'He needs to stay': CNN struggles to find Black voters who want Joe Biden to drop out

CNN's Eva McKend traveled to the Dallas convention of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's most prominent historically Black sorority organization, where Vice President Kamala Harris, herself a former member, delivered an impassioned speech warning of the dangers of former President Donald Trump.

Black voters have historically been the most reliable and consistent bloc for the Democratic Party, and Biden himself secured the nomination in 2020 in large part to the backing of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), one of the most prominent figures in the Congressional Black Caucus.

What McKend found was that few of the Black women gathered there shared the view of the Beltway punditry, or a growing number of congressional lawmakers, that President Joe Biden should exit the race over his age-related energy issues — despite the fact that many were passionate fans of Harris, who would herself be a beneficiary of such a move as the default successor to Biden's nomination.

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"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have a plan for 2024 and on, so I just want them to enact that plan," 31-year-old Dennisa Thomas, a systems engineer from Kansas City, Missouri, told McKend. "She's supportive of him staying on the ticket, and I trust her judgment. So if he needs to stay, he needs to stay."

She continued, "I think that people are more concerned about the aesthetic of what it means to be president, but Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have been working since they got into [office], and I think we need to make sure that the people who are in office are the people who are doing the work."

Jill Nickerson, a 61-year-old former school counselor from Wynne, Arkansas, agreed, brushing off Biden's debate underperformance and saying, "If every time I didn't do my job the right way, I got fired or chewed out, I wouldn't have a job." And Chinella Webb, a 57-year-old MRI tech from Birmingham, Alabama, said she would back Harris if she had to step up and take over as nominee, but that "we are standing behind our president."

National polling paints a bit more nuanced of a picture; Black voters remain one of Biden's most supportive voting blocs, but many polls show even they are divided over whether the president should remain in the race, with a recent New York Times/Siena College poll finding a narrow 47-43 plurality of Black voters favoring his exit.

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