy healthy. 
 
Here are some key elements:

• First, every American -- whether they have health insurance or not -- should be able to get recommended coronavirus testing and receive any future recommended vaccine for free. 
   
• Second, no one should face thousands of dollars in medical bills and lost wages if they are put in mandatory quarantine by the government. That is not only the moral thing to do, it keeps us all safer. 
   
• Third, anyone exhibiting symptoms should get fully paid time off to see a doctor and, if necessary, to get tested and treated for the virus. No one who is sick should feel like they have to go to work and potentially spread this virus faster just because they can’t afford to miss a few days’ pay.
   
• Fourth, we should pass a major, targeted fiscal stimulus to counteract the economic harm that coronavirus is about to cause. Our financial response should include providing direct support to businesses of all sizes that have seen their supply chains disrupted by manufacturing slowdowns across Asia. 

I’m also calling right now, tonight, for the Federal Reserve to take action to help out American companies. During the financial crisis, the Fed quietly gave big banks access to trillions of dollars in low-cost loans to prop them up. The Fed should stand ready to offer low-cost loans to companies that agree to support their workers and that need a little help to make it through the next several months. It is important that these companies do not lay people off or go under because of a short-term disruption in their supply chains. 
 
Those are concrete steps we can take right now. But this moment is a reminder of what qualities we need in a president -- and what qualities are so sorely lacking in the one we have. 
 
Ultimately, that’s what this election is about. With fears of an economic crisis and recession rising, with fears of a global pandemic rising, Americans must ask themselves: who do you trust to actually run this country? 

Donald Trump has already shown he’s not up to the task. So who should the Democrats nominate?

Let’s be blunt. This crisis demands more than a billionaire mayor who believes that since he’s rich enough to buy network airtime to pretend he’s the president, that entitles him to be president -- and whose track record as mayor shows he’ll govern to protect himself and his rich friends over everyone else. 

This crisis demands more than a former vice president so eager to cut deals with Mitch McConnell and the Republicans that he’ll trade good ideas for bad ones.  

This crisis demands more than a Senator who has good ideas, but whose 30-year track record shows he consistently calls for things he fails to get done, and consistently opposes things he nevertheless fails to stop. 
 
I’ve said many times that any of the Democrats running would be a better president than Donald Trump. And that’s still true. But this crisis is a reminder that this primary isn’t a game. We are picking a president -- and we need someone whose core values can be trusted, who has a plan for how to govern, and who can actually get it done.
 
I will be that president. 
 
I’ve been at the center of this kind of crisis before.   
 
My preparation started right here, teaching law at University of Houston, and then at University of Texas. I loved teaching. I knew it was what I was meant to do. I taught the money courses -- contracts, bankruptcy, secured transactions, finance. And in my teaching and in my research I was always studying one simple question: why are so many American families going broke? 
 
Here in Texas, I first dug into the data to figure out what drove families into bankruptcy. With my fellow researchers, I went around to courthouses all over the country copying thousands of bankruptcy filings to begin understanding why so many American families turned to bankruptcy. 
 
At every turn, I saw a government that had been captured by wealthy people and powerful corporations.  At every turn, I saw the people in power -- regulators and Congress – happy to do the bidding of big banks and Wall Street, but ignoring the signs of the coming crisis, a crisis that would cost millions of Americans their homes, their jobs, and their savings. 
 
In the early 2000s, when I saw the early signs of what became the 2008 financial crisis, I rang the alarm bells as loud as I could. In 2003, I called out subprime lenders for tricking unsuspecting families -- especially Black families and Latino families -- into refinancing into overpriced subprime mortgages. In 2005, I warned that families were getting deeper into debt and hanging on only by borrowing against their homes.  I explained that these families were walking a financial tightrope in which even the slightest breeze would send them head over heels into financial chaos. 
 
By 2006, I flagged that foreclosure rates were climbing, but that the mortgage lenders were still churning out loans because they had passed on the risk of defaults to distant investors in the form of mortgage-backed securities. Those trends -- shady subprime lending, rising household debt, a mortgage market where lenders didn’t bear the risk of their loans -- set the stage for the 2008 crisis.
 
Yes, I rang the alarm bells as loudly as I could, but the people with the power to stop the crisis didn’t listen -- not enough of them anyway. Not the banks, not Alan Greenspan, not other federal regulators, not Congress. And when the crisis hit in 2008, working families lost it all while the big banks that broke the economy got a fat taxpayer bailout.
 
When the crisis came, Congress came to me and asked me to head up the Congressional Oversight Panel to try to get some accountability on how that bank bailout was working. 
 
As the crisis unfolded and Congress began drafting reforms for the financial sector, I saw my chance.  We could end this corrupt system that worked great for the banks and kicked dirt on families. So I pushed hard to get my idea for a consumer financial protection bureau passed into law. People told me not even to try. The idea was too big, it would be too hard. 
 
But we built a coalition, and we mobilized people all across the country to push politicians to stand with consumers instead of banks. The banks fought back, spending $1 million dollars a day of lobbyist money to flood the halls of Congress. But we fought harder, and we won.
 
And then President Obama asked me to come to Washington to set it up -- and I built the agency from 2 employees to about 1000 employees, got it all operational, made it all work, and really put in place the kinds of safeguards we need to keep banks from boosting their profits by cheating people. 
 
I loved the agency.  I loved how it showed we could make government work, not just for the rich and powerful, but we could make it work for everyone.  And when Republican Senators blocked me from running it permanently, I went back to Massachusetts and ran for office against one of those incumbent Republican Senators -- and I beat him. I became the first female Senator from the state. 
 
This campaign for president has reminded me a lot of my time traveling and meeting families that were going through bankruptcy. The stories of why American families are struggling today have the same root causes: It’s a one-two punch of government corruption and corporate greed. 
 
During the course of the campaign, I’ve introduced a gazillion detailed plans that are actually all really just one plan: how we transform a corrupt government and a rigged economy that only benefits those at the top into a government and an economy that builds opportunity for every single person. Everything I plan to do as president flows from that.
 
That’s why I’m in this race -- and that’s why I’m asking for your vote. If you think we need both progressive ideas and progressive results, then join us. Go to ElizabethWarren.com, pitch in five bucks, sign up to volunteer. 
 
Because the time to choose is upon us. The crises we face are real. 2020 is your chance to choose a president. And I’m ready to get to work.  
 
Thank you all for being here. And I look forward to talking with each and every one of you in the selfie line.
 
Thank you.

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Mike Bloomberg 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2020

STATEMENT FROM MIKE BLOOMBERG 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER KEVIN SHEEKEY ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

 

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Donald J. Trump for President, Inc..
February 29, 2020

Trump campaign statement on South Carolina Democrat primary

“Once again, President Trump is the clear winner because not one of these candidates has a chance at beating him in November. The President will be running on his solid record of achievement for all Americans and will wipe the floor with whichever Democrat is unlucky enough to emerge. The South Carolina results just prove what a hot mess the Democrat primaries are, as the field once again descends into chaos heading into Super Tuesday. We don’t know who the eventual nominee will be, but they are all the same, and their radical big government socialist policies will be on the Democrat ballot in November no matter what.”

- Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager

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