Rep. Jim Clyburn says Clinton would’ve won in 2016 had Obama put a Black woman on Supreme Court

House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn said in an interview this week that if former president Obama had nominated a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 election.

Clyburn claimed while speaking to The Hill that Democrats could have seized on GOP opposition to a Black female SCOTUS nominee to bolster voter turnout. “I’ll always believe that if this had been done when Garland’s name went up that Hillary Clinton would have been president,” he said. 

He continued, “All you’ve got to do is look at voter turnout. Look at Hillary Clinton’s turnout. I just think the Black vote would have been much more incentivized in Michigan, for instance, and other places, that I think would have made a huge difference. It would have given her a much better message to run on.”

According to Business Insider, Clyburn pressed Obama in 2016 to nominate Howard University Law School Dean Danielle Holley-Walker, a Black woman, to the seat left open by Justice Scalia.