Many Black and Hispanic Democrats still support Biden ... for Kamala Harris

While the Republican Party is rallying around Donald Trump, is the Democratic Party divided along colour lines? Such divisions are emerging over the continued candidacy of President Joe Biden, according to the New York Times.

Biden is reported to be under increasing pressure not to seek re-election, but he still has supporters, many of them Black and Hispanic. They have a stake in the contest, and her name is Kamala Harris. Their allegiance is not so much to Biden as to the Biden-Harris ticket. They want to ensure that if Biden does quit, the Democrats nominate Kamala Harris to run for president.

That is the convention: If something happens to the president, the vice president takes over.

Breaking convention

But one of the topmost Democrats wants to break with that convention.

“In a meeting with fellow California Democrats last week, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi stressed the need for an open process to choose the party’s next nominee if President Joe Biden steps aside, in an effort to avoid the appearance of a Kamala Harris coronation,” reported Politico.

Kamala Harris was a senator from California before she was elected vice president.

But Pelosi and several other California Democrats fretted that voters would be turned off if Kamala Harris was nominated for the presidency without any contest to choose the candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the House of Representatives, however, called the idea of an open convention “crazy”.

Against Biden, against Kamala Harris

She said other Democrats “underestimate” Biden’s continued political strength, particularly with labour unions and older Americans. She further said those who don’t want Biden are also against Kamala Harris.

“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave that they will support Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she said.

“A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,” she added.

Her remarks brought the divisions to the fore.

The donors, media pundits and Democrats who want Biden out are largely white.

Kamala Harris’ mother, on the other hand, was a Tamil Indian while her father is a Jamaican American.

Ocasio-Cortez herself is a Latina who represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, which has large Latino, Chinese, and South Asian populations.

James Clyburn, the veteran Black Congressman from South Carolina, who helped Biden become president, has defended the Biden-Harris ticket and said holding an open convention would not be good fo the party.

Biden’s Black supporters

Black Democrats are among Biden’s strongest supporters. Half of the Black Democrats say he should run for re-election while only a third of the white and Hispanic Democrats say the same, according to an AP-Norc survey conducted between July 11 and 15.

Blacks also helped him become president. He won 87% of the African American vote, 67% of the Hispanic vote and 61% of the Asian vote, but only 41% of the white vote in the 2020 election when he defeated the incumbent, Trump.

But he does not have the support of all the Black and Hispanic members of Congress. At least half a dozen have urged him to step aside or expressed doubts about his ability to win the election.

Nevertheless, Democrats should stop trying to oust Biden and push aside Kamala Harris because their voters might resent that, said a commentator on MSNBC.

Supporting Kamala Harris

There are already protests against any moves to bypass Kamala Harris.

“To not choose her is a slap in the face to Black women,” said Melanie Campbell, chairwoman of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund, a group focused on Black voter engagement. “You are saying to Black women that what we represent is not good enough… You take her down, then you lose the Black women’s vote.”

Democrats had been divided along colour lines before. The Southern Democrats were called Dixiecrats and opposed racial integration until the time of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s. Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act in 1964 integrating schools and other public facilities. Subsequently, the once Democratic southern states turned Republican.