Biden looks for momentum from South Carolina win

Bloomberg

Joe Biden is looking to use a blowout win in South Carolina to paint the Democratic primary contest as a clear choice between his traditional centrism and Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism.
In multiple television interviews on Sunday, the former vice president touted his success with South Carolina’s diverse electorate and portrayed Sanders as a risky choice who’d lose key states and hurt other Democratic candidates in the general election because of his liberal policies.
“I can go into purple states and we can win,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I can win in places where I don’t think Bernie can win in a general election.”
Citing his record in the Senate and as vice president under President Barack Obama, Biden also argued that he’d been a more effective lawmaker than Sanders, whose plans Biden has called unrealistic.
Americans “are not looking for revolution, they are looking for results,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The former vice president said he had raised $5 million in the past 24 hours, a span that included the decisive win in the Palmetto State. He vowed to staff up as he seeks to head off Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who still leads the race in delegates, saying “there’s lots of changes coming.”
“We’ve now won more actual votes overall since this began, since this whole process began, than Bernie has won,” Biden said.

Obama called Joe Biden to congratulate him
Bloomberg

Former President Barack Obama called Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary, a person familiar with the call said on Sunday.
Biden won overwhelmingly in South Carolina with 48.4% of the vote. Bernie Sanders was a distant second with 19.9%. Biden got a boost from his status as Obama’s vice president, winning 61% of the black vote in a state where more than half of the electorate is African American.
Obama has said that he will not endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary, leaving the choice of the party’s nominee to the voters. On the campaign trail, Biden frequently invokes his friendship with Obama and the work they did together in the White House.
Two people familiar with theex-president’s thinking say he still doesn’t plan to make an endorsement early in the nominating process. They’re skeptical an endorsement from the former president would shake up the race and believe it could even backfire.