Rep. Jim Clyburn (DS.C.) went after Sen. Joe Manchin (IW.Va.) after the senator said Sunday that he chose to leave the Democratic Party because the party had changed so much.
“This is not my father’s Democratic Party and that’s great,” Clyburn said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, appearing just after Manchin.
“I remember when my father got the right to vote, or actually vote, here in South Carolina. It wasn’t until 1948 that the Democratic Party opened up to African Americans,” he continued.
Manchin announced Sunday that he wants President Biden to leave the presidential campaign and “pass the torch,” while Clyburn supported Biden and left the door open to supporting a new candidate if the president drops out of the race.
“We are going to move forward with these improvements that we have made in this party, opening this party to everyone and keeping it open to everyone,” Clyburn said, defending unity in the party.
The veteran Biden ally also warned that if the party doesn’t unite behind a single candidate, Biden or another, and quickly, it could spell disaster for Democrats.
“If you go to the convention, you have an open process at the convention, everything will come out the same way it came out in 1968, 1972 and 1980,” Clyburn said, referring to previous contested conventions where the Democratic candidate lost the general election. .
“I support Joe Biden. He’s still in this race. He will be the nominee if he stays in the race,” Clyburn continued. “And I think we should all be looking for ways to unite around this candidate.”
Biden and his campaign have remained adamant that the president will be the Democratic nominee, despite growing calls for him to drop out.
“Joe Biden has made this abundantly clear: he is in this race and he is in it to win it. Furthermore, he is the presumptive nominee, there are no plans for an alternative candidate,” Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s swing states director, wrote in a memo released after the Republican National Convention.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
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