PBS News Hour

GEOFF BENNETT: Few Democrats are as influential or as politically powerful as South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, a longtime ally of President Biden's.

Clyburn was quick to throw his support behind Kamala Harris as the Democrats' presidential nominee, which helped to consolidate the party's support for her.

And Congressman Clyburn joins us now.

Thanks so much for being with us.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, thank you very much for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: Most folks know you as the elder statesman who saved Joe Biden's campaign back in 2020.

You're one of his closest allies.

And I understand he called you moments before he dropped out of this race.

What did he tell you?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Well, he told me he had made a decision not to continue the campaign.

And he read me the statement and asked what I thought.

And I told him I thought it was a good statement, but it was missing something.

And I said to him I didn't think it would be the prudent thing to do to leave the stage and not endorse the vice president to succeed him.

GEOFF BENNETT: So the original statement didn't have the endorsement of Kamala Harris?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: No, it didn't.

And he told me -- when I said that to him, he says: "I plan to issue a second statement within the hour, and that will be an endorsement."

And 30 minutes later, he did issue a second statement, and it was the endorsement.

GEOFF BENNETT: Do you think he would have done that without your encouragement?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: I think so.

I think he had already made up his mind to do so.

I had no way of knowing that.

And so I said what I said.

He told me what he did, and he did what he said.

GEOFF BENNETT: You know, for all of the focus on the ceremonial passing of the torch from Biden to Harris, last night, we saw the Obamas in many ways affirm Kamala Harris as the rightful successor to the Obama era.

We heard President -- former President Obama invoke that slogan, "Yes, she can."

That's how he rephrased it.

How do you see it?

How do you see that historical through line and her role?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: I see it as the pass-through is Joe Biden.

Joe Biden brought this country back from the brink.

Obama left Trump a whole lot to work with.

And he did to the Obama era what he did to his father's money, lost it all.

And he mismanaged the pandemic.

Nobody blames him for COVID-19, but he could have managed it with some good sense.

But we got all foolishness.

So it was up to Biden to bring this country back from the brink.

And he did.

He did it with some monumental legislation.

His Rescue Plan didn't get a single Republican vote, but it got children back in school, it got businesses unshuttered, and it got our economy back in, focused.

Then he did the infrastructure bill.

We had been promised infrastructure every month for four years.

And not one dime was spent on infrastructure.

A $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, that included the broadband Internet that we needed in order to get telemedicine out to people, especially in rural communities, and get children to stay in schools or stay acquainted with educational stuff, and went on to the CHIPS and Science ACT, the PACT Act, Safer Communities Act, Inflation Reduction Act.

He did it.

So we can't go from Obama all the way to Harris.

You got to pass through Joe Biden.

GEOFF BENNETT: When you talk about the Biden policies, does Kamala Harris owe voters more specifics in terms of what her policies would be, or is it enough in the moment to be buoyed by all of this Democratic enthusiasm and energy?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: In the moment, it's enough to be buoyed.

We're in a convention.

We was in this convention tomorrow evening, and then we will go back to the business of campaigning.

That's when she has to lay out exactly how she plans to conduct herself as president.

I don't think a convention setting is the right place to do that.

Here, you're trying to gin up the troops.

You want the troops to get involved in this campaign, and then you will give them something to work with when they get back home.

So I think she's doing it exactly the way it ought to be done.

Now, we will get some broad themes tomorrow night from her, and that's as it should be.

But the specifics, I hope she won't get into completely tomorrow night.

GEOFF BENNETT: How might this Harris/Walz campaign best corral all of this energy and this momentum and turn it into actual votes come Election Day?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Well, I'm glad you said that, because everybody keeps talking about the energy.

And I remind people, the atoms float around in the atmosphere forever, and did not become potent until somebody figured out how to harness that energy.

That's what we have got to do.

The energy is here.

You can feel it.

You can hear it.

But we have got to figure out how best to harness that.

And, in my opinion, you don't harness energy by running television ads or even radio ads.

They continue to generate energy.

You have got to harness that with people on the streets, boots on the ground.

And so I hope we will make that investment to the extent that we should.

We can talk all we want about HBCUs.

Get onto these campuses and get them out to vote.

The Divine Nine, get them involved in this campaign.

The Masonic orders, get them involved in this campaign.

We have got to get people through those organizations that already exist on the ground and to keep knocking on people's doors and getting them to the polls.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lastly, in the minute we have left, what do you want to hear from Vice President Harris tomorrow night when she delivers her speech and formally accepts this party's nomination as the presidential nominee?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Focus on the future.

Focus on the future.

That's what this is all about.

No matter what you may do with the foundation, people need to know how this building is going to look when all the elections are done.

GEOFF BENNETT: All right, that is South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn.

Thanks so much, sir.

We appreciate it.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Thank you so much for having me.