Who's too old? South Carolina congressman who boosted Biden in 2020 ready to back him again

WEST PALM BEACH — The South Carolina congressman widely credited with having catapulted Joe Biden to the presidency said Monday he "can't wait" for Biden to launch his re-election bid, despite what he called efforts by GOP-majority state legislatures to return the country, and Florida, to the Jim Crow era.

"I can't wait for Joe Biden to make his announcement so that we can get actively involved," said U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of Sumter. "I plan to devote my time and energy the rest of this year and next year going into this election making sure that we get the type of turnout that we need."

President Biden, in fact, announced his 2024 re-election bid in a video released on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of his 2020 presidential campaign, even as polls show many Americans, even Democrats, harboring doubts.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released last week showed that only 26% of those asked want to see Biden seek another term. And just 47% of Democrats — fewer than half — say they want him to run.

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Other voter surveys have echoed similar results, with many citing concerns about Biden's handling of the economy and his age. The president turned 80 last year and would be 86 at the end of his second term should he prevail in next year's election.

But Clyburn, who noted that at 82 he is two years older than Biden, dismissed concerns about age, adding that accomplishments are more significant.

"I feel fine, and I'm two years older," said Clyburn, who was in West Palm Beach on Monday to speak at a luncheon. "This whole thing about being too old, you know nobody can tell me at what point do you get too old. He is meeting the challenge of his job, especially on the international level. And he has a real good domestic plan to run on, too."

Jim Clyburn's endorsement in 2020 catapulted Biden to White House

That national agenda, said Clyburn, includes a half dozen major pieces of legislation passed by the Democratic majority in the past two years. They include infrastructure investments, pandemic assistance and the first gun safety measure approved at the federal level in decades.

"These are six big, I guess here we'll call it huge, pieces of legislation that the president has to run with," said Clyburn, referencing Palm Beach County resident and former President Donald Trump's past intonation in pronouncing the word "huge."

Clyburn's support for Biden proved crucial in 2020.

After announcing his intention to seek the White House in the spring of 2019, Biden stumbled in a series of debates against a multitude of challengers in the summer and fall of that year. He started the caucus and primary season the next year with losing and lackluster results in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Then ahead of the win-or-go-home South Carolina primary, Biden received Clyburn's endorsement. Biden won the Palmetto State's contest and then went on to score primary win after primary win, in many ways owing it to Black voter turnout.

Clyburn: They want to restrict or curtail minority voting in the guise of election security

Black voters played a decisive role in helping Biden garner the Democratic nomination and then defeat Trump. Now voting advocates and others have said it's a reason they feel GOP-majority state legislatures, including Florida's, have been enacting laws demanded by Trump and other GOP leaders to restrict or curtail minority voting under the guise of election security advocacy.

Clyburn said those efforts are part of a strategy he said is aimed at turning back the clock to the late 19th Century, which saw Black disenfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation predominate with the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

"Whoever has been advising Donald Trump studied this country's politics of 1876," he said. "Because what I see going on today is exactly what went on after we got rid of Reconstruction, brought in Jim Crow and directed all kinds of misinformation to Black voters while suppressing the Black vote.

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"Those are the two things going on, directing misinformation into minority communities while suppressing the votes of minority communities. That's what's going on in the Florida Legislature, the South Carolina Legislature."

That includes, the congressman said, gerrymandering and redistricting efforts that he said cost Democrats four seats in the U.S. House this session. He also said it includes the deliberate spread of disinformation revealed in depositions and evidence-gathering during the lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, a case settled last week.

"That's going to be the big issue in the campaign," Clyburn said. "The extent to which we can overcome the disinformation and this suppression that is taking place in the minority communities."

Clyburn also said he refuses to write off Florida as winnable for Democrats, despite disastrous midterm election results last year. In November, Republicans swept all statewide races with double-digit margins of victory. An analysis by The Palm Beach Post showed just 49% of registered Democrats cast a ballot.

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Many who didn't vote said they were not enthusiastic about the party's gubernatorial candidate, Charlie Crist. That left party leaders like Palm Beach Democratic chair Mindy Koch sensing frustration.

"While Republicans fall in line to vote for Trump, or whoever, Democrats don't because if we don't love (our candidate), we won't vote," Koch said this month.

Florida congressional Democrats have also been vexed by Gov. Ron DeSantis' ability to shape the political narrative.

While the governor has blasted Capitol Hill Democrats' spending programs as inflation fuelers, he has happily padded the state budget with those dollars and accepted credit when handing out bonuses to Florida public servants that were at least partly made possible by congressional Democrats' appropriations.

"A vital wave of federal relief has made its way to millions of Floridians to help keep them safe and financially secure," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, in May 2021. "Gov. DeSantis apparently thinks that Florida residents, and the media, are fools as he brazenly tried to take credit for it."

Jim Clyburn: Florida not a 'lost cause' for Democrats

Clyburn said Democrats need to use the time now to find strategies to reach voters, energize them and prepare a strategy to turn them out in large enough numbers to win.

In fact, he said he has drawn inspiration and lessons from Josiah Walls, one of the first African Americans to serve in Congress during the Reconstruction Era and the first Black person from Florida to be elected to the U.S. House.

He said the first step is for Democrats to champion what they achieved while in the majority of Capitol Hill. He pointed to two news conferences he had in South Carolina with GOP and Trump-backing Gov. Henry McMaster to tout congressional dollars brought to the state for broadband internet expansion and deepening the Charleston port.

"That's what you've got to do, share with people exactly what you're doing," he said. "You can sit down and dream about it, or you go out to the American people and point to the results."

Clyburn said he cannot predict when voter efforts will bear fruit in Florida, but the time to begin turning the tide is now.

"I don't know when that time is going to come here in Florida. It could very well be in 2024," he said. "But the question becomes, 'Have we made the right preparations to take advantage of that when the opportunity presents itself?' But, no, I don't think that Florida is a lost cause."

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Congressman Jim Clyburn eager to back Joe Biden 2024 re-election effort