2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races
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- Start date
Pull Up the Roots
Veteran
What is the context?
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
"Vote for the Dems because GOP are such terrible people". Yeah we know.
We've known for 50 years. Now instead of trying to scare the vote from us, how about giving us something to vote for. It doesn't even have to be reparations. Just something tangible. For black people.Precisely why these folks are not to be taken serious 
washingtonpost.com
Can hanging out with Tulsi Gabbard fans help us understand what her deal is?
By Jada Yuan closeJada YuanFeature reporter covering national politicsEmailEmailBioBioFollowFollow
11-14 minutes
There was no alcohol at the debate watch party that the Tulsi Gabbard campaign threw for supporters in a music school here, but that didn’t mean attendees had to forgo the fun of drinking games.
“That’s three for Warren, zero for Tulsi!” said Alen Abramyan, a roofer and Armenian immigrant, counting up the questions the moderators posed to each candidate. He was texting with friends who were at home and taking a shot every time it seemed like Congresswoman Gabbard (D-Hawaii) had been skipped or slighted. “They’re going to be wasted in 10 seconds,” he predicted.
Twenty minutes later, he announced, “They’re wasted!”
For supporters of the congresswoman, who has been rising in polls and who seemed to pop up in more split-screen arguments in the recent Democratic primary debate than anyone else — facing an attack from Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) over her party loyalty, battling with South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg over their military records as the only veterans on the stage — feeling left out and marginalized is their high.
Left out of presidential debates that talk too much about domestic policy and not enough about how the United States has been at war for most of their children’s lifetimes. Left out of a Democratic Party that seems, to them, bent on quashing real dissent and examination of its systematic corruption. Left out of a Republican Party that preaches but rarely practices fiscal conservatism, and, to them, seems to be just as corrupt.
They are members of the armed forces and people from Hawaii now far from home. And, from an informal survey of the crowd, they’re often anti-establishment folks or so-called chaos voters who wanted to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, and when they couldn’t, voted for Donald Trump instead. She appears to be more popular among Republicans than Democrats in Iowa, according to a political scientist’s analysis. She had the support of 10 percent of independents in a Quinnipiac University poll of New Hampshire that was published earlier this month.
Ask Gabbard’s supporters why they’re die-hard for her, and certain things come up: her noninterventionist foreign policy stance and her insistence that the United States get out of the business of policing the world, as well as civil liberties, such as the right not to be spied on by the National Security Agency. Authenticity and integrity also come up. They often cite Gabbard’s 16 years of military service and her two tours of duty in the Middle East; she’s still active in the National Guard.
Over the past month, Gabbard has gone from being a “huh” on the debate stage — as in how does she keep qualifying (she’s made every debate but September’s) — to a genuine thorn in the side of front-runners and the Democratic National Committee. The Trump War Room Twitter account, affiliated with the president’s reelection campaign, tweeted out a remark that Gabbard made during the Atlanta debate last week: “Our Democratic Party, unfortunately, is not the party that is of, by and for the people,” along with a 100 emoji.
Criticizing her own party on national television while vying to represent the Democrats in the 2020 general election is certainly an unorthodox strategy. So is labeling Hillary Clinton, the last nominee, “the queen of warmongers” and the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long,” as Gabbard did in a tweet in October. Although, in fairness, Gabbard only did that after Clinton suggested in an interview that the GOP was “grooming” Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate and that she was “a favorite of the Russians.” (Studies of Kremlin-run propaganda do show that Gabbard is mentioned more often and more positively than other Democratic candidates.)
In a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the Democratic debate, Gabbard was portrayed by Cecily Strong as the night’s “villain.” Strong’s Gabbard says “I smell your fear, and it makes me stronger. I’m wearing the white suit of your fallen hero, Hillary Clinton.”
Indeed, Gabbard is the only person on the stage who seems to have an issue with everyone next to her, the only one telling fellow Democrats that they’re all corrupt and they’re all bad.
Coincidentally, that’s the same reason people like Trump.
“We’ve certainly seen an increase in momentum recently,” said her father, Mike Gabbard, a Hawaii state senator. “Thank you, Hillary.”
Unified across party lines
Setting Gabbard, who is the first practicing Hindu member of Congress, even further apart is the way she has come across in debates as if she were a leader beamed in from an apocalyptic future (or the Divergent series) with her all-white pantsuit, her streak of white hair and her unique manner of delivering answers in an affectless monotone straight into the camera, even when addressing other candidates, as if trying to inject her words straight into the veins of the American people.
The 38-year-old was the most-searched candidate during most debates, regardless of her speaking time.
Gabbard’s Democratic rivals have made barbed references to her frequent appearances on Fox News; her meeting with President-elect Trump in 2016; and her even more criticized meeting with President Bashar al-Assad while on a trip to Syria, and how she refused to call him a war criminal.
She was the last candidate to make the Atlanta debate, barely reaching the requirement of polling above 3 percent in four national polls less than a week before the DNC’s deadline. Her single-digit national polling numbers (with slightly higher single-digit numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire) indicate she has an incredibly long shot to be the nominee.
What’s missing from the analysis, though, is that Gabbard’s outsider status is only making her stronger, according to watch-party attendees who see themselves as part of a growing community of unlikely allies, unified across party lines by how much they love Gabbard and by how much they’re fed up with politics.
At the watch party, the room was fired up the second Gabbard walked in, half an hour after midnight.
“Tulsi! Tulsi! Tulsi!” they chanted.
Gabbard did not hold back when she took the stage. She called out her rivals for perpetuating “the Bush-Clinton-Trump doctrine of intervention and regime-change wars” and for being “stuck in this Washington establishment elite mind-set” that “underestimate the voices of the people in this country across party lines.”
All she heard in the debate, she said, was “more of the same, more smears and lies and misinformation because they’re afraid of the truth.”
“They’re scared of Tulsi!” someone shouted.
But here in this room, she was also softer and more approachable than she has come across in any debate. She praised her supporters for the “incredible, beautiful, unifying coalition” they were building. She didn’t ask for money, but for everyone there to be her messengers.
She sounded almost like a spiritual leader, and a little like Marianne Williamson, the author and presidential candidate who hasn’t been in a debate since July.
Faced with unwarranted criticism, Gabbard said, it was necessary “that we fight back with aloha and with the truth. That we fight back with strength and with love and with light. This is the only way that we defeat this darkness that has cast a shadow over our country, over our brothers and sisters, over our people for so long. Are you in?”
Of course they were.
“Tulsi! Tulsi! Tulsi!”
Who was in that room?
Colin Porter, an ROTC student from Athens, Ga., said he registered as a Democrat specifically to vote for Gabbard and her foreign policy of noninterventionism.
Had she been on a phone call with the new Ukrainian president, he said, he believed Gabbard would withhold aid, too, “because I think probably Gabbard’s position is to reduce military aid to a lot of varied countries, and she’d do it regardless,” he said. “And I agree with that. I don’t think it’s the U.S.’s responsibility.”
He voted for Bill Johnson in 2016.
“I feel betrayed by the Republican Party,” said his father, Chris Porter, a corporate pilot who was also there cheering Gabbard on. He’s an undecided conservative who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but wouldn’t rule it out for 2020.
They’d been joined by Lorenzo, a defense worker who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because he’s under review to join the National Guard. In talking about Gabbard, he mentioned Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex. He wouldn’t be the last to mention Eisenhower.
A young bearded man in a fleece vest approached them with high-fives. He was a law student named James Lyman who had reluctantly voted for Clinton in 2016.
Like many who came out that night, he saw Gabbard’s meeting with Assad as positive. “All she ever did was meet with him. That doesn’t mean she supports him. She also met with the opposition in Syria,” Lyman said. “Talking to people and diplomacy used to be valued. Democrats used to support that.”
'It's a phenomenon'
Gabbard’s fiery anti-establishment stances have earned her support from Joe Rogan, an extremely popular podcaster with libertarian views who likes to rail against politically correct culture and wokeness. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey made the maximum personal donation to her campaign after the first debate.
Gabbard’s support is, according to several polls, overwhelmingly male. They’ve also said that it doesn’t hurt that she’s good-looking and surfs.
“It’s a phenomenon,” says Garland Favorito, a retired systems analyst who says he’s “Tulsi or bust” — meaning he won’t vote Democratic unless Gabbard is the nominee. “She’s [former congressmen] Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich wrapped up in a more attractive package.”
Paul and Kucinich both ran for president and both became conduits for noninterventionist, anti-establishment voices within their own parties. Many of the people at the watch party mentioned that they started supporting Gabbard after she stepped down as DNC vice chair to endorse Sanders’s 2016 run for the party’s nomination.
The watch party was only a three-minute drive from the debate at Tyler Perry Studios, but it felt even more on the fringe than that.
Whereas Gabbard’s reception among her fellow Democrats had been icy, here, the atmosphere was warm and folksy. The food on offer was Costco pizza, lemonade served out of one of those orange coolers that Super Bowl winners dump on their coaches’ heads, and a sloppy tray of overcooked penne with marinara sauce. Two college students from Hawaii who had taken a gap year to become full-time volunteers manned the merchandise table.
Her father had brought along three friends with whom he played in a folk band back in high school in the 1960s. They sang Simon and Garfunkel and a song Mike had written for his daughter: “She’ll do the right thing for you and me / Tulsi in 2020.”
Her uncle Bill Gabbard, who just moved to Atlanta, said there’s no way she’s going to mount a third-party candidacy: “We’ve known her her whole life, and when she says that’s not gonna happen, that’s not gonna happen.”
Joining Tulsi as she rushed to the party from the debate were her husband, Abraham Williams, who was manning a video camera, plus both of his parents. Tulsi’s sister, Vrindavan Gabbard, who famously complained on Twitter about Tulsi’s lack of airtime during the first debate, had since quit her job to work full time on her sister’s campaign.
Vrindavan stood on a chair to get a group photo of Tulsi with whoever was left of the 150 merry outsiders who had lasted until the end of the night. Some stayed until 2 a.m., chatting about Tulsi and how she had made them feel like they finally had a community and someone they could trust and believe in.
At the end of her speech, Tulsi looked around the room and apologized for the terrible cold she’s been fighting off. “I wish I could personally give you a hug,” she said. “You don’t want my germs. Trust me. They’re terrible.”
“Give them to Biden!” someone shouted.
“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t wish this on anyone.”
washingtonpost.com
Can hanging out with Tulsi Gabbard fans help us understand what her deal is?
By Jada Yuan closeJada YuanFeature reporter covering national politicsEmailEmailBioBioFollowFollow
11-14 minutes
There was no alcohol at the debate watch party that the Tulsi Gabbard campaign threw for supporters in a music school here, but that didn’t mean attendees had to forgo the fun of drinking games.
“That’s three for Warren, zero for Tulsi!” said Alen Abramyan, a roofer and Armenian immigrant, counting up the questions the moderators posed to each candidate. He was texting with friends who were at home and taking a shot every time it seemed like Congresswoman Gabbard (D-Hawaii) had been skipped or slighted. “They’re going to be wasted in 10 seconds,” he predicted.
Twenty minutes later, he announced, “They’re wasted!”
For supporters of the congresswoman, who has been rising in polls and who seemed to pop up in more split-screen arguments in the recent Democratic primary debate than anyone else — facing an attack from Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) over her party loyalty, battling with South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg over their military records as the only veterans on the stage — feeling left out and marginalized is their high.
Left out of presidential debates that talk too much about domestic policy and not enough about how the United States has been at war for most of their children’s lifetimes. Left out of a Democratic Party that seems, to them, bent on quashing real dissent and examination of its systematic corruption. Left out of a Republican Party that preaches but rarely practices fiscal conservatism, and, to them, seems to be just as corrupt.
They are members of the armed forces and people from Hawaii now far from home. And, from an informal survey of the crowd, they’re often anti-establishment folks or so-called chaos voters who wanted to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, and when they couldn’t, voted for Donald Trump instead. She appears to be more popular among Republicans than Democrats in Iowa, according to a political scientist’s analysis. She had the support of 10 percent of independents in a Quinnipiac University poll of New Hampshire that was published earlier this month.
Ask Gabbard’s supporters why they’re die-hard for her, and certain things come up: her noninterventionist foreign policy stance and her insistence that the United States get out of the business of policing the world, as well as civil liberties, such as the right not to be spied on by the National Security Agency. Authenticity and integrity also come up. They often cite Gabbard’s 16 years of military service and her two tours of duty in the Middle East; she’s still active in the National Guard.
Over the past month, Gabbard has gone from being a “huh” on the debate stage — as in how does she keep qualifying (she’s made every debate but September’s) — to a genuine thorn in the side of front-runners and the Democratic National Committee. The Trump War Room Twitter account, affiliated with the president’s reelection campaign, tweeted out a remark that Gabbard made during the Atlanta debate last week: “Our Democratic Party, unfortunately, is not the party that is of, by and for the people,” along with a 100 emoji.
Criticizing her own party on national television while vying to represent the Democrats in the 2020 general election is certainly an unorthodox strategy. So is labeling Hillary Clinton, the last nominee, “the queen of warmongers” and the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long,” as Gabbard did in a tweet in October. Although, in fairness, Gabbard only did that after Clinton suggested in an interview that the GOP was “grooming” Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate and that she was “a favorite of the Russians.” (Studies of Kremlin-run propaganda do show that Gabbard is mentioned more often and more positively than other Democratic candidates.)
In a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the Democratic debate, Gabbard was portrayed by Cecily Strong as the night’s “villain.” Strong’s Gabbard says “I smell your fear, and it makes me stronger. I’m wearing the white suit of your fallen hero, Hillary Clinton.”
Indeed, Gabbard is the only person on the stage who seems to have an issue with everyone next to her, the only one telling fellow Democrats that they’re all corrupt and they’re all bad.
Coincidentally, that’s the same reason people like Trump.
“We’ve certainly seen an increase in momentum recently,” said her father, Mike Gabbard, a Hawaii state senator. “Thank you, Hillary.”
Unified across party lines
Setting Gabbard, who is the first practicing Hindu member of Congress, even further apart is the way she has come across in debates as if she were a leader beamed in from an apocalyptic future (or the Divergent series) with her all-white pantsuit, her streak of white hair and her unique manner of delivering answers in an affectless monotone straight into the camera, even when addressing other candidates, as if trying to inject her words straight into the veins of the American people.
The 38-year-old was the most-searched candidate during most debates, regardless of her speaking time.
Gabbard’s Democratic rivals have made barbed references to her frequent appearances on Fox News; her meeting with President-elect Trump in 2016; and her even more criticized meeting with President Bashar al-Assad while on a trip to Syria, and how she refused to call him a war criminal.
She was the last candidate to make the Atlanta debate, barely reaching the requirement of polling above 3 percent in four national polls less than a week before the DNC’s deadline. Her single-digit national polling numbers (with slightly higher single-digit numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire) indicate she has an incredibly long shot to be the nominee.
What’s missing from the analysis, though, is that Gabbard’s outsider status is only making her stronger, according to watch-party attendees who see themselves as part of a growing community of unlikely allies, unified across party lines by how much they love Gabbard and by how much they’re fed up with politics.
At the watch party, the room was fired up the second Gabbard walked in, half an hour after midnight.
“Tulsi! Tulsi! Tulsi!” they chanted.
Gabbard did not hold back when she took the stage. She called out her rivals for perpetuating “the Bush-Clinton-Trump doctrine of intervention and regime-change wars” and for being “stuck in this Washington establishment elite mind-set” that “underestimate the voices of the people in this country across party lines.”
All she heard in the debate, she said, was “more of the same, more smears and lies and misinformation because they’re afraid of the truth.”
“They’re scared of Tulsi!” someone shouted.
But here in this room, she was also softer and more approachable than she has come across in any debate. She praised her supporters for the “incredible, beautiful, unifying coalition” they were building. She didn’t ask for money, but for everyone there to be her messengers.
She sounded almost like a spiritual leader, and a little like Marianne Williamson, the author and presidential candidate who hasn’t been in a debate since July.
Faced with unwarranted criticism, Gabbard said, it was necessary “that we fight back with aloha and with the truth. That we fight back with strength and with love and with light. This is the only way that we defeat this darkness that has cast a shadow over our country, over our brothers and sisters, over our people for so long. Are you in?”
Of course they were.
“Tulsi! Tulsi! Tulsi!”
Who was in that room?
Colin Porter, an ROTC student from Athens, Ga., said he registered as a Democrat specifically to vote for Gabbard and her foreign policy of noninterventionism.
Had she been on a phone call with the new Ukrainian president, he said, he believed Gabbard would withhold aid, too, “because I think probably Gabbard’s position is to reduce military aid to a lot of varied countries, and she’d do it regardless,” he said. “And I agree with that. I don’t think it’s the U.S.’s responsibility.”
He voted for Bill Johnson in 2016.
“I feel betrayed by the Republican Party,” said his father, Chris Porter, a corporate pilot who was also there cheering Gabbard on. He’s an undecided conservative who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but wouldn’t rule it out for 2020.
They’d been joined by Lorenzo, a defense worker who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because he’s under review to join the National Guard. In talking about Gabbard, he mentioned Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex. He wouldn’t be the last to mention Eisenhower.
A young bearded man in a fleece vest approached them with high-fives. He was a law student named James Lyman who had reluctantly voted for Clinton in 2016.
Like many who came out that night, he saw Gabbard’s meeting with Assad as positive. “All she ever did was meet with him. That doesn’t mean she supports him. She also met with the opposition in Syria,” Lyman said. “Talking to people and diplomacy used to be valued. Democrats used to support that.”
'It's a phenomenon'
Gabbard’s fiery anti-establishment stances have earned her support from Joe Rogan, an extremely popular podcaster with libertarian views who likes to rail against politically correct culture and wokeness. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey made the maximum personal donation to her campaign after the first debate.
Gabbard’s support is, according to several polls, overwhelmingly male. They’ve also said that it doesn’t hurt that she’s good-looking and surfs.
“It’s a phenomenon,” says Garland Favorito, a retired systems analyst who says he’s “Tulsi or bust” — meaning he won’t vote Democratic unless Gabbard is the nominee. “She’s [former congressmen] Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich wrapped up in a more attractive package.”
Paul and Kucinich both ran for president and both became conduits for noninterventionist, anti-establishment voices within their own parties. Many of the people at the watch party mentioned that they started supporting Gabbard after she stepped down as DNC vice chair to endorse Sanders’s 2016 run for the party’s nomination.
The watch party was only a three-minute drive from the debate at Tyler Perry Studios, but it felt even more on the fringe than that.
Whereas Gabbard’s reception among her fellow Democrats had been icy, here, the atmosphere was warm and folksy. The food on offer was Costco pizza, lemonade served out of one of those orange coolers that Super Bowl winners dump on their coaches’ heads, and a sloppy tray of overcooked penne with marinara sauce. Two college students from Hawaii who had taken a gap year to become full-time volunteers manned the merchandise table.
Her father had brought along three friends with whom he played in a folk band back in high school in the 1960s. They sang Simon and Garfunkel and a song Mike had written for his daughter: “She’ll do the right thing for you and me / Tulsi in 2020.”
Her uncle Bill Gabbard, who just moved to Atlanta, said there’s no way she’s going to mount a third-party candidacy: “We’ve known her her whole life, and when she says that’s not gonna happen, that’s not gonna happen.”
Joining Tulsi as she rushed to the party from the debate were her husband, Abraham Williams, who was manning a video camera, plus both of his parents. Tulsi’s sister, Vrindavan Gabbard, who famously complained on Twitter about Tulsi’s lack of airtime during the first debate, had since quit her job to work full time on her sister’s campaign.
Vrindavan stood on a chair to get a group photo of Tulsi with whoever was left of the 150 merry outsiders who had lasted until the end of the night. Some stayed until 2 a.m., chatting about Tulsi and how she had made them feel like they finally had a community and someone they could trust and believe in.
At the end of her speech, Tulsi looked around the room and apologized for the terrible cold she’s been fighting off. “I wish I could personally give you a hug,” she said. “You don’t want my germs. Trust me. They’re terrible.”
“Give them to Biden!” someone shouted.
“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t wish this on anyone.”
Last edited:
Biden Boyz
Yes. U can’t collaborate with a campaign tho as a pac.
He’s about to start on the biggest negative ad campaign ever in the history of the us, he’s covering his ass. Running gives him no grey area. He can do whatever he wants to do
Pull Up the Roots
Veteran
Can you articulate "tangibles"?"Vote for the Dems because GOP are such terrible people". Yeah we know.
There are a few candidates doing the bold.
Biden Boyz
lol did u read the article? She’s mad they’re focusing on getting blacks to vote and not Latinos.
she’s mad Biden will deport ppl. Which he should
Illegal immigrants hurt black felons from getting jobs.
fukkin scumbagThe Hill
51 mins ·
Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has pardoned a man convicted in 2001 of sexually abusing his 6-year-old stepdaughter, saying "it appears to me" he was "wrongly convicted and imprisoned."
About this website
THEHILL.COM
Kentucky governor pardons man serving life sentence for sexually abusing 6-year-old
The judge said the accuser's recantation was “no more likely to be true than false.”
Your daily reminder of what we're actually fighting against while you consider not voting for Dem nominee
Kentucky gop politicians are bottom of the barrel.Secure Da Bag
Veteran
I agree. Baby bonds, UBI, Free college, cancellation of student debt, Universal Healthcare. As they have been doing, that's how you get votes.
A better implementation of opportunity zones would be nice.
But the fear tactic of getting the Dem vote has to stop.
he's not going to run third party
No but he's apart of the effort to keep Bernie or Warren from winning a majority in the first round so they can pull the okey doke.
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
I thought they'd use him and Steyer to fukk with the delegate vote at the convention.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
How?
Watching the 5 o clock news and have seen 2 Bloomberg commercials in around 20 minutes time.
nytimes.com
Black Voters to Black Candidates: Representation Is Not Enough
By Astead W. Herndon
11-14 minutes
Joe Biden leads with black voters, and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are making better inroads with younger ones than Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. In interviews, voters rejected the idea that racial representation equated to change.
Senator Kamala Harris has worked to appeal to black voters, describing how her upbringing taught her lessons about black communities that other candidates had to learn about in textbooks. Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times
- Nov. 25, 2019, 5:00 a.m. ET
The 20-year-old Spelman College student had just attended a “Black Women’s Breakfast” featuring Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate and the second black woman elected to the United States Senate. And speaker after speaker had explicitly argued that black women should support Ms. Harris and leap at the opportunity to elevate someone with their lived experience.
But after the event on Thursday, as Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl” played in the background, Ms. Hester made a sheepish admission: Ms. Harris was not her preferred choice. There were policy reasons — Ms. Harris has not rolled out a proposal on student debt cancellation, which is Ms. Hester’s top issue. But there was also something else. Even at the historically black all-women’s college that Ms. Hester attends, supporting Ms. Harris was a particularly uncool thing to do.
“It’s hard, you know. On social media, there’s a different meme about her every day,” Ms. Hester said. “A lot of young people don’t support her.”
“Why aren’t black voters supporting the black presidential candidates?” is an overly simplistic question. Like all voting blocs, black voters have diverse priorities that crisscross the ideological spectrum, creating fault lines across regions, generations and economic class. But in interviews with more than two dozen black voters in Atlanta and across South Carolina, many articulated a particular disenchantment with the idea that racial representation equated to change, and that they should automatically back a candidate who looked like them.
Moderate black voters, particularly older ones whose support has helped former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. maintain his lead atop most primary polls, pointed to the election of President Trump, and said nominating the candidate they saw as most capable of ending his administration was a moral priority above all others.
And some black voters on the left — particularly younger ones — are disappointed by some aspects of former President Barack Obama’s legacy and have embraced the idea that supporting a candidate who is willing to upend unjust systems is more important than choosing one from their own community.
Mr. Biden, who held events in Atlanta and South Carolina after the debate, has made his support from black voters, and the Southern mayors who govern them, a central talking point in his electoral pitch.
Dan Webb, a 58-year-old resident of Greenwood, S.C., who is black, said it plainly: He was supporting Mr. Biden because he thought white people in key Electoral College states were more likely to vote for him — and he wants Mr. Trump out.
“Within South Carolina, within the African-American community, we don’t want to take a chance on someone that doesn’t have a chance of beating Trump,” Mr. Webb said. “I feel that Biden is the candidate that has the best chance.”
In the latest national polls, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the two progressive standard bearers in the Democratic primary, are Mr. Biden’s closest rivals in terms of black support — not Ms. Harris, of California, or Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.
A supporter of Senator Elizabeth Warren listened to her speech on Thursday at Clark Atlanta University.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
“I want black women in office, I do, and I love Kamala Harris and think she’s amazing, but I’m just more policy-focused,” said Amber Lowe, 29, a pastor and community activist in Atlanta. She was backing Ms. Warren.
“You need to focus on things beyond relating to me,” she said. “I want to talk about the stuff that affects me. What are you going to do for me?”
Aqil Shakur, a 53-year-old Atlanta-area barber, said, “If I had a Kamala Harris or a Cory Booker that sounded like Bernie Sanders, of course I would choose them, because they’re closer to my lived experience.”
“But the Kamalas and the Corys aren’t discussing the issues he’s discussing,” he added.
The sentiment among members of the black electorate has squeezed some candidates from both sides, and is especially meaningful for Mr. Booker and Ms. Harris, two black candidates looking to replicate Mr. Obama’s electoral playbook.
In Wednesday night’s debate, both candidates pitched themselves as best equipped to rebuild the “Obama coalition,” a subtle dig at moderate candidates like Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who have impressed white moderates but have amassed almost no support among black ones.
In the days that followed, at events in Atlanta and elsewhere, Mr. Booker and Ms. Harris re-upped their pitches. More than citing any particular policy, both candidates said black voters could uniquely trust them based on their identities and personal backgrounds.
Regarding race, Mr. Booker said the country must elect a president who “doesn’t have an academic appreciation of these issues, but actually has a passion, an instinctual connection — is someone that we can trust to bring these issues to the front and center.”
Ms. Harris said at the Atlanta breakfast that her upbringing taught her lessons about black communities that other candidates had to learn about in textbooks.
“I was raised knowing the injustices in the criminal justice system. I experienced it,” she said. “I didn’t acquire the language to talk about criminal justice as I started running for president.”
Pressed by a moderator, Ms. Harris said she felt that she faced two hurdles among black voters: misinformation about her record and lower name recognition than the race’s white front-runners.
Over the weekend, she held a organizing push called “Black Women’s Weekend of Action.”
“When we talk about black girl magic, we know that it is something special,” Ms. Harris told a crowd at Benedict College, a historically black institution in Columbia, S.C. “But that magic is born out of hard work.”
Her supporters said black voters sometimes held black candidates to an unfair standard, encouraged by a political media biased against women of color.
“I think that there is unfortunately a tendency in our community for us to question the authenticity of people who look like us before we question other people,” said Theia Smith, 39, an entrepreneur from Atlanta who attended the breakfast.
But black voters have a history of supporting black candidates. Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia last year, galvanized black urban and rural voters throughout the state, which turned her underdog bid into a fiercely competitive one. During Mr. Obama’s barrier-breaking run, black voters and young voters helped transform his candidacy into a phenomenon that was equal parts cultural and political, latching on to his outsider image and inspirational calls for unity.
A rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta for Senator Bernie Sanders, one of two candidates who have earned the support of young black progressives.Credit...Dustin Chambers for The New York Times
Now, younger black voters have largely flocked to Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren over the race’s black candidates, because their left-wing promises to upend systemic racism and radically reform the economy are much more in line with the language of activism that emerged after the Black Lives Matter movement during Mr. Obama’s presidency. Older voters have stuck with Mr. Biden, despite Ms. Harris and Mr. Booker being well liked by black influencers and elected officials in the Congressional Black Caucus.
Mr. Shakur, the Atlanta area barber, pointed to the Obama administration as his political turning point. While he respects the former president, he said Mr. Obama failed to deliver the disruptive change that he desired. The experience changed his political priorities.
“We heard social justice talk, but he protected Wall Street, not Main Street,” Mr. Shakur said of Mr. Obama. He’s supporting Mr. Sanders this time. “I’m not falling for that again.”
His son Ali Shakur, 27, said his guiding principle was simple: He wanted to support the candidate “most committed to fundamental change.”
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren tried to flex that young support after the debate. Mr. Sanders held a rally at Morehouse College on Thursday, the historically black all-men’s college in Atlanta, where speakers introduced him as the heir to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of racial and economic justice. A group of black students was positioned behind Mr. Sanders as he spoke, and he walked out to “Pick Up the Phone,” a rap song by Young Thug and Travis Scott.
At Ms. Warren’s event that day, an evening speech at Clark Atlanta University, another historically black school, that celebrated the political power of black women, supporters voiced similar sentiments. They said her message of “big, structural change” was authentic, and they praised her for infusing her policies with corrective measures for racial inequities.
Several students said they had no qualms about supporting a white candidate in a primary field that included Mr. Booker, Ms. Harris, and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, the first black governor in the state’s history and one of the newest entrants to the primary field.
“Of course black people want to be pro-black, but I feel like their records are anti-black,” said Jesiah Osbourne, a 19-year-old political science student at Morehouse College.
Angela Peoples, an activist and leader of “Black Womxn For,” a collective of activists and influencers who have recently endorsed Ms. Warren, led the crowd at Ms. Warren’s event in a chant of “Flip The Table!”
“Black voters are being asked, again, to roll along so we can get along,” Ms. Peoples said, “but those days are over.”
The enthusiastic rallies for Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders were a warning shot to Mr. Biden, and a sign that if the progressives do not secure enough black support to win the nomination, it will not be for lack of effort or careful planning.
At the same time, the candidacies of Mr. Patrick and former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York could complicate matters, if either can gain enough traction among black voters in search of a moderate to support.
In an interview on debate day, Mr. Patrick said his just-announced candidacy was seeing support on the ground from black voters, and that he thought Mr. Biden’s lead among them was “softer than it seems.”
“What I’m sensing is not some openness to someone new. What I’m seeing is an openness to me,” Mr. Patrick said, invoking his background as a black man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago.
He had just landed in Atlanta, and was on his way to an event at Morehouse. Three hours later it was canceled: Only two people had shown up.