After last Thursday's disastrous debate performance for President Joe Biden, Democrats are scrambling to figure out what to do about keeping the president as the nominee or replacing him with Vice President Kamala Harris, or perhaps someone else entirely. As unpopular as Harris may be, it's crucial to point out that she was chosen because she is a black woman. Democrats cannot afford to get rid of her, especially since it would be such a bad look.
Sure enough, Levon Satamian at our sister site of RedState highlighted how Areva Martin, a delegate for Harris, appeared on Stephen A. Smith's podcast to discuss the possibility of Harris being replaced as the candidate waiting in the wings should Biden not be the nominee.
"You've got to build consensus, and there is not consensus right now. You pick a white man over Kamala Harris -- black women, I can tell you this: We're gonna walk away, we're gonna blow the party up," Martin told Smith.
It's worth reminding that Biden is already hemorrhaging support with black voters and others in his 2020 coalition, specifically black men. We've been hearing about such a warning for months now, even before the debate, though it continues to be a pronounced problem.
As Satamian also highlighted about Martin:
Martin said she is for Biden in 2024 and will vote for him, to nobody's surprise, but she expects to see Harris as Biden's replacement if needed.
She continued, saying:
Nobody's told me who it [Ideal Democrat candidate] should be. And then tell me how you're gonna get the four thousand delegates, which I am one of them. I'm a delegate coming from California.
The Washington Examiner also highlighted Martin's remarks during the podcast, and put out a piece on how "Democrats’ top five Biden replacement roadblocks," including "The Kamala Harris problem."
Delegate declares Black women will "blow up" Democrat Party if Biden is replaced with a White man instead of Kamala Harris.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) July 2, 2024
READ: https://t.co/uMPBuzslxE#Democrats #JoeBiden #stephenasmith #KamalaHarris #DNC #politics #viral #whitehouse #explorepage #viral #trending pic.twitter.com/dZOkTOi0eF
Multiple polls have now shown Harris losing to former and potentially future President Donald Trump in a hypothetical matchup for November, as do any number of replacements. This includes polling from CNN, where Trump leads Harris with 47 percent to her 45 percent. A Data for Progress poll shows Trump leading against Harris as well, with 48 percent to her 45 percent.
While Harris might not be an attractive option, it's likely very tricky for Democrats beyond sticking with Biden or replacing him with Harris.
NEW — Biden's campaign manager held a tense call with top donors today, outlining what would happen to the campaign infrastructure should Biden step aside. (In short, the war chest go to Kamala Harris.)
— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) July 1, 2024
One participant said some donors even asked for refunds for their…
As the Washington Examiner also laid out:
Biden is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. He won all the primaries, even if he faced only token opposition in most of them, and more than 90% of the pledged delegates. Under the rules, the simplest and arguably only feasible path to removing Biden is for him to withdraw voluntarily.
...
As vice president, Kamala Harris would be the most logical Biden replacement. Most campaign finance experts also believe she could keep the Biden-Harris campaign war chest, which could be transferred to other Democratic entities but not a new campaign.
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A massive mutiny at the Democratic convention could in theory displace Biden. But there would be huge practical problems.
While nearly all the pledged delegates are committed to Biden, there is some question as to how fully bound they are, with DNC rules allowing them to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” But it would require a huge slice of Biden’s nearly 3,900 delegates to defect to deprive him of the nomination and the failure of anyone to clinch a majority on the first ballot for the 700 uncommitted Democratic superdelegates to get to weigh in on the nominee. The superdelegates are party elected officials and leaders whose participation could help Biden, though it would probably require his near-total collapse even to get to that point.
If such a headache, as the one raised by Martin, sounds so familiar, that's because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been theorizing for months how Democrats might end up replacing Biden with former First Lady Michelle Obama at the DNC next month. He first made the prediction last September, when he gave it about a 25-30 percent chance, raised it to 50 percent in February, and immediately following the debate, said there was an 80 percent chance, though we would likely find out even sooner than the DNC.
"If you push Joe Biden aside, Kamala is next in line. The people who say 'we want Gavin Newsom,' you know what, if the Democrat Party pushes an African-American woman aside and replaces her with a white guy, their party implodes, they cannot do it," Cruz explained in last week's episode of "The Verdict," the podcast he co-hosts with Ben Ferguson.
As Cruz had also explained in September, by picking Obama, Democrats can avoid "infuriat[ing]" black women.
While Obama was not included in the Data for Progress poll mentioned above, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday shows that of six potential replacements, including Harris, only Obama leads Trump, 50-39 percent.