Sunday, June 30, 2024
Opinion | This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault - The New York Times
This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault
What Is the Democratic Party For?
Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they?"On Thursday night, after the first presidential debate, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner interviewed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down,” she said. “There is a panic that has set in.”
Newsom’s reply was dismissive. “We gotta have the back of this president,” he said. “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”
Perhaps a party that wants to win? Or a party that wants to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to the job? Maybe the better question is: What kind of party would do nothing right now?
In February, I argued that President Biden should step aside in the 2024 election and Democrats should do what political parties did in presidential elections until the 1970s: choose a ticket at their convention. In public, the backlash I got from top Democrats was fierce. I was a bed-wetter living in an Aaron Sorkin fantasyland.
In private, the feedback was more thoughtful and frightened. No one tried to convince me that Biden was a strong candidate. They argued instead that he couldn’t be persuaded to step aside, that even if he could, Vice President Kamala Harris would lose the election and that if a convention didn’t choose Harris, passing her over would fracture the party. They argued not that Biden was strong but that the Democratic Party was weak.
I think Democrats should give themselves a little bit more credit. Biden’s presidency is proof of the Democratic Party’s ability to act strategically. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 2020 because he set the hearts of party activists aflame. Support for him always lacked the passion of support for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or even Andrew Yang. Biden won because the party made a cold decision to unite around the candidate it thought was best suited to beating Donald Trump. Biden won because Democrats did what they had to do, not what they wanted to do.
And it wasn’t just Biden. While the Republican Party collapsed into its MAGA era, repeatedly choosing wannabe Trumps who lost winnable elections, Democrats kept choosing candidates who could win tough races in challenging states: Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs in Arizona, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Since 2018, Democrats have been on a winning streak because they have acted strategically while Republicans have acted impulsively. But the same Democrats had no confidence that they could rise to the moment if Biden stepped aside.
I sometimes asked the Democrats I was talking to what they thought would happen if, in a terrible turn of events, Biden received health news that forced him to end his campaign. Would the Democratic Party collapse into a fetal position and accept Trump’s ascension? Of course not, they said. Then Democrats would have no choice but to build a ticket at the convention. I always found that answer revealing.
There is no lack of talent or capacity in the Democratic Party. But there is a lack of coherence and confidence. What is the party for? Newsom’s comments on Thursday implied that the party’s function was to support Biden. “We gotta have the back of this president.” Newsom said that the criticism of Biden was not unfounded, just “unhelpful.” A more astonishing statement came from Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. “I think we could learn something from Republicans,” he told Fox News. “Republicans will not abandon Donald Trump through indictments, through whatever it may be.”
Do Democrats really want to follow the model of the Trump-era Republican Party? Republicans lost in 2018 and 2020 and badly underperformed in 2022. In March, Lara Trump was elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She is, from the traditional party perspective, completely unqualified for the job.
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But if you view the committee as a vehicle for the ambitions and whims of Donald Trump, her father-in-law, then she is wholly qualified. She is loyal to nothing and no one in the party except Donald Trump, and she is clear on the role the committee should play. She said, “Every single penny will go to the No. 1, and the only job of the R.N.C. — that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.”
This is a corruption of the concept of a political party. In “The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics,” Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman tell the history of how the strong parties of yesterday have become the hollowed-out vehicles for presidential ambition we see today. The ethos of the early American political parties was that they were a bulwark against politics becoming about one person. “The idea,” Rosenfeld told me, was “that parties subsume individual ambition, that you commit to the party and to the cause, never to the man.”
Parties lived up to this imperfectly, but at key moments, they did live up to it. Famously, it was a delegation of Republican members of Congress who persuaded President Richard Nixon to resign. There was more to the Republican Party than Nixon’s ambitions. There is not more to the Republican Party today than Trump’s ambitions. I would have told you that the Democratic Party was different, that it was not just a vehicle for Biden’s ambitions. Now I’m not so sure.
The best case against replacing Biden is that doing so at this late hour would be riskier than keeping him. But that is a choice the Democratic Party made.
It was a choice to support Biden in running for re-election, despite poll after poll showing supermajorities of the American people thought he was too old to serve a second term.
It was a choice, if an understandable one, for zero major Democrats to run against him in the primaries, even as polls showed majorities of Democratic voters didn’t want Biden to run again.
It was a choice, if top Democrats and the White House believed Harris too weak to run or govern in Biden’s place, to do nothing about it.
Democrats have spent all this time choosing to do nothing to solve the most obvious problems they faced in 2024, and now the argument is that there is nothing they can do; it’s too late. Now to even admit these problems is “unhelpful.”
Even if top Democrats believe Biden should be replaced, they face a collective action problem. Imagine you’re Newsom. You want to run in 2028. If Biden drops out, you want to be considered in 2024. Is the best strategy for you to try to push Biden out of the race publicly? Or is it to be the most loyal of loyal soldiers so that if Biden leaves or loses, you have a strong bond with his donors, his team and his supporters? And who wants to be the member of Biden’s inner circle who goes to him and says: You’re not up to this anymore. What happens to your role in the White House the day after? It doesn’t serve any individual Democrat’s interest to oppose Biden.
The argument Democrats have made is that Biden has lost a step on the campaign trail but his capacity to govern is unaffected, that the problem is superficial. This is Biden’s line. “I know I’m not a young man,” he said on Friday. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
Biden’s speech calmed some Democratic nerves. He was louder, clearer, feistier. Closer to the Biden of the State of the Union than the Biden of the debate. Democrats asked: Where was this guy? Come on. It is easier to read off a teleprompter than to manage the chaotic, unexpected demands of a debate. You cannot say that the Biden of the teleprompter is a true reflection of the man but that the Biden of this debate answer is not:
For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America — I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised 500 million dollars — billion dollars, I should say — in a 10-year period. We’d be able to wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do — child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single, solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the — with, with, with the Covid. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with — look, if — we finally beat Medicare.
You don’t have to believe Biden is senile to believe he is diminished by age, as we all will be. I worry about the fact that his worst moments come when he is unscripted, like in the debate, or when he stopped to answer questions after his news conference rebutting the special counsel’s report and mixed up Mexico and Egypt. I worry that people around Biden tell me they were unsurprised by his performance, that they have seen him like that many times. This is not the president I want in a pressured, high-stakes dialogue with Benjamin Netanyahu or Xi Jinping.
Biden’s campaign could show us these are flukes, that the president is fast and convincing on his feet. There is no end of adversarial podcasts and TV shows and interviews they could have him do. In polls, he is losing badly among voters who get their news from social media and YouTube. Why not sit for a long interview with Lex Fridman or Joe Rogan or Charlamagne tha God? Why didn’t Biden do the Super Bowl interview? Biden sits for fewer interviews than any other recent president. He gives fewer news conferences than any other recent president. The idea that this is all just coincidence, that none of it reflects capacity, isn’t plausible. Not anymore.
I have heard some Democrats point to Fetterman, who suffered a debilitating stroke during his Senate campaign, as a kind of grim model. He also turned in a bad debate performance, but he won his seat anyway. But he was recovering from a stroke. It was reasonable to expect his capacities to return, as indeed they have. Biden will not age in reverse.
What do political parties do? One thing they do — perhaps the most important thing they do — is nominate candidates. We have a two-party system. Voters will have two viable options in November. The Democratic Party is responsible for one of those options. It needs to make that choice responsibly. What is its job if not that?
But rather than act as a check on Biden’s decisions and ambitions, the party has become an enabler of them. An enforcer of them. It is giving the American people an option they do not want and then threatening them with the end of democracy if they do not take it. Democrats like to say that democracy is on the ballot. But it isn’t. Biden is on the ballot. There are plenty of voters who might want to vote for democracy but do not want to vote for Biden. That’s why we see Democratic Senate candidates running well ahead of him in key states.
Biden likes to say: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.” And yes, Biden is preferable to Trump, one of the most dangerous men to ever occupy the White House. But the alternatives to Biden, right now, are Harris and Whitmer and Newsom and Warnock and Shapiro and Jared Polis and Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and Gina Raimondo and Chris Murphy and on and on. How does Biden compare with them, really?
Biden says not to look at the man; look at the record. Look at the unemployment rate, the Inflation Reduction Act. He has been a good president. But he did not write the Inflation Reduction Act by hand with a fountain pen. It and every other bill passed under his tenure was written and passed by members of Congress. Those votes were organized by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries. Biden’s White House staff — his policy advisers and his foreign policy team — they’re Democrats. The cabinet members carrying out those bills are Democrats, and some of them are potential presidential candidates. The president is important, but he is not alone. He is part of a party.
I’m not going to end this by pretending that there is some easy path forward for Democrats. No path now is without risk. An open convention would be a risk. Nominating Harris would be a risk. To run an 81-year-old with a 38 percent approval rating who just got trounced in the first debate would be a risk. Biden was headed for a loss before the debate, and he is likelier to lose after it. To the extent his team has articulated a theory of what was supposed to turn the race around, this was the theory: the unusually early debate, in which the American people would see Biden and Trump on the stage and be reminded of why they backed Biden in 2020. That theory failed. Biden couldn’t pull it off.
Politically, I am more optimistic about a convention than some. It carries risk but also possibility — the possibility of a ticket that re-energizes the Democratic Party, that excites voters who currently feel they have no good choices. But it could go badly, too, just as Biden’s campaign is going badly now. And so what tips me is not really the politics. It’s that I don’t actually believe Biden should be president for another four years. I don’t believe he would be better than the alternatives.
I realize there is no magic mechanism, no unitary actor called the party that can persuade him to step aside. But there are many people in the party with influence over him. There is the support he senses he has from the rest of the party. The Democratic Party may not end up with another choice — it may truly be too late — but it should be trying to make one possible. Because there is not a plausible way for Democrats to convince voters that the man they saw on Thursday’s stage should be president three or four years from now.
So to go back to Newsom’s question: What kind of party would be trying to make a change after Thursday night? A party that was doing its job.
Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox; the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. He is on Threads."
Rebecca Noble/Reuters
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Damon Winter/The New York Times
48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy - The New York Times
48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy
"With countless calls and a rush of campaign events, the president’s team began a damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, not long after President Biden had walked off the stage from a disastrous debate, his campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, acknowledged in a series of private calls with prominent supporters that the night had gone poorly but urged them not to overreact.
Later on Friday, top White House aides worked the phones, with Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, calling the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to check in, according to a person familiar with the call. And by the afternoon, the Biden campaign had transformed its weekly all-staff call into a virtual pep talk to dispel any doubts creeping into the campaign offices in Wilmington, Del., and beyond.
“Nothing fundamentally changed about this election last night,” said Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, according to a recording of the all-staff meeting. “We’re going to get punched. We’re going to punch back. We’re going to get up when we get punched.”
The 48 hours after the debate were a frenzied campaign within a campaign to save Mr. Biden’s suddenly teetering candidacy, a multiday damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors to stand by the president, the party’s presumptive nominee.
After a frenetic run of seven campaign events across four states since the debate, Mr. Biden himself is taking a pause for a preplanned family gathering at Camp David. He arrived late on Saturday and will be joined by his wife, Jill Biden, the first lady, as well as the Biden children and grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the scheduling.
The gathering, for a family photo shoot, was scheduled in the spring, according to those people. But the timing and circumstances of Mr. Biden being surrounded by the very family members who have been crucial in his past decisions to run for the presidency — or to sit out a race — have heightened the stakes and scrutiny surrounding the Camp David retreat.
For now, the divide between the party’s most active supporters and its voters, who for more than a year have voiced concerns about the 81-year-old president’s fitness for another term, remains as large as ever. Some Democrats are bracing for a drop in polling after his shaky debate performance that could, they say, reignite calls to replace Mr. Biden.
The all-hands efforts, from Wilmington to Washington, showed the depths of the damage Mr. Biden did to his re-election campaign in a mere 90 minutes. His campaign has been criticized as insular and insistent, so the burst of activity signaled that the debate fallout had turned into a real crisis that spun those in his orbit into a frantic battle mode.
Former President Barack Obama came off the sidelines to offer words of encouragement. Mr. Biden made a mea culpa of sorts on the stump in North Carolina at a proof-of-life rally. And prominent surrogates, including those on many wish lists of replacements, made the case for Mr. Biden on cable news. Some of the most intense advocacy unfolded behind closed doors, at private fund-raisers and in a flurry of late-night and early-morning conversations.
By Saturday, their efforts appeared to have successfully slowed the tide of prominent Democrats calling for Mr. Biden to step aside. The president, for his part, grabbed microphones at campaign events, telling supporters and deep-pocketed donors that he knew he had flubbed the debate. And he repeatedly tried to flip the focus back onto Donald J. Trump’s performance.
“I didn’t have a great night,” Mr. Biden told a group of donors in East Hampton on Saturday. “But neither did he.”
Selling a ‘comeback kid’
Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who hosted a private fund-raising dinner for the president at his home on Saturday evening, was among those receiving a call from a senior White House official.
“It was acknowledging that they had a tough night and also acknowledging that we’ve got to remember that this has been a heck of a run the past four years, and we’ve got to keep it going,” he said in an interview, adding, “They have to hit the gas pedal hard.”
At his event, which raised $3.7 million for the campaign, Mr. Murphy introduced the president as “America’s comeback kid.”
As some Democrats dreamed up ways to draft another candidate on private text chains and in quiet conversations, top Biden officials told nearly everyone that there was no viable alternative and Democrats needed to stay focused on the threat posed by Mr. Trump.
Among those making the case were Mr. Biden’s top White House advisers — Mr. Zients, Bruce Reed, Anita Dunn and Steve Ricchetti — who dialed up a list of legislative leaders, top donors and others, according to multiple people familiar with the calls. Top campaign aides said Mr. Biden would need to prove that he could be vigorous enough for the rigors of campaigning. But they reassured their allies that they believed he would be.
At a fund-raiser for House Democrats with Mr. Obama on Friday evening in New York, the overwhelming topics of discussion were Mr. Biden’s failure on the debate stage and how the party should respond. Along with Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, Mr. Obama told donors the debate had been a tough night, but he emphasized the urgent task of defeating Mr. Trump, two attendees said.
Some attendees blamed Mr. Biden’s aides for the debacle, arguing they should have never agreed to the format or to such a late start time. Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York said many donors urged the elected officials in attendance to pressure Mr. Biden to end his run for re-election. Mr. Meeks said he counseled donors to calm down.
“I agree that it was a terrible, terrible night,” he said, suggesting that some of that was because Mr. Biden tried to cram too much information into his answers.
“Donors are very concerned,” Mr. Meeks said. “I had a number of them come and said that they were panicked, to be quite honest with you, that we had to do something, we had to do something now. And others who came up to me and said it would be a mess to do something now.”
As Mr. Obama was trying to reassure donors, they were buzzing among themselves about an editorial posted online around the time of the event by The New York Times editorial board calling for Mr. Biden to step aside, according to two attendees. It followed other such calls from media figures Mr. Biden follows, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and the Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
For months, Democrats have, mostly quietly, worried about Mr. Biden’s capacity for campaigning at his current age and governing until age 86 if he wins a second term. A full 45 percent of Democrats did not want him to be the nominee in the days before the debate, according to the latest poll by The Times and Siena College, worries that were most likely only deepened by his performance.
Democratic officials were awaiting what the first wave of post-debate polls would show. For now, there seemed to be a sense among top Democrats that there was little they can do.
One of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships, said the idea that a younger candidate could replace Mr. Biden and still beat Mr. Trump in November was akin to a “D.C. parlor fantasy.” The adviser compared that hope to the speculation that Nikki Haley or other Republicans could have knocked Mr. Trump off the G.O.P. ticket.
Several advisers said a second debate, scheduled for September, should still happen. They said the president should focus on asserting himself against Mr. Trump rather than trying to explain the full Biden agenda.
The first 24 hours
The effort to stop Democrats from fleeing the campaign started before Mr. Biden had even finished his performance on the debate stage on Thursday night. Campaign war rooms established in Wilmington and Atlanta began pushing messages to reporters and surrogates, including that Mr. Biden had no intention of leaving the race.
The next morning, Ms. O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, marched through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, flanked by Mr. Fulks and the campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, to debrief some of the campaign’s most loyal donors.
Later in North Carolina, Mr. Biden closed a rally with an acknowledgment of his age and limitations, transforming a scheduled rally in Raleigh into a performance that could be clipped and blasted across social media.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to,” Mr. Biden said at the rally. But, he added, “I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job.”
At 2:36 p.m. Friday, the Biden team got one of its most important boosts: A supportive message from Mr. Obama. “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Mr. Obama wrote on social media.
“That statement was huge,” said Representative Ro Khanna of California, a member of Mr. Biden’s national advisory board.
At the all-staff meeting on Friday afternoon, top campaign officials — Ms. O’Malley Dillon, Ms. Chavez Rodriguez, Mr. Fulks and Rob Flaherty, another deputy campaign manager — told the staff that they understood they were facing a deluge of concern and criticism from friends, family and fellow supporters.
“We’re not asking you guys to pull the wool over your eyes about what you saw,” said Mr. Fulks, according to the recording.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Biden aides called after the debate and emphasized the stakes of this election. She joined the president at an annual LGBTQ+ gala on Friday night in New York City.
“People started to kind of swirl a little bit but at the end of the day we’re going to be looking at two choices,” she said. “Folks are coming back to a very pragmatic space and understanding what has to happen this election cycle.”
‘I didn’t have a great night’
The next afternoon, at a Saturday webinar organized to reassure Democratic National Committee members, the party’s national chairman, Jaime Harrison, spoke of the party’s field operation and the $27 million the Biden campaign had raised since the debate. He did not take questions, according to multiple participants, who said the committee’s views on Mr. Biden’s future remained mixed.
Throughout the weekend, the Biden operation was eager to present a picture of a unified party — maybe too eager.
On Saturday afternoon, the Biden team sent out a fund-raising solicitation from James Carville, the Democratic strategist who has repeatedly argued that Mr. Biden shouldn’t be the party’s nominee.
“What really just set me into orbit was the day after his excuse for not doing well is that he’s old. Well, that’s the whole point,” Mr. Carville said in an interview, adding an expletive. “It is safe to say there is a pushback, rally-around-the-flag moment here. But we’ll see.”
As Mr. Biden swung through the Hamptons to gobble up cash at the home of the billionaire hedge-fund manager Barry Rosenstein, he addressed his shortfalls onstage. “I understand the concern about the debate — I get it,” he said. “I didn’t have a great night.” On his way there, his motorcade passed a group of people holding signs that read, “Please drop out for U.S.” and “We love you but it’s time.”
By Saturday evening, Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote a memo accusing “the beltway class” of counting out Mr. Biden prematurely. “If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,” she wrote.
She made no mention of the more than 50 million Americans who watched Mr. Biden’s sputtering performance in real time.
Kate Kelly, Katie Glueck and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent. For much of the past decade, she has focused on features about the presidency, the first family, and life in Washington, in addition to covering a range of domestic and foreign policy issues. She is the author of a book on first ladies. More about Katie Rogers"
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Kamala Harris was the unexpected winner of Thursday’s presidential debate
Kamala Harris was the unexpected winner of Thursday’s presidential debate
“She was very clear about the stark contrast Americans need to see between Biden and Trump.
And on that stage, Trump ran wild, delivering a mad hatter’s night full of bluster, misinformation and outright lies. Biden just seemed lost, his voice faint and his movements stiff. The debate seemed to go so badly for Biden that moments after the debate ended, CNN’s John King was reporting that there were discussions among distraught top democratic insiders, donors and strategists about whether Biden should stay in the race.
And then there was Vice President Kamala Harris, the silver lining on a somber night for Democrats.
Harris was a bright light for those who fear for American democracy should Trump get reelected. Harris’s post-debate interview with Anderson Cooper was simply presidential. She was crisp. Strong. Forceful. Honest. And she was very clear about the stark contrast Americans need to see between Biden and Trump. Watching her, I found myself screaming “yes!”
She made the case we had all hoped Biden would make in the 90-minute debate: Trump is a threat to the very fabric of our democracy and to our most basic individual liberties and freedoms. And she made it well.
The problem for most, though, is that Biden did not make that case.
Consider that the debate was in Atlanta. Right where Trump has been indicted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis for allegedly trying to shake downGeorgia Gov. Brian P. Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, to “find” more votes after Trump lost the 2020 election in Georgia by just slightly more than 11,000 votes.
In Atlanta, of all places, Biden should have pointed out that the other man on the stage was under investigation in that very place for trying to steal the 2020 election.
Biden just could not pivot to land those slam dunks on Trump.
But Harris did make the necessary layups. She might have just become the biggest asset for the rest of the campaign. She is smart, savvy and laser-focused on women’s reproductive rights and protecting Americans’ freedoms.
The campaign has been sending her to talk to Black audiences — she’s been in Georgia enough recently that she might have to change her official residency. But she’s been hidden from wider audiences and seen as a liability by the Washington punditry class. That’s a mistake. Put her front and center.
The downside of that, of course, is that Harris now also becomes a target. She’s already been the target of gross racist attacks, and we should expect that to get only worse. But we should not let the worst impulses of a minority of Americans overshadow the simple fact that Harris is an asset to the Biden campaign — and to the nation.
Harris is up to the challenge. She is young (in this race, anyway), and she is experienced on the world stage. She is ready to lead Democrats forward through the 21st century — and, if necessary, to serve as the nation’s first female commander in chief.
After Thursday’s debate, the one things that is clear is that should Biden decide it is time for him to retire and pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders, Kamala Harris is ready and able.
Sophia A. Nelson is a CNN contributor and the author of “Black Woman Redefined : Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama” and “E Pluribus One : Reclaiming our Founders’ Vision for a United America.”`
Trump’s debate references to ‘Black jobs’ and ‘Hispanic jobs’ stir Democratic anger
Trump’s debate references to ‘Black jobs’ and ‘Hispanic jobs’ stir Democratic anger
“The phrase “Black jobs” was widely condemned by Democrats and Black leaders as vague and insulting.
Trump’s allies pushed back on the critiques as missing the president’s broader message.
“He meant the jobs of Black people. And we’ve been using that term for a while,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation. “It’s any job. Instead of Black people having unlimited accessibility to all types of jobs, illegal immigrants are taking their jobs from them.”
Much economic research shows that immigration has helped to increase employment, with a 2024 paper by the economists Alessandro Caiumi and Giovanni Peri finding that immigration between 2000 and 2019 had a positive effect on the wages of less educated workers born in the United States. Still, separate research have suggested that greater immigration may have hurt the wages of less educated Black men, though it was one of several factors.
Asked to clarify what Trump meant in describing a “Black job” during an interview with NBC News, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is Black and is under consideration to be Trump’s vice presidential nominee, sidestepped the question, instead discussing homeless veterans.
Some Black adults do think there’s a possibility that immigration will affect employment opportunities for workers who are already here. About 4 in 10 Black adults say it’s a “major risk” that the number of jobs available to American workers will be reduced when immigrants come to the U.S. — whether they arrive legally or illegally — according to an AP-NORC poll from March. But the poll also found that about 3 in 10 Black adults think it’s a major benefit that immigrants will take jobs that Americans don’t want.
In some communities like Chicago, an increased number of migrants has generated greater economic anxiety and concern that government resources are not allocated fairly. Yet Black and Hispanic Americans are on average more supportive of immigration than other demographics, and in cities like Chicago, Denver and New York, racial justice groups have been at the forefront of mitigating potential strife between communities of color and undocumented people on issues like jobs.
For some Black activists, the comments changed little about the state of the presidential race.
Michael Blake, founder and CEO of the Kairos Democracy Project, said “It’s hard for someone to believe that (Trump) means they’re taking quality jobs.”
“It is the responsibility for us to then tell the story of the benefits of diversity, rather than the fears of it. And the notion that those people are taking from you is a fear-only message as opposed to asking: How do we all win?,” Blake added. “When you embrace all races, we all win. We should not allow fear of the past to supersede the prosperity of the future, because we all can win.”
‘Black Jobs’; Black Voters in metro Atlanta react to Trump comment, Biden performance – WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta
‘Black Jobs’; Black Voters in metro Atlanta react to Trump comment, Biden performance
ATLANTA — Black voters in Metro Atlanta are now reacting to Thursday’s presidential debate.
Some told Channel 2′s Audrey Washington they were offended when former President Donald Trump coined the term, “Black Jobs.”
“The millions of people that he has allowed to come in through the border. They are taking Black jobs now,” said Trump after the debate moderator asked President Joe Biden about Black employment.
The phrase, “Black Jobs” quickly trended on social media.
Many Black voters believed Trump was referring to low-income jobs when he said, “Black Jobs.”
“Very offensive to me, but Trump has shown us who he is, time and time again,” Georgia voter, Donnita Bellamy told Channel 2 Action News.
“I would like clarification on what that means because I have a Black job. I am a Black lawyer,” NAACP President, Gerald Griggs said.
But Biden’s debate performance was also a big topic.
Some called it concerning.
“Half-truths from one candidate and we heard another candidate stumble through and have difficulty answering questions,” said Griggs.
Bellamy said despite the debate her support will remain with Biden.
“I am all about substance. I am not about chaos and nonsense,” Bellamy explained.
“This is a job interview. No one is entitled to the position,” said Griggs.
Democratic political strategist, Tharon Johnson also weighed in.
“There’s a long campaign left, and we have 5 months to go in this election and anything can happen,” Johnson told Channel 2′s Audrey Washington on Friday."
Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside? | Democrats | The Guardian
Republicans use cannabis smell complaints as ‘excuse’ to oppose legalization, advocates say
"Norml argues lawmakers exaggerate scent complaints to support policies banning public use of marijuana
Some Republican lawmakers, including Florida governor Ron DeSantis, say that the now-public consumption of marijuana is a nuisance to people who don’t like the smell and a quality-of-life issue.
Meanwhile, advocates of marijuana legalization argue that lawmakers are exaggerating the scale of the problem and using the smell issue as a smoke screen for their actual gripe: cannabis should not be legal.
Earlier this month, Mike, a 52-year-old maintenance worker, sat on a bench at Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn, smoking a blunt.
“I’ve been doing it for so long, I don’t even smoke to get high,” said Mike, a Brooklyn native who has smoked since he was about 11 years old and declined to give his last name.
Perhaps only one thing about Mike’s marijuana consumption has changed in recent years: In 2021, New York approved adult use of cannabis, which has meant that, like in other states where it’s legal, he and others now smoke the drug openly.
Stroll down a sidewalk in many cities, and you just might catch a whiff of Acapulco Gold. (Or sometimes, on highways and in more rural areas, it really is just a skunk.)
“I enjoy being able to sit down and smoke outside, with the police walking by not saying anything. I don’t want to be someplace where there shouldn’t be any weed smoking, but you’re smoking it just because you can,” Mike said.
Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (Norml), says that the lawmakers “making the most noise” about people like Mike “are people who oppose changing marijuana policies to begin with, and they are just looking for a convenient excuse to support that position”.
In recent years, twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational use of cannabis, and 14 others have approved it for medical use, according to the Pew Research Center.
Among the states that have legalized recreational use, New York is the only one that does not punish public usage, according to Norml.
“New York happens to be the media capital world, so this is a story that you hear about nationwide. Even though this is largely not even just a New York phenomenon, this is a New York City phenomenon,” Armentano said.
While people in other cities and states have mentioned – and in some cases, complained – about the marijuana smell, much of the attention appears to be focused on New York. A brief Google News search of “public”, “cannabis” and “smell”, yields a majority of stories concerning the Big Apple.
For New Yorkers, the smell may be the least of their problems when it comes to cannabis: implementation of its adult-use program has been widely hailed as “botched” and the governor herself even declared it a “disaster”.
Michael Novakhov, a Republican state assemblyman who represents parts of Brooklyn, said he has nothing against people consuming marijuana but has heard from constituents who don’t want their children exposed to it. Last year, he proposed legislation that would have prohibited the public use of cannabis unless approved by the local government. That and the state senate version did not make it out of committee.
Notably, many apartments in New York do not allow smoking or have balconies or patios. Novakhov said he would like to see people establish cannabis lounges like in other states.
The state has not issued any on-site consumption licenses because officials have not established regulations for such businesses, and they do not have a date by which they expect to do so, according to the Office of Cannabis Management.
“We have a great example in how people consume alcohol, which is bars, and I think [cannabis] should be in certain bars and places where people can buy and consume,” Novakhov said.
People can, of course, also consume alcohol at home, whereas that is more difficult with cannabis. Novakhov would like to see people who would illegally use cannabis in public fined, not arrested.
Norml also generally supports public cannabis consumption as “being a civil violation, very similar to the way alcohol is treated”, Armentano said.
In Florida, DeSantis has said he opposes a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana because of the smell and has claimed people would be “able to bring 20 joints to an elementary school”.
Armentano argues that since Florida already allows medical marijuana, little would change as far as public consumption.
He doesn’t think “you will see people smoking marijuana everywhere. If that was the case, that would be [happening] now in Florida.”
“Legalization didn’t create marijuana, and it certainly didn’t create the public use of marijuana,” he continued.
Still, Mike, the lifelong cannabis consumer, said he has always avoided smoking in front of kids because he knows he “was a guy who they were influenced by”.
Now, he sees people rolling joints and smoking on subways and near playgrounds.
“I like smoking weed,” he said, “but I’m turned off by the way some people are doing it”.