We Need to Listen to James Clyburn
The Democratic Majority Whip has some thoughts about President Biden
We are re-sending/revising this issue because we saw a typo! Please excuse our error.
Issue #87 OpEd July 19, 2022
All day I’ve been wondering what I wanted to write about this week. Not that there is any shortage of topics, because that would most certainly be a lie. And a big one. But I just couldn’t settle on what I could tackle and get it right.
Writer’s block? Maybe yeah, maybe no.
But if I’m being honest, sometimes as a writer you’re forced to admit to yourself that the topic you really want to dig into isn’t necessarily the topic you feel most equipped to tackle. As a wordsmith, you might be able to put some polish on it or make it dance a certain way, but at the end of the day you’ll still know it wasn’t done the way you wanted – and chances are the readers will know too.
As in all situations when I’m not quite sure which way to go, this becomes a job for Mighty Wife. Never let me down once, and I sincerely doubt that once will ever come. So I explain my dilemma, and being the master researcher that she is, she sends me a link to a couple of stories.
Hot damn if that didn’t do it.
Because in this particular interview of Rep. James Clyburn, featured in the Los Angeles Times, Clyburn summarized something that has been bugging me for months, namely all this pile-on criticism of President Biden, as if the man has been standing still while in office. And as if he has the same overwhelmingly Democratic Congress to work with as President Lyndon Johnson did when he passed so much historic legislation more than a half-century ago, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When instead what he has is a crippled Senate where two senators, in particular, seem to take particular joy in thwarting everything he tries to do. Not quite as contemptible as Mitch McConnell, but in some ways worse. Because you expect the worst from McConnell, same as you expect the worst from the entire Republican Congress in both Houses.
Anyway, I would love to express these thoughts I have been having better than Clyburn, but I can’t. So instead I’m going to step aside and let you hear from the man himself, the most senior African American in Congress, and the man who effectively put President Biden in office with the strength of a nod – a nod strongly encouraged by his wife before she died. If you scroll down to the 11th paragraph of this interview, you’ll find what I view to be the absolute must-read section. Here is the reporter’s question, followed by a portion of Clyburn’s answer. But for the full effect, I strongly suggest you read the entire interview (yep, I just added the same link again).
By the way, Rep. Clyburn is the majority “whip” in the current Congress. In this case, the “whip” is the person in charge of “whipping,” or counting, the votes for each bill. The whip works with other congresspeople to get them to support the bill with their votes. It is a very important job, not just a title.
And then consider this: it’s up to us this year. As monumental as the task may seem to go up against all this corruption, trying to find a clean hand inside a stacked deck, we have to overcome it all at the polls. And we need to recall the other times when it seemed impossible at best because this is certainly not the first time we almost lost the country. But if we don’t fight this thing, then this time it will not be “almost.” Believe that.
Q: Black voters turned out to put President Biden in office, but as we’ve seen over the past year and a half, he hasn’t been able to deliver on criminal justice reform, student debt relief or voting rights. Roe vs. Wade is no longer the law of the land, and Americans are struggling with inflation, as the Fed continues to raise interest rates. What’s your response to their concerns?
A: Why is everybody judging his administration on a four-year program and only a year and a half has expired?
Do you think it was any benefit for Joe Biden to wipe out $1.6 billion in debt for the HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in this country? Over 100 HBCUs in this country. Joe Biden, in his [American] Rescue Plan, took all that debt off the books.
I can go down from the American Rescue Act. I can go to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I can go to the omnibus appropriations bill and look at what we have done in the African American community. The glass is more than half full, and we keep talking about the glass being half empty. Let’s talk about what we’ve done, and the fact that we’ve got two and a half years left to do some more. The president signed the first major piece of gun legislation that has been signed in 30 years.
Everybody was dissatisfied with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That’s why we kept fighting so we could get the Voting Rights Act of ’65. And we kept fighting so we could get the fair housing law of ’68. We kept fighting so we could get the Civil Rights Act of ’64 to apply to the public sector in 1972.
So you do not consider the first step as being the final step.
What do you think about Rep. Clyburn’s still-strong support of President Biden? Let us know in the comments.
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