During a town hall on Tuesday, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) was asked about people not voting in the 2024 Presidential Election.
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00:00Thank you for being with us tonight. And on a personal matter, I want to thank you for always being willing to meet with us.
00:08I was on the board of South Carolina Humanities for many years and you met with us in your office, which very few of our other representatives took the time to do.
00:20And as you know, South Carolina Humanities has just been completely destroyed.
00:25The NEH has been completely destroyed. So that has nothing to do with my question.
00:31I wanted to have this opportunity to thank you and thank you for meeting with with us so so faithfully.
00:38My question is, we have talked about a lot of different things.
00:44We talked about the threat of Trump. People knew what Trump might do.
00:49People were told what Trump planned to do.
00:53Yes. This this is it's going to be a difficult question, but I hope you'll be honest and quick about telling us one thing.
01:03My question is, what do you think is the number one reason why people who were eligible to vote did not vote?
01:14Oh, boy. It is a tough question.
01:19It is a tough question. I've asked myself that and I guarantee you, I spent a lot of sleepless nights.
01:27But I do believe that we have reached a point where and I think it's just you have to go through this.
01:40All of a sudden, I've got social media.
01:44People tend to believe.
01:47A lie more quickly than they will believe the truth.
01:50And I don't know if we'll how long it would take us to get through this, but I think we will.
02:04This whole notion of what breeds success, what demonstrates success, how you evaluate success.
02:14I can't tell you how many times I hear and how upset I get when people tell me, well, he or she gets got this many followers on social media.
02:31Well, this happened to me about two weeks ago.
02:33And I said to the person, I said, now, would you differentiate between a follower and a troller?
02:44I said, just because they're there doesn't mean they're following you.
02:49They could very well be trolling you.
02:51And so, but I think we have to really get people to understand.
02:59When I spoke at the Democratic Convention, I spoke about Project 2025.
03:08And you may recall that I said that Project 2025 is Jim Crow 2.0.
03:16That's what I said.
03:21Very few people believe that there's a new book that I saw.
03:28I think it came out this morning.
03:30I saw it this morning.
03:32Someone has gone through Project 2025 and has said in no uncertain terms that this is a big threat to our democracy going forward.
03:43And so, what we've got to do, I think, is show people how their futures could very well, very well not be if they do not wake up.
04:02The next election is going to be very, very telling.
04:05So, now, why people didn't vote, I think, number one, a lot of people just got turned off.
04:17They got upset about Joe Biden.
04:20A lot of people did not like the way Kamala Harris got the nomination.
04:27A lot of people just got carried away with style over substance.
04:37In fact, I used to say all the time that there is no substitute for substance.
04:44I'm not saying that anymore.
04:45Because I think that with the advent of social media, that style is trumping, and I mean that as an intended pun, style is trumping substance.
05:06And that is a problem that we're going to have to work through.
05:16People just say, if I can get the lead story on the evening news, or if I can get a headline in the morning newspapers, I will have done something.
05:28No.
05:30Not necessarily so.
05:32But did your comment contribute in a positive way to moving an agenda?
05:46Or did it just get you a headline?
05:50That is the thing that we will have to spend more time on, getting people to understand.
05:55It is much more important to make headway in the society of ours than getting a headline.
06:04I don't know why people did not vote.
06:07I know that I detected the weekend before the election that we were going to lose.
06:16In fact, I got phone calls that Monday asking me where I was going to be Tuesday night.
06:28I said, well, I've got my youngest daughter's on the school board in Columbia, in Richland County.
06:34And so I said, I'm going to go to Columbia and sit with her because there's moms for liberty and running all over the state.
06:44And they were playing big in Richland County, and they had targeted her.
06:51And so I said, well, I've got a funny feeling that she may not survive this, and so I'm going to be with her.
06:59And they said, well, you mean your uncle be in Washington for the victory parties?
07:05I said, no.
07:05I said, quite frankly, I just spent the weekend in Pennsylvania.
07:13I'm not too sure there's going to be a victory party.
07:17And, of course, we know what happened with that.
07:22My daughter did survive.
07:25She did survive.
07:26All right, we're going to go right here.