Following Sen. Mary Landrieu’s comments to NBC News’ Chuck Todd, in which she says that the South has “not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans,” Dem Rep. James Clyburn picked up the torch and, unsurprisingly, doubled down on Monday morning.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, Clyburn said no matter what President Barack Obama does, “a lot of people” won’t accept him “because of his skin color.”
“For anybody to say there’s nothing that is racial about some of the animus being expressed by President Obama, you’re not telling the truth,” said Clyburn. “We know with a lot of people, I don’t care what he does. He’s not going to be acceptable because of his skin color.”
“None of us can successfully change our skin color nor can we change our gender,” the South Carolina Democrat continued. “There are gender biases existing in this country. We have to work through those things. Those that are democrats that have a history of being fair on civil rights and those kinds of activities. We’ve got to stick with that agenda and work through it and don’t be ashamed or afraid of it.”
The high-ranking House Democrat also laid the groundwork for the Democratic blame-game if the GOP ends up taking over control of the Senate, while giving credit to the GOP for making the election a referendum on the president. He added though, that the tactic wouldn’t be “that important” if Democrats had done an effective messaging job from the outset.
“They have successfully made this campaign a referendum on President Obama,” Clyburn said, “of which I did not believe would be all that important if we as Democrats had done a better job on messaging exactly what the president has done.”