Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
Despite weeks of dire warnings of impending doom from panicky pundits, politicians, big-money Hollywood donors, and the New York Times editorial board, President Biden seems less likely than ever to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Not because he’s an obstinate old man (apparently he is), but because he understands where his power comes from: working-class families, especially Black voters, who supplied Biden’s margin of victory four years ago and are prepared to try and repeat the trick again.
While the Times was calling on Biden to step down, the president was arranging a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, whose 58 members represent areas Democrats need to win in November. “We spoke with President Biden directly, and we’ve been speaking with all of the stakeholders, including Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries, which is a very important part of the equation,” Representative Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn, the group’s first vice-president, told me. “Right now, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus as individuals have stated, for the most part, that they are supporting the Biden-Harris ticket.”
That support is crucial. Four years ago, Biden narrowly won Georgia, which he carried by 12,000 votes; Wisconsin by a little over 20,000 votes; Pennsylvania by just over 81,000; and Michigan by 155,000. To win again, Biden will have to match or exceed big turnout numbers in the Black-voter strongholds of Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Detroit that powered his victory last time.
“The Congressional Black Caucus is working very closely with the DNC and the Biden campaign to make sure that we are in those cities so that we can drive a high turnout,“ Representative Gregory Meeks of Queens, who chairs the CBC’s political-action committee, told me. “We’ve been there for a while.”
Black women, famously, are the most reliable Democratic voters, delivering more than 90 percent of their votes to Biden in 2020. There’s a reason Biden picked one Black woman as his vice-president and another as his first appointment to the Supreme Court, and has named more Black judges than any president in history, with most of his appointments going to women and candidates of color — another first for an American president. That level of political patronage, along with billions in federal aid for historically Black colleges and universities, represents support that CBC members value.
Jeffries, the CBC member who is on track to become Speaker of the House, has been measured in his remarks. Last weekend at EssenceFest, the huge annual cultural and political gathering in New Orleans sponsored by Essence, the Black women’s magazine, he urged audience members not to get caught up in the frenzy over whether Biden should step down.
“What separates the best quarterbacks from the mediocre quarterbacks? It’s not necessarily the case that the mediocre quarterbacks don’t have the same physical talent as Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes, but Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady know that the rush is coming,” Jeffries said. “They know they’re going to get hit. There will be times that they are going to be knocked down and/or sacked, but when they’re in the pocket, they don’t get jittery. They stay calm and they’re focused on executing the play, and what we’ve got to do in this moment is stay calm, execute the play, and at the end, victory will be achieved.”
Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas went further. “I don’t care if Daffy Duck is on the ticket as the Democratic nominee. I’m voting for whoever, because at the end of the day, the stakes are too high,” she said during a different EssenceFest forum on politics, taking direct aim at those calling on Biden to quit. “We are in an existential crisis, and right now the divisiveness is killing, because the one thing that we should be united about is about democracy and opportunity.”
So don’t be surprised if Biden ignores the editorial boards and focuses on the political foot soldiers who carried him across the finish line four years ago. The president already appears to be bouncing back from his disastrous debate performance: Polls taken after the debate show him in a statistical tie with Donald Trump at the national level and in the all-important swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. And this week’s Republican National Convention will give Dems a new opportunity to shift the attention away from Biden and on to Trump and the Republicans.
I asked Clarke if the fight over Biden’s future — the repeated calls to mount a strong campaign against Trump — might end up being healthy for the Democratic Party. “Whether it’s healthy or not, we’re having the conversation,” she told me. “And I hope that as we build a consensus, it strengthens us as a party.”
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