Clyburn says Biden pushed to move South Carolina up in primary calendar to avoid ‘embarrassment’

Watch Chris Wallace’s interview with Rep. Jim Clyburn tonight at 10 p.m. ET on CNN and stream it on HBO Max.

President Joe Biden supported a decision to make South Carolina, not New Hampshire, the first Democratic presidential primary state in 2024 so as to avoid “embarrassment” in a state where the demographic makeup is less favorable to Democrats, Rep. Jim Clyburn told CNN’s Chris Wallace.

Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee approved a proposal backed by Biden to move up South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan in the 2024 Democratic calendar, breaking with decades of tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire as the first two states to hold nominating contests.

Biden has said he wants to give Black, brown and Asian American and Pacific Islander voters an earlier say in the presidential nominating process and that the new order would better reflect the diversity of the Democratic Party. But the move also would provide Biden with more favorable political turf; he had poor showings in the first nominating contests of 2020 before a strong victory in South Carolina, backed by the state’s Black voter base, resurrected his campaign.

On “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” the CNN anchor asked Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and longtime ally of Biden’s, if the president was “stacking the deck” in making the decision.

“I don’t think you’re stacking the deck. I think you’re avoiding embarrassment, that is what he is attempting to avoid here,” said Clyburn, one of the highest-ranking African-Americans in Congress. “And I would expect anybody to do the same.”

“You do not have the demographics as required for Democrats in the general election, and neither one of those states (Iowa and New Hampshire) have the demographics that are favorable to Democrats in the general, I think we know that,” Clyburn…