'Prefer a white person': Harris aides call out 'offensive' post-debate talk of snubbing her

29 June 2024

With President Joe Biden still reeling from an uninspired showing at Thursday night's debate, talk of potentially asking him to end his 2024 campaign has persisted. That talk includes not only replacing Biden at the top of the ticket, but also passing over Vice President Kamala Harris to instead nominate another Democrat. And multiple Harris aides are crying foul.

The New York Times editorial board was the latest to join the chorus of voices urging Biden to end his reelection bid on Friday, with the paper making the case that doing so would be good for the country given the danger former President Donald Trump presents to democracy and global stability. The editorial argued that there are unnamed Democrats "better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency," and that the Democratic Party should "create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place."

However, according to a Saturday report in Politico, aides to the first Black and Asian American female vice president in U.S. history have noticed that chatter of potentially replacing Biden skips over Harris' name. The unnamed aides cautioned Democrats against snubbing Harris in the event Biden is no longer the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee, given the rift it would cause between the Democratic Party and its core constituency — Black voters.

“The fact that people keep coming back to this is so offensive to so many of us,” one Harris aide described as a "veteran Democrat" told Politico. “They still don’t get that the message you’re saying to people, to this Democratic Party, is, we prefer a white person.”

"If they think they are going to get through South Carolina bashing an effective and qualified Black woman vice president — their instincts are as bad as I thought they were," another aide told the outlet.

One notable example of a potential Harris snub should Democrats move to replace Biden came from New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who suggested on the social media platform X after Thursday night's debate that Democrats should be open to nominating Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (formerly the Democratic governor of Rhode Island).

"I notice that you skipped clean over our BLACK VICE PRESIDENT and all your named folk are WHITE," one X user tweeted in response. "We see y’all."

Actually replacing Biden is unlikely, given that Democrats suffered an historic defeat the last time they replaced a nominee just months before Election Day. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie pointed out in a recent conversation with fellow columnists Michelle Goldberg, Patrick Healy and Bret Stephens, giving into panic and having Biden step aside could yield disastrous results for Democrats in November based on an example from 1972.

That year, Democratic nominee George McGovern replaced running mate Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri) with former U.S. Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver just weeks after Eagleton was nominated at the party's national convention. Eagleton's sudden replacement came after reports emerged of him receiving electroshock treatments for clinical depression. Despite 77% of voters telling TIME magazine at the time that those reports would not impact their vote, McGovern's campaign nonetheless gave in to panic and replaced his running mate, and then lost badly to President Richard Nixon in November, who won 49 states and more than 500 Electoral College votes.

"[W]hy, exactly, should Harris step aside? Why should Harris not be considered the presumptive nominee on account of her service as vice president and her presence on the 2020 ticket?" Bouie wrote. "And should Harris be muscled out, how does this affect a new nominee’s relationship with key parts of the Democratic base, specifically those Black voters for whom Harris’s presence on the ticket was an affirmation of Biden’s political commitment to their communities?"

Click here to read Politico's report in full.

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