Joe Biden took his ball and went home.
The former vice president on Tuesday suddenly announced that he was bailing from New Hampshire, where polls show him running in fourth or even fifth place. Biden said he will leave right away and not spend primary night in the state. Instead, he’s heading to South Carolina to “headline a newly scheduled kick-off rally in the state he’s long considered his campaign firewall,” Fox News reports.
“We’re going to head to South Carolina tonight,” Biden told reporters. “And I’m going to Nevada… we’ve got to look at them all.”
After his dismal finish in Iowa, where he finished fourth, things in New Hampshire looks just as bad, if not worse. The day before the Granite State’s primary, Biden was running fourth in most polls (and fifth in a couple). He knows he’s not in good shape, saying at the last Democratic debate in Manchester, N.H.: “I took a hit in Iowa and I’ll probably take a hit here.”
That may well be a dramatic understatement. Most of the latest polls were taken days ago, when a quarter of the state’s voters claimed to be undecided. Many have since made up their minds, and they aren’t breaking Biden’s way. That’s the real reason he’s bailing.
“The campaign confirmed Biden is now canceling his originally scheduled appearance at a primary night party in Nashua, N.H., and will be in South Carolina instead. The New Hampshire party will go on as scheduled without him,” Fox reports.
