Hoo boy.
Is this what healing the soul of the nation looks like? Amid growing calls for Biden to drop out -- calls he's vehemently refused to listen to -- it seems the Biden camp is going to go the 'put y'all back in chains' route and frame this drama along racial and class lines.
NEW: My column this morning on Biden’s last line of defense.
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) July 8, 2024
It should sound familiar - it was the basis of his 2020 nomination.
But it’s more complicated this time https://t.co/aMw2vDzCIn
Sitting on a panel here at Essence Fest, an annual gathering of Black leaders, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) brought the crowd alive here Saturday with a declaration: “It ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate — it’s going to be Biden.”
More significant may have been the private forum Waters used to defend the president a day earlier. On a conference call Friday with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the 85-year-old House veteran urged the lawmakers to stand with Joe Biden, sending an implied but unmistakable message to her younger colleagues not to waver, a participant on the call told me.
As the president fights for his political life this week, and calls grow from party leaders that he withdraw his candidacy, he’s counting on the support of African American Democrats and his union allies as his last line of defense. It’s a playbook Biden has turned to in the past, portraying his detractors as mostly elite white liberals who are out of step with the more diverse and working-class grassroots of the party. That’s what propelled his nomination after a string of setbacks in 2020.
It’s his only path to survival now.
Good luck with that.
For 40 years, black voters have effectively determined the Democratic nominee for president.
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) July 8, 2024
Biden’s bet is this time is no different.
Here’s your mini primary, as it were: can Biden keep the CBC in hand and avoid defections ?
It’s a risky play but the only he has
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Which speaks volumes about what a disaster Biden's term has been.
The subtext here - h/t @maggieNYT - is that if the @VP had developed friendships on the Hill from her arrival in 2017 on she’d probably be the presumptive Dem nominee by now
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) July 8, 2024
She didn't. Ask yourselves why.
There it is https://t.co/usRmjVtLuh
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) July 8, 2024
Let them fight.
This strategy isn't a good one. Biden is losing ground with black voters as well as union voters.
— Jerry Manders (@JerryManderz) July 8, 2024
Heh.
As always with the Democratic Party, much of the Biden stay-or-go drama is coming down to race. Many black Democrats have come to believe that calling for Biden to quit is a white thing. The divide could be the president's best hope. From @jmart: https://t.co/NormtZ4nZs
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 8, 2024
This is what 'turning down the temperature' looks like.
Everything is about race with democrats. Never about the people.
— Let’s be honest here (@Lovea2ndbaseman) July 8, 2024
Never.
It’s actually about a hanging on to power thing.
— John Wisniewski (@WhiskeyMD247365) July 8, 2024
Of course it is.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that Trump’s reelection scored the highest percentage of the black vote for any republican presidential candidate since Reagan: and that was a tie.
— Michael T Lawhorn (@MichaelTLawhorn) July 8, 2024
The problem is black voters -- like every other voter -- are feeling the pinch of Bidenomics.
Gas is more expensive. So is food. So is rent.
What has the Biden administration done to make any of that better for any voter?
A related thought. Let's say you really, truly want Kamala Harris to become President of the United States. What's the most likely way, the best chance for that to happen? It is for Joe Biden to be re-elected. https://t.co/vJdF8dLwW5
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 8, 2024
The flaw with this thinking is: Kamala is wildly unpopular. Among all voters.
She had ZERO delegates from the 2020 primary. ZERO.
And she hasn't gotten more likeable in the last four years.
Wait. Calling for Biden to quit is racist? The only ones calling for Biden to quit the election are Democrats afraid that Trump will obliterate down ballot Democrats when he runs the table come November. https://t.co/KTamGRM4fP
— Steve M (@Steven_Moyer) July 8, 2024
They always play the race card. It's all they've got.
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