In the 2020 election, Biden garnered 87 percent of the black vote. However, recent surveys indicate that this support has plummeted to 63 percent. The situation is even more dire among younger black voters; only 33 percent of those aged 18-29 express intent to vote for Biden. This downward trend has sparked concern within the Democratic establishment, prompting Clyburn to employ a novel approach to whip up support. He suggests that elder black Americans should prod their younger relatives to support Biden. “They should try and talk some sense into their children,” Clyburn told NOTUS in an interview this week. Despite economic challenges like record-high gas prices, rising housing costs, persistently high inflation, and a job market that forces many to take on second and third jobs to make ends meet, Clyburn attributes Biden’s erosion of support to “misinformation and disinformation.” Addressing the growing belief that former President Donald Trump has done more for black Americans than Biden, Clyburn pointedly said, “If you believe that, your parents should’ve sent their mule to school and kept you at home.” Both Biden and Trump, the two leading candidates for the 2024 election, are vigorously courting black voters, realizing their potential to swing the election. From Philadelphia to Milwaukee and Atlanta, the fight is on to win over black voters across all age groups. Clyburn said that with a second Trump presidency, “We may be back to Jim Crow again.” He did not elaborate on which specific policies would negatively impact black Americans, nor did he cite evidence of policies from Trump’s first term in office that adversely impacted the black community. “I know what I had to go through, I know what I saw my parents going through,” he said, warning that Trump poses enough of a threat to black Americans that older black leaders need to begin warning about “the indignities that my mother and my father had to endure so I could be where I’m at today.” NOTUS asked Nina Turner, a former Ohio state representative who served as national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, what she thought of Clyburn’s remarks. Turner said, he is “really stretching." She added, “To try and scare Black voters, particularly young Black voters, into voting for Biden is desperate. He is really desperate.”Former U.S. House Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who assumed the role of co-chair in President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign, is sounding the alarm over a decline in support among black voters, a demographic that was instrumental in Biden's previous victory.
