Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) warned that America was at a “crossroads,” and that if we didn’t “choose wisely” in the 2020 election, we would see “the demise of the greatest democracy ever on Earth.”
Cooper asked, “You’ve been involved in the Civil Rights movement your entire life. We saw in city after city, people peacefully by and large protesting. What do you think? How does this moment feel to you?”
Clyburn said, “A little bit surreal. When you look at what we’re doing back in the 1960s and ’70s for that matter, we really thought that, were we to succeed, that it would be moving on to the next chapter. And I thought that for a long time. But the more I studied history, and the longer I lived, I began to see the realization that in this country, things move like a pendulum on the clock. They seem to go to the right for a while, then back left for a while, then back right. I think that what we saw is when the country moved to the left and elected Barack Obama, there was this rush to get the country going back to the right. And, boy, did it go back to the right, and we elected Donald Trump.”
He continued, “I don’t believe that anybody realized at the time that the country was being pushed over the cliff. And I’ll tell you, what I feel today is that the future of this country is really at stake. I think that what has gone on, not just in the streets, but what’s going on in the White House leads me to believe, from my study of history, that this country is at a crossroads. And if we don’t choose wisely between now and the end of this year, I think that we are seeing the demise of the greatest democracy ever on Earth.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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