President Joe Biden came to Philadelphia July 7 to campaign and reboot after his debate performance prompted calls for him to drop out of the presidential race. Biden gave a speech at predominantly Black mega-church, Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ in East Mt. Airy in the city’s Northwest neighborhood.
The president was greeted by the church’s founder, Bishop Ernest C. Morris, Sr. and Mayor Cherelle Parker accompanied the president. Senior pastor Bishop J. Louis Felton gave an introduction which addressed the recent controversy and made clear it was up to Biden to convince those in attendance, not him.
Biden used notes, but no teleprompter for the 10-minute speech which was streamed live. Biden has been criticized for using a teleprompter in the days since the debate. Biden opened with a story about his early work in the Civil Rights Movement in Wilmington, Delaware and discussed what he has tried to do to better the lives of Black Americans throughout his presidency. Philadelphia has a majority Black demographic.
Biden said in part, to repeated rounds of applause, “In my life and as your president, I’ve tried to walk my faith. To get us through the pandemic that claimed a million loved ones and left 8 million people with an empty chair at dinner or breakfast because of someone they lost. To ensure that the economy has the lowest Black unemployment and more Black small businesses in decades. To rebuild and ensure Black America has the peace of mind that comes with health care for everybody.”
He continued, “To ensure you can follow your dreams without the burden of student debt. To make housing affordable, help more Black families build wealth and pass it on to future generations. To keep our communities safe by getting weapons of war off our streets. To give hate no safe harbor.”
Biden said, “And while there are those who want to erase history, [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] and I want to make it. Because Black history is American history,” a line that received resounding applause.
The event in Philadelphia was part of a whirlwind trip throughout the critical swing state of Pennsylvania and it was evidence of the disconnect between Beltway pundits and actual voters. Church members voiced their support for Biden’s presidency and his assertion that he is not stepping down, but is committed to finishing the campaign and beating his GOP opponent, Donald Trump, whose name he did not mention in his speech.
Statewide visit
Biden was met at the airport in Philadelphia by local politicians, including kingmaker Bob Brady and later found support from Sen. Bob Casey, facing a tight re-election bid against Trump-endorsee David McClintock, and sometime antagonist, progressive senator John Fetterman. Fetterman has been perhaps Biden’s most vocal supporter in the days since the debate fiasco, giving interviews and talking about how ableist the subsequent commentary about Biden has been.
Fetterman has also said that the issue is Trump, not Biden, noting on his Twitter/X account, “I’m unwilling to discard a great president, a decent man and a loving father after 50 years in public service, over a 90-minute debate.
Responding with disorder, panic and disloyalty is not meeting this moment.”
Fetterman attached a screenshot of a Washington Post headline: “‘I’m terrified’: Ready to move on from Biden, worried about what’s next.”
The Washington Post story quoted a Wisconsin voter who said he was “looking at other candidates” and someone who “Just, like, knows how to address a camera.”
In Pennsylvania with Biden, Fetterman was no less vocal than on Twitter/X, taking the microphone to say, “There is only one person in this room that kicked Trump’s ass in an election. There is only one person in this state that has kicked Trump’s ass in an election. There is only one person in the country that’s ever kicked Trump’s ass in an election, and that is your president.”
During Biden’s visit to a Harrisburg campaign office, a supporter said “we need Dark Brandon back,” a reference to a popular meme in which Biden in sunglasses and sometimes glowing eyes says he will take on Trump and win.
Biden told the supporter, “Dark Brandon is coming back.”
Pennsylvania’s Speaker, Joanna McClinton, was unable to attend the Harrisburg event Sunday, but tweeted her support on Twitter/X, writing,
“I am grateful for President @JoeBiden’s partnership as we work to deliver for Pennsylvanians. I am proud to be working with @BidenforPA to secure a Biden-Harris victory in Pennsylvania this November!” She attached a photo of herself with Biden.
Interview flap
In a small controversy, a local host of a program on Black radio station WURD 96.1 FM/900 AM in Philadelphia was let go due to her interview with Biden last week. The Inquirer reported Andrea Lawful-Sanders, who hosted “The Source,” “agreed to leave the station” after telling CNN host Victor Blackwell that she had received a list of eight questions from the Biden campaign, four of which she approved and used in her interview with Biden.
The interview was not cleared with the station.
Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement to the Washington Post, “It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer.” Hitt said the questions, which specifically did not mention the debate but instead focused on Biden’s work for Black Americans, were not a requirement for the interview.
The Washington Post framed their story as Biden attempting to avoid gaffes, which he has been known for going back decades.
Black support unwavering
The warm welcome and speech from Bishop Felton that Biden received in Philadelphia highlighted the increasingly widening disconnect between voter response to Biden—particularly among the Democratic party’s core base, Black voters—and the drumbeats in Washington from pundits and some centrist House Democrats calling on Biden to exit the race.
In Washington, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Joyce Beatty and former January 6th Committee chair Benny Thompson have all voiced their support for Biden.
As has Vice President Harris, who noted in an interview with The Nation, “I appreciate that perhaps for some who weren’t paying attention, this seems like a ‘moment,’” Harris allows. “But there have been many moments in my career which have been about my commitment to these kinds of fights, whether they’re on the front pages of newspapers or not.”
While Biden was in Pennsylvania, Harris was at the 2024 Essence Festival of Culture where she spoke with CEO of Essence, Caroline Wanga. Harris would be the likely successor should Biden change his mind and drop out of the race.
Attacks on Harris
But questions about Harris’s race and gender as liabilities have also been voiced. The New York Post ran a story headlined, “America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president: Kamala Harris” which said, “the most irrepressibly fatuous politician in America may become the leader of the free world because the Democratic Party is unable to break its DEI stranglehold.”
DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—are three closely linked values held by many organizations that are working to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders and sexual orientations.
On Tuesday night, former Deputy Assistant to the President in the Trump administration, Sebastian Gorka, described Vice President Harris on the conservative TV network Newsmax with snarky sarcasm: “She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored. Therefore, she’s got to be good.”
On July 9, LGBTQ+ ally and Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Jasmine Crockett said on CNN, “Republicans will lie as we know that Donald Trump lied over 30 times in a 90-minute debate. And so until they actually provide receipts, I’m going to need them to pipe down.”
Critique of Trump remains absent
The Philadelphia Inquirer has been an outlier among national publications in staying focused on the perils of another Donald Trump presidency and his Project 2025 plan for the nation. First stating in an editorial from The Editorial Board, “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race” that while Biden’s debate performance was certainly “horrible,” Trump’s debate was far worse and sounded alarms about what another Trump presidency would do to the country.
On July 6, The Editorial Board wrote, “The lingering focus on Biden’s shaky debate obscures Trump’s major verbal miscues.”
The paper suggested more unscripted events for the president and more attention to Trump’s foibles and outright lies, as well as addressing Project 2025.
Though fewer than a dozen House reps have called for Biden to step out after his debate performance, some Beltway insider reporters have insisted that there are more who simply won’t say it on the record. More concerning, the New York Times has taken an adversarial approach to the president, with the Editorial Board demanding July 8 that Biden drop out and that Democrats get together en masse and demand he do so, the way Republicans did with Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was about to be impeached and likely indicted.
Yet in the July 8 editorial, “The Democratic Party Must Speak the Plain Truth to the President,” the Editorial Board wrote, “Mr. Trump was the worst president in modern American history. He is a felon convicted of breaking the law as part of his campaign to win the 2016 election. Four years later, after his multiple attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election failed, he incited an attack on Congress aimed to keep himself in power. During the current campaign, he has promised an even more unrestrained version of himself if re-elected, even refusing to disavow violence on his behalf.”
So why not demand Trump leave the race for any one of those crimes against the nation?
MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid queried the Times’ motives Tuesday night, citing a series of events that could have prompted the paper to call for Trump to drop out, including the incident where he told Americans to imbibe bleach to protect against COVID, when he tried to overturn the 2020 election or when he was convicted in any one of his trials.
Until July 9, when Trump gave a rally in Miami in which he yet again lauded fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, Trump had not given a single campaign event in 11 days. Yet not one newspaper or cable news outlet commented. The Republican National Convention is July 15-18 in Milwaukee—a city about which Trump said last month to GOP House members, “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city.”
Trump is expected to announce his running mate at the convention. One of the contenders, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose state is the most impacted by climate change in the nation, complained angrily at the rally that Harris supports the environmental effort to ban plastic straws.
Among the statements Trump made at his Miami rally Tuesday, Trump said insurrectionists are “hostages unfairly imprisoned” and said “the Supreme Court ruled they should be out soon.” He said he “didn’t know what NATO was” before he took office. He praised the author of Project 2025 and said he’d be back in a future administration. Trump also said in his speech that he had no idea what NATO—the leaders of which Biden is currently hosting—was. “I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was, too much.”
Biden pushes back on calls to drop out
The Democratic National Convention is August 19-22 in Chicago. On July 8, Biden sent a confrontational letter to House Democrats calling on anyone who wants to challenge him for the nomination to do so then.
Biden explained that there was a primary in which millions voted and he received 87% of the vote. He said he had challengers and voters chose him. He said he wouldn’t do what his opponent did and reject the will of the voters.
In the letter to Democrats, Biden said it is time for the party to come together so it can have the best chance at beating Trump. “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end,” Biden says. “We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”
As Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, nominee for Auditor General, told PGN, “Pennsylvania is the birthplace of democracy and it’s where we’ll save it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris remain the best team to help us do that, but this election is ultimately about us. We have to defend and expand the progress of the last four years. Continue to preserve our fundamental freedoms, cut Rx prices, reduce gun violence, and protect our air and water. The other path is Project 2025 and a lawless Trump led autocracy.”