Rep. James Clyburn Says Biden Still Has Black Backing Despite Reported Loss of Support
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn believes that President Joe Biden still has overwhelming support among Black voters, The Hill reports.
During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” on Saturday (Feb.3), Clyburn argued that Biden’s decisive primary win in South Carolina is proof of his strong African American base.
“I think the answer is emphatic yes,” Clyburn said, “and the best illustration of that, he got 96 percent of the vote in this primary, but its largest percentage — over 97 percent — was in the town of Orangeburg where there are two HBCUs and a community college.”
“And he got the largest percentage of the whole state. So that demonstrates to me what I’ve been saying all the time and that Joe Biden has not lost any support among African Americans,” Clyburn continued.
To shore up his African American base, Clyburn accompanied Biden on a visit to South Carolina where he gave remarks to the St. John Baptist Church in Columbia and lauded the vast contributions of the Black Church.
“Well, you give us a mountaintop, you give us a promised land, you give us a dream and a faith that we shall overcome, can overcome,” Biden said, echoing the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., that he spoke on the night before his death.
“And you push us toward a more perfect union, you really do, to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice together, and what a gift to the nation and the world you’ve been,” Biden continued.
He also attended a banquet held at the Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia, visited a Black barber shop, and spoke at a dinner hosted by local Black leaders.
While Clyburn is confident of Biden’s support among Black voters, rented polls have shown that the president's number with African Americans is on the decline. According to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states said they would support former President Donald J. Trump in the November election, while 71 percent would vote for Biden.
In 2020, Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, it has been almost 50 years since a Republican presidential candidate has won more than 12 percent of the Black vote.
