Tag Archives: James Clyburn

national news

Here is the face of a kingmaker

Let me stipulate that I am going to offer an observation in this blog post with some trepidation, given the accusations that the current president seeks to govern like a monarch.

So, here goes …

The face you see in the accompanying picture is that of a man who should be pictured in the dictionary next to the term “kingmaker.”

He is U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat. How does he emerge as a kingmaker? Well, on the eve of the South Carolina Democratic Party presidential primary this month, he endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency.

What was the result? Clyburn energized the African-American voters in his state; Biden rode that energy to a smashing victory over Sen. Bernie Sanders. What’s more the momentum that Biden gained from that victory — given that he had underperformed so miserably in the nation’s first four primary/caucus states — has propelled him from near political death to likely nomination to be the next president of the United States.

The former VP has parlayed Rep. Clyburn’s endorsement into arguably the most stunning political comeback any of us have ever witnessed.

I don’t know what Joe Biden has in mind with regard filling key posts should he be elected president this fall over Donald John Trump. My advice to a President-elect Biden would be this: Appoint James “The Kingmaker” Clyburn to any position he wants.

national news

What a difference a primary victory has made

A single primary victory in the Deep South has injected a once-moribund presidential campaign with a vigor and vitality that one could not have imagined.

Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary this past weekend and set up a Super Tuesday ballot performance that has many of our heads spinning.

As I watch the coverage of the primary states poll closing, I am struck by the victories being rolled up by Biden in states where he was given up for politically dead a week or two or ago.

I heard someone say tonight that U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, the South Carolina political icon whose endorsement of Biden is seen as the turning point in the former VP’s presidential campaign, could be named “secretary of any Cabinet agency he wants” in a Biden administration if such an event comes to pass.

Gosh, do ya think?

Well, they’re still counting the ballots. I don’t know how Super Tuesday will shake out. As I write this brief blog post, I am hopeful that Democrats across the nation have snapped out of their revolutionary mood and returned to some semblance of rationality and reason.

Joe Biden represents a sort of political comfort zone that I believe we will seek as we ponder who we want to lead us for the next four years. I have had more than enough of the stomach-churning uncertainty of Donald Trump.

Of all the candidates left standing among that once-gigantic Democratic Party primary field, Joe Biden appears at this moment to be the one who can restore the decency that once was the hallmark of our nation’s most exalted public office.