Rumors of replacing top Democratic candidate President Joe Biden with several Democratic governors have reportedly riled up people around Vice President Kamala Harris, with one source saying the discussion sends an underlying message that the party wants a “white” candidate.
POLITICO report Dislike within the Harris camp for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) has been at the forefront of media speculation about who might be at the top of the shortlist to replace Biden if he does in fact step down.
The article names other politicians mentioned as possible alternatives to Biden: Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pennsylvania).
Behind the scenes, Harris’ allies have “expressed frustration that her name has not been put in the same group as other aspiring Democrats,” they wrote. Politico Eugene Daniels, Jennifer Haberkorn and Mya Ward. One source called the film “nasty.”
“The fact that people keep coming back to this is very uncomfortable for a lot of us,” one Harris supporter told the outlet. “They still don’t understand that the message you’re sending to the people, to this Democratic Party, is that we prefer white people.”
“If they think they can get away with criticizing a competent, capable black female vice president in South Carolina, their instincts are just as bad as I thought they would be,” the second source added.
Harris, the vice president and running mate, has close ties to Biden unlike other leading Democrats, and following Biden’s crushing defeat, she was thrust into the position of defending him on national television.
Harris appeared on CNN’s post-debate coverage, where host Anderson Cooper asked her whether “the president we saw onstage tonight” was the same as Biden normally is.
She tried to shift the discussion to the administration’s record, but one anonymous Harris aide said: POLITICO That was the plan.
She said:
The Joe Biden that I work with every day is, as I said, a man who has worked tirelessly to get Republicans and Democrats in the Oval Office and to compromise. That’s hard to do these days, but Joe Biden can do it. I see a Joe Biden who has traveled to allies around the world, who has strengthened NATO, who has two new members in NATO. Four years ago, people were saying, “Hey, we’re going to have to do this. We … [does] Is NATO even worth having? The Joe Biden I know will create 800,000 new manufacturing jobs and [is] That’s the Joe Biden I know, who will bring manufacturing back to America, not ship jobs overseas like Donald Trump did.
Newsom, a surrogate for the campaign, also notably defended Biden in the post-debate spin room, claiming that Biden won “substance.”
But Biden doesn’t appear to be planning on stepping down. Breitbart News reported that the Biden family gathered at Camp David over the weekend to assess Biden’s political positions. The New York Times He said the “whole family is united” in Biden continuing the campaign and that there has been no discussion about a possible withdrawal.
The campaign will reportedly be changing its communications strategy, including increasing interviews and media appearances, according to Breitbart News.
