The lawmakers, donors and voters who have been the most outspoken about keeping President Biden in the race are driven by a concern that ditching him could also mean bypassing his vice president.
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President Biden’s support among Black lawmakers and voters is not just rooted in concern about Vice President Kamala Harris’s future. They have long been the core of his base.
The phalanx of Black and Hispanic Democrats that has closed ranks around President 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 Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, it has been Black and Hispanic lawmakers, donors and activists who have rallied the most loudly to his defense, insisting that they are, in the words of one of the most senior Black Democrats in Congress, Representative James E. 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 Mr. Biden, some in the party will also seek to skip over Ms. 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,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said during a social media stream on Thursday night. “A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket.”
ImageMs. Harris speaking at a festival in New Orleans earlier this month. Black lawmakers and many activists have said that if Mr. Biden were to step aside, Ms. Harris should take his place at the top of the ticket.
One of the factors prolonging what has been an agonizing period of reckoning among Democrats about Mr. 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.
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