LAS VEGAS — The phalanx of Black and Hispanic Democrats that has closed ranks around President Joe Biden as much of the rest of their party seeks to push him out of the presidential race has another goal: ensuring that if he does go, Kamala Harris will take his place at the top of the ticket.
In the weeks since Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Black and Hispanic lawmakers, donors and activists have rallied most loudly to his defense, insisting that they are, in the words of one of the most senior Black Democrats in Congress, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, “ridin’ with Biden” no matter what.
That powerful defense, though, has not been driven solely by a yearning for a second term of the Biden presidency, according to interviews with dozens of them over the past week. It is also born of a palpable fear among many Black and Hispanic Democrats that in their rush to ditch Biden, some in the party will also seek to skip over Harris, throwing open the nominating process in a way that would defy the will of their communities.
“I’m in these rooms; I see what they say in conversations,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said during a social media stream Thursday night. “A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket.”
Public support for Biden to stay in the race is not unanimous among Black and Hispanic members of Congress.
In recent days, at least a half-dozen of them have called for Biden to step aside or have expressed grave concerns about his ability to win in November. They include Reps. Marc Veasey of Texas, Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona.
“We must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardizing what should be a winning campaign,” Veasey wrote in a letter joined by three other lawmakers, not all of whom were Black or Hispanic.
“It is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,” they wrote Friday.
One of the factors prolonging what has been an agonizing period of reckoning among Democrats about Biden’s fate is a racial divide on the future of their party, and who should have the greatest say in what it looks like.
Black lawmakers and voters have long been a core of his base. Veteran Black and Hispanic lawmakers have celebrated Biden’s domestic agenda as delivering for their constituents.
Still, Biden’s support has slipped among the rank and file. Black voters remain among his strongest backers, but were about evenly divided on whether Biden should stay in the race in a recent AP-NORC poll. And Republicans have made inroads among Black and Latino voters since the 2020 election, polling suggests.
But underlying the sense of urgency among many Black lawmakers to defend the president is a feeling that those pushing the hardest for Biden to go are predominantly white lawmakers and an elite class of donors who do not necessarily back Harris and are not prioritizing the wishes of Black voters who consistently turn out for the party.
“To not choose her is a slap in the face to Black women,” said Melanie Campbell, chair of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund, an advocacy organization focused on Black voter engagement. “You are saying to Black women that what we represent is not good enough — not only to stay with the man we voted for, but the woman that most of us advocated for, to be the vice president. You take her down, then you lose the Black women’s vote.”
With Biden’s future mired in uncertainty, the White House has continued to rely on Harris while the president self-isolated in Delaware with a case of COVID. She made an unscheduled appearance Friday afternoon at a newly opened ice cream shop in Washington owned by supermodel Tyra Banks, with her grandnieces in tow. Later, Harris held a call with major party donors at the request of Biden’s senior advisers, according to two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
As Biden has pushed back defiantly on the calls for him to leave the race, he has leaned heavily on the support of Black and Hispanic lawmakers, effectively using their backing as a shield against calls for him to step down. His first meeting with lawmakers after the June 27 debate was a video meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus that turned into something of a pep rally, according to attendees.
This week, the White House invited members of CBC and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to travel with Biden on Air Force One to Las Vegas, and as the list of lawmakers calling for the president to step aside has grown longer, many Black and Hispanic leaders have fanned out across the country to defend his candidacy and legislative record.
The clear implication has been that calling on Biden to withdraw is counter to the wishes of a loyal and crucial part of the party base. But that tactic has not succeeded in tamping down on dissent.
Now, with Democratic leaders and prominent lawmakers becoming more and more vocal about their view that Biden must exit the race, Black and Hispanic leaders have become more direct about their insistence that Harris is the only alternative.
During a dinner of Congressional Black Caucus members this week in Las Vegas, Clyburn, who helped resurrect Biden’s 2020 campaign, defended the Biden-Harris ticket and said choosing instead to hold an open contest for the nomination would not be good for the party, according to people present at the dinner.
“If anything does change from President Biden, the only option for us Democrats is to support Kamala Harris, period — point blank, period,” said Quentin James, co-founder of the Collective political action committee, which aims to help Black candidates seek elected positions and promotes voter outreach in minority communities.
Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, an organization that supports women of color in politics, said she and other leaders of Democratic organizations have started conversations with delegates going to the Democratic National Convention next month to ensure that they would support Harris as the nominee should Biden step aside.
Prominent Democrats including Rep. Adam Schiff of California and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Allison said, “should be as fervent, as clear, as strategic about unifying support behind the vice president with three and a half months out.”
“Otherwise, they’re deeply, deeply out of touch about how Democrats have won elections,” she said. “The calls for Biden to withdraw feel empty without a call for unity.”
Some members of Congress who have called on Biden to drop out — an overwhelmingly white group — have said explicitly that there should be an open primary to replace him.
“It’s important to have a fair, open and democratic primary,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, the first Democrat in Congress to urge the president to step aside. He stressed that Harris would be in a strong position but suggested it would be helpful for the party to demonstrate that “this is not the product of a smoke-filled room or a handful of power brokers, but that there’s genuine democracy here.”
Many Black and Hispanic Democrats are adamantly opposed to that. A group of leading Black Democrats circulated a letter Friday pushing back on the calls for Biden to bow out, but also making it clear that Harris must step in if he did.
“If — and we stress if — President Biden chooses not to run for a second term, we are clear that our choice is Vice President Harris,” the letter said. “We don’t have to go and find a savior or great hope elsewhere,” said the group, which includes a number of Black leaders in the Democratic Party. “We already have it in our vice president.”
A separate public letter of support organized by Black women with more than 2,600 signatures as of Friday condemned the infighting in the Democratic Party and called on Democrats to support the Biden-Harris ticket.
Part of Biden’s motivation to remain on the ticket is a long-held concern that he has a better chance of beating Trump than Harris, a view that may be at odds with recent polling comparing the two Democrats. In public, however, Biden has increasingly turned to Harris to energize Black voters.
On Tuesday at the NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas, the president drew his most enthusiastic response from a crowd of roughly 4,000 when he attacked Trump for his comment about “Black jobs” at the presidential debate — and cited Harris.
“I know what a Black job is,” Biden said to roaring applause. “It’s the vice president of the United States.”
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