The Man Who Saved Biden’s 2020 Campaign Lets Loose

Rep. Jim Clyburn doesn’t believe the polls.

Despite a growing list of surveys that show Donald Trump gaining with Black voters, the longtime South Carolina Democrat and co-chair of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, dismissed suggestions Democrats should be concerned.

“Something is amiss with the polling,” he said in an interview with thePlaybook Deep Dive podcast. “Anybody who believes that Donald Trump will get30 percent of the Black male vote or 12 percent of the Black female vote — I got a bridge down there on Johns Island I’ll sell you.”

The former No. 3 House leader also opened-up about his plans to skip Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress — and potentially hold an alternative event with Democrats who are committed to the kind of two-state solution that Netanyahu has resisted.

And Clyburn tossed out a few names as potential leaders of the Democratic Party in a post-Biden world and explained why he hasn’t endorsed in New York’s competitive Democratic primary between progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman and the more moderate George Latimer.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive senior producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here: 

Let's start with Donald Trump’s return to the Hill for the first time since Jan. 6. How did that feel?

Well, his being here prevented me from getting into my garage on time this morning. So that's the story of my life — being disrupted by Donald Trump. But, other than that, I don't feel anything.

You are one of the Biden campaign's co-chairs. Tell us a little bit about that. What's the job of the campaign co-chair? How formal is it? 

I don’t know what the job is. [Laughs]

Well, how did you get it? Did the president call you and tell you? It sounds important. 

I guess the president must have called me. We meet every Saturday morning virtually. Some Saturdays I make the meetings and some Saturdays I don't.

What do you guys talk about at the secret co-chair meetings? 

They aren’t secret at all. We just get updates from the staff —

Can I come to the Saturday meetings then, if they’re not secret?

Well it's not secret, but it's private. There’s a big difference between private and secret.

Tell us a little bit about the flavor of these meetings and what's discussed.

We're just getting updates from the staff and other entities in the campaign, and they ask us questions, we give advice and that sort of thing.

Before we get to some of the Biden campaign stuff, I’ve got to ask you about one thing that's newsy this week. And that is George Latimer’s challenge to Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary in New York. Bowman is obviously a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Some big names like Hillary Clinton have endorsed Latimer. Are you for Bowman or Latimer? 

I've contributed to Bowman.

You've contributed financially?

Financially, I contributed to Bowman.

But this is short of a full-on endorsement?

Well, he has not asked me for any kind of endorsement. He asked me for a contribution, and I gave it to him. I tend to respond to candidates based upon what they want me to do. If a candidate calls and says, “I'd like for you to come to my district,” then I may go. He's not asking anything else of me.

If he calls and asks you to come and campaign for him in his district, what are you going to say? 

Well, let's cross that bridge when I get to it.

Has Latimer reached out to you? 

No, I don't know Latimer.

So just tell us about the politics of this. This seems to be one of the most interesting primaries that Democrats are having right now. It's really dividing the party ideologically. You seem to be lined up a lot more with George Latimer than Jamaal Bowman. 

Well, I don't know George Latimer. I have no idea about his politics. So I may be lined up with him, I don't know. But if you recall, everybody said in the 2020 presidential primary that it was divisive. And it may have been. But my candidate came out OK.

Well, you're being very modest. You are often considered the single most important person in helping Joe Biden win the nomination and therefore the presidency. 

Well, you know, you’re having a contest. We had 20 some-odd people running for president. I think there were 23 people; 21 of them were at my fish fry a few months before. It wasn't divisive. You just had a contest.

So I don't call the contest divisive. I think you’ve got a contest going in New York — in fact, I think I saw somewhere that Mondaire Jones endorsed Latimer. And he was a member of the [Congressional Black] Caucus. And he's right there running in the congressional district next to it. So I don't call that divisive. I just call that the contest.

So you could end up doing what Mondaire Jones did and endorse Latimer? 

I doubt very seriously — I can’t endorse anybody I’ve never met and don’t even know anything about. All I know is the name.

Let's talk about the South Carolina presidential primary. One of the great disappointments of there not being an open race on the Democratic side is we didn't get a Clyburn fish fry this year. But the South Carolina primary was first. Remind us how that came about. 

It came about because Joe Biden wanted South Carolina to be first.

But the fact of the matter is, I never asked for South Carolina to be first in the nation. I've always asked for South Carolina to be first in the South, and we were first in the South for years. And I jokingly said — I'm half-joking when I say this — I was a baseball player growing up, a pretty good baseball player, and I knew that the most important batter in the lineup is the fourth-place batter. The fourth-place batter is called the cleanup hitter. South Carolina was in fourth place. And I wanted to stay in fourth place.

That's what made you so influential every election. 

Absolutely. So why would I want to be first?

So this leads to this question: What about 2028? Where do you want South Carolina to be? 

I want South Carolina to be anywhere they decide for it to be in 2028.

Will you fight to keep it first? 

No. No I won’t.

And you'd be okay if it went back to fourth? If it went back to cleanup?

It's OK with me. Absolutely.

OK. This may be a little early, but who do you think the post-Biden, top-tier Democratic presidential candidates are? Who do you see as the next crop that you have your eye on and maybe even would like to see run? 

How big is the crop?

That's for you to tell me. It could be five, 10, 20. 

Well yeah, it might be closer to 10 than five, but I see Cory Booker, Wes Moore, what's his name — the governor of California.

Gavin Newsom. 

Gavin Newsom.

The governor of Pennsylvania.

Josh Shapiro? 

Shapiro, yeah.

I don't know what's going to happen between now and then, but the governor of North Carolina — Governor [Roy] Cooper — I think is a really, really good governor. He is a guy that I would keep my eyes on, if I were you guys in the media.

I can't help but notice that Kamala Harris was not on that list. 

Well, she is automatically on the list. As vice president, she is automatically on the list. I don’t put her in the next crop. She's in the current crop.

Can you help us understand the decision, as you understand it, that Joe Biden made to run for reelection rather than retiring, and letting a primary happen to see who runs against Trump?

I don't know if you know this or not, but I'm sure you remember in 2020, privately, he did tell some people that he was only going to serve one term. His aides actually debated among themselves whether to make that a public pledge. They decided not to. And obviously he decided not to only serve once.

What do you think went into that decision? And did he talk to you about it in the run up to it? 

No. All of what you just said is news to me. I didn't know anything about what you just said. I do know that when he asked me my opinion, I said to him that I thought he should run. He didn't tell me that he was thinking about one term. He did say in my presence and campaign more than once using the term “transitional,” that he was going to be a transitional president.

And sometimes he would talk about being a “bridge” back in 2020. 

That's right.

The bridge got a little longer though. 

Absolutely. It doesn't have to be a short bridge. It can be a long bridge. It doesn't have to be a four-year transition, it can be an eight-year transition. And that's what I said to him. I said, “Well let's make this transition an eight-year transition.” Because we had to transition. We are transitioning.

Look, we're going through some real trying times. It's like Thomas Paine in his little pamphlet, “The American Crisis”: “These are times that try men's souls.” And there ain’t no room out here for “summer soldiers” or “sunshine patriots.”

You know the next line. Most people don't know that next line.

Oh, yeah, but I know it: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

How do you know that? How is that memorized?

I don't know. That's what it says.

Let me ask you this: I always thought that the decision for Biden was, does he run again or does he open up the party to a messy, divisive primary. How do you look at that choice between Biden running with all of his faults versus opening it up to a potential primary? 

Well, I don't know that the primary would have been all that nasty. I think that you had people, like Gavin Newsom, I think Gavin Newsom was hell bent on running. I think he really, really wanted to run. I think he was positioning himself to run if Biden did not run. And I do think that Cory Booker would have run. I think that there would be a big contest. I'm not too sure the vice president would be the only woman in the race.

Do you think it could have produced a candidate as strong or stronger than Biden? 

No.

So at the end of the day, this was the best way to go?

I think he was the best in 2020, and I think he is best today.

Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know you get asked this question a lot, but I'm going to ask it as well. And that is this series of polls this year that show Donald Trump doing a whole lot better with Black voters than he did in 2020. 

The May New York Times/Siena swing state poll showed 23 percent Black support for Trump. He won 8 percent according to the exit polls in 2020. 

And then the Wall Street Journal broke down an interesting gender divide in April. This was a national poll, and it showed that 30 percent of Black men said they'll vote for Trump versus 12 percent in 2020 and 11 percent of Black women versus 6 percent in 2020. 

This is a big shift. I don't think you can deny that these polls are showing something. What do you think that Biden needs to do to turn this around? 

I don't think he needs to do anything but what he's doing. I think Joe Biden is doing exactly what he needs to do to win reelection. Something is amiss with the polling. I call your attention to the recent polls in Maryland. The African American woman [Angela Alsobrooks] running for the United States Senate nomination — the Sunday before the election, one poll had her five down, the other poll had her seven down — and she won by 13. How do you explain that? That's 20 points.

So I have no idea what's going on with polling these days. But I do know this, the polls did not have [Jon] Ossoff, nor [Raphael] Warnock winning Georgia. And then both of them won. The polls did not have [Lucy] McBath getting 87 percent in that district. But she did.

Anybody who believes that Donald Trump will get 30 percent of the Black male vote or 12 percent of the Black female vote — I got a bridge down there on Johns Island I'll sell you.

Does it worry you at all? Do you think it's something that the campaign needs to be spending any time on and resources on or do you think it'll just naturally tighten, as we get closer to the election? 

I’m going to tell you what concerns me. What concerns me is the disinformation and misinformation that's being peddled out here. What really concerns me is a fact that for some strange reason the media are more concerned with trying to balance stories rather than report the facts. That bothers me to no end.

There is a generational divide that exists among people, Black and white. I got a text from my grandson last night, thanking me for the statement I made on Netanyahu's visit. Now, why did he feel the need for that? I didn't sit in that House when Netanyahu was here the last time.

So you’re not going?

This is nothing new for me not to attend Netanyahu's speech. I didn't attend his last speech here for the same reason I'm not going to attend this one. But for some strange reason, that's some big revelation to my grandson. That ain't no revelation. I've been in this place a long time. Nobody bothers to think about it.

Last thing on Netanyahu. You had hinted that there might be some counter-programming during his visit. Any idea what that will look like? And how many members might participate in that? 

I don't know. I'm meeting with staff. I've already told them what was on my mind and they're going to let me know where there may be other folks who may want to have some alternative meetings on this. Irrespective of that, if I'm the only one, I won't be attending.

But you might go beyond not attending and actually do something that gets some attention? 

Right. Because I think that those of us who believe in a two-state solution really need to let it be known that this isn't just Joe Biden. Barack Obama was here. I think Bill Clinton was here. This two-state solution is something that we've been for for a long time and I have yet to find out from anybody, what's Trump's position on this? Is he supporting Netanyahu? I think if you want to be president of these United States, you’ve got to be able to lay out a visionary path forward on this country's relationship with the state of Israel. And I ain't seen anybody making Trump respond to that issue. Just beating up on Biden and beating up on Biden. And they ain’t saying one word to Trump about where he stands.

You mentioned North Carolina earlier. I don't know how much you pay attention to the nitty gritty, but there's a conventional wisdom now that among the major swing states, Biden’s chances are better in the Midwest than the Sunbelt — and that North Carolina might be a little out of reach. What’s your read on this?

I do not think that North Carolina is out of reach. Not by a long shot.

Do you buy this distinction between the upper-tier Midwest states versus the Sunbelt? And that Biden’s fortunes are a little more promising in the Midwest?

That may be true. I have not spent a whole lot of time on that. I've been spending time on Pennsylvania, Michigan, I'm getting ready to go to Wisconsin real soon. I really think that if we hold Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, we'll be fine.

I have not done the numbers to see exactly what states will make up the required number of electoral votes. But I wouldn't give up on North Carolina or Georgia, whatever the numbers are showing. Because I think the other side is not putting together a campaign to win. They’re trying to muddy the waters, suppress the vote, depress turnout on our side because I don't think they can grow their numbers.

This question is a fun one: You've got a lot of interesting politicians from South Carolina. I want you to give me in order from your favorite to least favorite Republican out of Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Nancy Mace. 

Lindsey and I are good friends. I do mean that generally, we are good friends. I don't agree with him on a lot of things, and I do agree with him on a lot of things. We were able to do a lot with the judiciary, especially those judge appointments in South Carolina. He's the senior senator and we've worked very closely together on all those things.

I know Tim [Scott], I know the former governor [Nikki Haley]. But I'm much closer to the current governor of South Carolina, who is a Trumpie. You know, Henry McMaster and I are good friends. We've had two press conferences together recently on issues that affect South Carolina.

My parents were Republicans. They were members of the party of Lincoln. So I don't have a knee-jerk reaction to Republicans. I thought you were asking me who my favorite Republican was and I was going to look up on my wall and look at Robert Smalls.

All right, last question, congressman. We do this thing on the show where the last question is a question that was proposed by a previous guest. 

And believe it or not, this one was proposed by Rick Scott a couple of weeks ago. This is a weighty question from Rick Scott. And that is: What is your purpose in life? 

Oh, it's very easy for me. My purpose in life is drawn really to rhyme with our Pledge of Allegiance. It is to make this country's greatness accessible and affordable for all of its citizens. And I've told my daughters that I want that on my tombstone when I take my place alongside their mother. That's my purpose.

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