House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., received the ignoble distinction of four Pinocchios for his claim that Democrats have never opposed voter ID laws. A couple weeks ago, various Democratic leaders pivoted on their long objections to voter ID laws as the “new Jim Crow” laws, including Stacey Abrams. The Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote “On the face of it, it seems absurd. After all, Clyburn has long been a foe of voter ID laws passed in his own state.”
In an interview with Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto on Tuesday, Clyburn was confronted about the flip flop when he announced support for Sen. Joe Manchin’s, D-W.Va., proposed voter ID requirement in a national election bill. Polls show voters overwhelmingly support voter ID.
Clyburn responded:
“I don’t know why you guys keep misrepresenting what I said. I have never said that you should not have voter ID. When I got my voter registration cards, I keep them in my wallet. And when I go to vote, I presented that every time. And I said to them, I am Jim Clyburn, this is my ID, and I want to vote. I have always had voter ID. And that’s why the representative earlier who voted … no Democrat has never been against voter ID.”
Kessler however said that Clyburn spoke out against South Carolina’s 2013 photo ID law under which a voter can use a driver’s license or obtain a voter registration card with a photo for free. It also allows South Carolinians to cast provisional ballots without a photo ID by signing an affidavit explaining why they were unable to get an identification card. Clyburn denounced the law and said that such ID laws were “poll taxes.”
He has repeatedly called such laws as designed to suppress the vote of black voters.
Kessler awarded four Pinocchios and added:
“Clyburn is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. He routinely decries ‘voter ID’ laws, but at the same time he insisted on Fox News that he has never opposed such laws — and that every Democrat has supported them. In reality, he appears to be against many types of voter ID laws — ones that require photos, or a fee for a photo or which favor one voting group over another.
In other words, he’s playing word games. He supposedly is for voter identification but against most of the voter ID laws being adopted by states … You cannot claim one day that voter ID is a new kind of poll tax and then, on another day, say every Democrat is for voter ID.”
Clyburn is not alone in this distinction. President Biden has also accumulated a collection of Pinocchios, including for his false statements about the Georgia voting law.
Such contradictions would not ordinarily draw much attention except that the statements were made to support claims that these laws are voter suppression vehicles or, as Biden has claimed, “Jim Crow on steroids.”
CRT. Critical Rage Theory.
Bob – well put
Democrats appear to have read the polls where 81% of minorities support voter ID laws.
All of a sudden, they have reversed course, and want you to disbelieve your own eyes and ears.
However, hark back to long, long ago, in the ancient times of a few months ago, when HR 1 would specifically roll back voter ID requirements in all states. The reasoning was that requiring any form of ID, at all, was racist, disenfranchised black voters, and placed an undue burden on voters. Remember that entire line of reasoning? Remember when they said it was absurd to require any proof of identity at all because there was no voter fraud? Remember the whole Boycott Georgia movement? Jim Crow on Steroids? Jim Eagle? Ringing any bells? Well, the Georgia voter law expanded voting. It provided a very generous list of ways to prove identity on absentee ballots. Voters can use their drivers license #, free state ID #, DOP and the last 4 of their SSN, or even a utility bill. THAT is Jim Crow on steroids.
Sorry, Democrats. You’re getting nailed down on this one. Backpedal and deny all you want. The internet is forever, along with all your impassioned pleas that having to provide a drivers license #, id #, last 4 of SSN with their birthday, or a utility bill is just too big a burden for the black community to bear. Requiring the information that every single Georgian voter would have regardless of race was claimed to be a blatant attempt to prevent black people from voting.
Democrats must think black people can’t remember their own birthdays or SSN if they think this is a racist, undue burden.
Honestly, this bigotry of low expectations, selectively applied only to the black population, is so offensive and racist it’s appalling. Their reliance on Democrats having instant amnesia on the rhetoric they’ve been dutifully repeating, that voter ID is racist, is shocking.
Are any Democrats scratching their heads at this point, finding it weird that their party is now claiming Republicans defunded the police, or that they never opposed voter ID as racist? Do they think it’s strange that Democrats rioted, looted, and burned blue cities for about a year, seized city blocks, kicked the cops out of autonomous zones, and stormed the Capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings, yet most were uncharged, while the group of people who trespassed and “illegally paraded” in the Capitol were sent to solitary and charged with the maximum number of crimes possible?
Any penetration through the cognitive dissonance yet?
They didn’t oppose voter ID because it is racist; they opposed it because they want to cheat.
And republicans want to defund the police.