While at Sunday brunch near Seattle, April Berg and her friends’ cell phones started ringing simultaneously.
“We thought someone had died,” she said.
Instead, word spread that President Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race. Moments later, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee. The normal 90-minute meeting for Berg and his friends lasted nearly four hours.
“It led to a lot of spicy conversations,” said Berg, who is black, a Democrat and represents the Washington state House.
Berg and millions of Black voters were instrumental in Biden’s 2020 victory, especially in swing states like Georgia. In his 2020 victory speech, Biden thanked Black voters and said he would do right by them. Throughout his presidency, Biden has touted his administration’s accomplishments, such as reducing child poverty, which particularly affects Black families, and the nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
But while a majority of black voters continued to support Biden, black support for him declined overall. Now that he is no longer seeking reelection, Black people across the country interviewed by NBC News expressed a range of reactions to Biden’s decision, ranging from euphoria to disappointment to ambivalence. But they agreed that Biden had several significant accomplishments in office and that Harris would be a worthy choice to take his place at the top of the ticket.
Biden’s decision pleased Berg and the brunch crowd because they now see a path to defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump.
With the pandemic and racial justice protests in 2020, Biden was “the right man at the right time,” Berg said. “And then he brought in Kamala Harris as his vice president and in the announcement, she sang the song ‘Working’ by Mary J. Blige. I think most black women, like me, felt very seen in that moment. And Joe Biden created this moment.”
She and her friends were pleased that Biden dropped out, she said, but not just because of his meandering debate performance on June 27. “I don’t know if I could point to one specific thing that I would say, ‘Oh, he needed to leave. I just think, overall, things changed after that night.”
Leslie Neland, an entrepreneur from Atlanta, said defeating Trump became more urgent when her 23-year-old son recently shared that he had been “afraid and overly worried” when Trump was president. “I deal with racism and move on. But when it affects my son, it heightens for me the fact that this man cannot be president again,” Neland said.
“Joe Biden has done a wonderful job for the country,” she added, citing Biden’s policies as the Child Tax Creditthat reduced black child poverty and appointed more Black woman will be federal judge (38, including Brown Jackson) than any other president.
“And so much more, including the incredible support of HBCUs and helping us through Covid after Trump. So I’m a Joe Biden fan,” Neland added. “It bothers me that so many black people don’t seem to realize everything he did.”
Maurice Hawkins, a political volunteer in Norfolk, Virginia, said some black people have become disenchanted with Biden because “we are all exhausted by systemic racism. No man can change hearts and minds. But Biden changed policies that benefit black people and put us on a promising path.”
Biden’s difficult debate performance in June led to growing calls from Democratic figures for him to step aside. Christine Beatty, a nonprofit political consultant in Detroit, said that created a controversial situation.
“I think he was forced out and I’m not happy about that,” Beatty said. “I think he succumbed to the pressure. The man addressed the country’s issues, which are our issues. He brought down unemployment; jobs are our problems too, right? He accompanied us during the Covid crisis; that was our problem too. He brought the economy back. That’s our problem too. There is no separation. The most critical issues in this country affect us and affect us even more. So he did a fantastic job. And he would have continued doing that.”
In addition to the 59 black federal judges he appointed overall (men and women), Hawkins also highlighted Biden’s other notable appointments, including Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the United Nations and Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense.
“He has one of the most diverse cabinets in the history of the American presidency. And in politics, he’s been fantastic,” Hawkins said. A dedicated volunteer for the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, Hawkins said he was “saddened” and “disappointed” to see Biden drop out.
But about a half hour later, he learned that Biden had endorsed Harris, and “that uncertainty I went through toward certainty and then excitement over the possibility of our country electing our first female president, the first African-American female president, the first woman of Southeast Asian descent.”
“So you can’t be happy to see someone like him go,” Hawkins said. “But Kamala Harris is the next best option.”
Neland, the Atlanta businessman, agreed with Biden’s decision to support Harris “because Kamala can beat Trump and that’s the No. 1 goal — not to let him get back into power. Kamala Harris is capable and will have the right people around her, not just a one-woman show.”
Beatty, who like Harris, graduated from Howard University, said the vice president is the logical choice to continue Biden’s work.
“Bringing in another candidate at this point would cause too much division within the Democratic Party,” she said. “Did you surpass the black vice president? You’re going to have to make a case, and I don’t think there’s a case to make. And as we know, black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party. When it comes time to produce and produce, that’s what we do.”
That path could be paved by Harris, said William Ratcliff, a retired project manager in suburban Phoenix who also took issue with Biden apparently being forced out.
“But I see the strategy,” he said. “Kamala is younger, a fighter, smart and can energize the base, which, to be honest, was pretty blah before.”
That energy, he said, is necessary to defeat Trump.
“Because he is such a threat to democracy and decency, something had to happen to put us on the path to victory,” Ratcliff said. “Joe Biden did his job and did it well. Now it is up to the Democratic Party to give its support to Vice President Harris. If we finally come together in celebration, we will be celebrating in November – not crying.”
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