Let the women decide

Despite having had an aunt who once lived in the state, South Carolina is seldom on my mental radar. The racist slaughter at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last June certainly got my attention; so did the subsequent removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capital grounds. But thereafter I went back to not thinking about South Carolina -- until the state was dragged back to mind by polling about the Republican primary contest scheduled there for Saturday.

Most surveys show Donald Trump crushing the pack of GOP clowns chasing him.

The Democratic pollster PPP took a look at the opinions of some of his Palmetto State supporters. The results make it all too obvious where his candidacy is getting its energy here.

Trump's support in South Carolina is built on a base of voters among whom religious and racial intolerance pervades. Among the beliefs of his supporters:

• 70% think the Confederate flag should still be flying over the State Capital, to only 20% who agree with it being taken down. In fact 38% of Trump voters say they wish the South had won the Civil War to only 24% glad the North won and 38% who aren't sure. Overall just 36% of Republican primary voters in the state are glad the North emerged victorious to 30% for the South, but Trump's the only one whose supporters actually wish the South had won.

• By an 80/9 spread, Trump voters support his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. In fact 31% would support a ban on homosexuals entering the United States as well, something no more than 17% of anyone else's voters think is a good idea. There's also 62/23 support among Trump voters for creating a national database of Muslims and 40/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else's voters back. Only 44% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should even be legal at all in the United States, to 33% who think it should be illegal.

• To put all the views toward Muslims in context though, 32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one, compared to only 33% who oppose it and 35% who have no opinion one way or another.

We really do live in a country with these people. ***But we also live in a country with some other people, perhaps especially in South Carolina. Toni Monkovic at the Upshot points out that when Democrats vote in their primary a week later, a very different segment of the electorate may be the deciders.

In the last South Carolina Democratic primary, black women made up for 61 percent of the black vote. In the 2012 presidential election, black women voted at the highest rate of any group across race, gender and ethnicity, and 96 percent of them voted for President Obama, according to exit polls. It is not an exaggeration to say that black women, in formation and flexing their political power, could have the final say over whether Mrs. Clinton becomes the first female presidential nominee of either party.

Whether the eventual Democratic nominee is Clinton or Sanders, these women count and they are seizing their own future.