- House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn reportedly blamed progressives for Democratic losses in 2020.
- A forthcoming book by two New York Times reporters features Clyburn's newly unveiled comments.
- Clyburn's office did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
During heated backroom discussions following the 2020 election, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn blamed progressives for nearly scuttling the Democratic Party's House majority, according to a forthcoming book.
Despite President Joe Biden winning the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points, House Democrats lost 13 seats in the same election and entered 2021 with a tight 222 to 213 majority.
Those losses quickly became a source of tension among Congressional Democrats, as New York Times reporters Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin detail in their forthcoming book "This Shall Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," a copy of which was obtained by Insider.
Host of the "world famous" Clyburn Fish Fry and a critical endorsement in Biden's 2020 campaign, Clyburn has served as the House Majority Whip since 2019 and previously chaired the House Democratic Conference from 2006 to 2007.
The majority whip "pointed a finger at his party's left wing in diplomatic but unmistakable terms," Burns and Martin wrote.
He said "racialized voting" hurt Democrats nationwide in the form of a racial backlash that pushed white voters toward the GOP, according to Burns and Martin, who note that they used direct quotes in the book for "verbatim language used in interviews, text messages, emails, documents, or in recorded material, or were relayed by authoritative sources soon after the fact."
In the Times reporters' account of a closed-door meeting on November 5, 2020, Clyburn lamented how the party was being depicted as highly progressive in elections nationwide. Candidates, in his view, should have been able to decide on issues of campaign strategy such as "whether or not you are going to run on Medicare for All or defunded police or socialized medicine or whatever," Burns and Martin wrote.
"I would hope that we would sit down and have some serious discussions about how to approach these campaigns," Clyburn said, according to the book.
The majority whip's comments did not sit well with progressive lawmakers in the room, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
"When I hear this from my colleagues, what I hear is stop pushing for what Black folks want, people of color, folks that are living in poverty, and that we need to appeal to a certain number of people, suburban people, and to shut up," Tlaib said, according to Burns and Martin.
Clyburn's office did not respond to Insider's request for comment ahead of publication.
Democrats managed to fare better among suburban voters in 2020 compared to 2016, according to Pew Research, with Biden gaining 9 percentage points on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's performance against Donald Trump. Crucial in the electoral college, this demographic of higher-earning, college-educated white people who live near major cities helped push Biden over the top in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Clyburn also resurrected the Biden campaign with his endorsement ahead of the 2020 South Carolina primary, when Biden was suffering from stinging defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Former Republican President George W. Bush even congratulated Clyburn on his decision to make the endorsement, which preceded a landslide victory in the the Palmetto State, paving the way for Biden's eventual party nomination and White House victory.
"George Bush said to me today, 'You know, you're the savior because if you had not nominated Joe Biden, we would not be having this transfer of power today,'" Clyburn told reporters on the day of the president's inauguration.