Joe Biden on Sunday was back in South Carolina where it all began for his presidency.
With his wife Jill by his side and hosted by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., Biden’s final 24 hours as President of the United States commenced in Charleston at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church. He spoke during the service, visited the International African American Museum, and was honored in a presentation from Clyburn.
He was to leave office on Monday with Donald Trump’s second inauguration at noon.
“I owe you big,” Biden told the congregation.
In 2020, he arrived in South Carolina for the Democratic primary seemingly a bust despite being the lone vice president in a crowded field. In the opening caucuses and primaries, he was respectively fourth behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Iowa; fifth behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Warren in New Hampshire; and second to Sanders in Nevada.
Those 19 days were wiped away a week later, on Feb. 29, when he more than doubled Sanders in the popular vote. He lost just five more states.
Biden considered the outcome in South Carolina more representative of the nation than other earlier stops and sought to get the state to the front of the primary schedule in 2024. Still, once a Democratic stronghold in another century, the state has voted for a Democrat for president just once – Jimmy Carter in 1976 – in 16 election cycles since 1960.
Republicans are in both U.S. Senate seats and six of seven in the U.S. House of Representatives; the governor’s office; 34 of 46 state Senate seats; and 88 of 124 state House seats with one vacancy.
Biden’s farewell on Sunday followed a national television address Wednesday that drew more than 20 million viewers across four broadcast networks and three cable news outlets.
For context from 2024, more than 26 million tuned in for his address when he quit the reelection campaign on July 21; his last State of the Union drew 32 million on March 7; and there were 51.3 million for the debate with Donald Trump on June 27. The Trump-Kamala Harris debate on Sept. 10 pulled 67.1 million.
While Trump notably did not attend Biden’s inauguration, Monday’s activities in Washington are expected to include the usual television shots of a departing president leaving the White House a final time. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former living Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are expected to attend.
