Paging Kamala? Summer Lee says VP Harris is ‘obvious choice’ if Biden steps down

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee has joined a growing chorus of elected Democrats weighing in on the fallout from President Joe Biden’s lackluster debate performance, emphasizing the gravity of the presidential race and suggesting that if Biden were to step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris is the “obvious choice” to replace him.

Lee, whose district includes Pittsburgh and parts of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, spoke Wednesday morning on Zerlina Maxwell’s radio show on SiriusXM Progress, making her first comments on Thursday’s debate on CNN between Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Like other Biden allies, the progressive Democrat from Swissvale said it has never been more imperative to keep Trump out of the White House, and that urgency has only grown in light of a recent string of consequential — and polarizing — U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Lee later added that Harris should be the Democratic nominee if Biden decides to end his presidential run, a topic of widespread media speculation.

“Maybe folks don’t want to hear, but we have timing that is running out. Time is not on our side. We have a few months to do a monumental task. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy,” Lee said. “If our president decides this is not a pathway forward for him, we have to move very quickly. There’s not going to be time for a primary. That time is past. The vice president is the obvious choice. She’s sitting right there.”

Lee, who is Black, said it would be terrible optics if Harris was “pushed aside.”

Harris, a former U.S. senator who was attorney general of California and district attorney of San Francisco, is the nation’s first female, Black and South Asian-American vice president.

Not picking Harris would feel insulting to the Democrats’ most loyal base, Black voters, and would dampen the group’s coalition, Lee said.

“But we’re so willingly going to push aside an entire demographic, and I think that it would be very dangerous to do that, personally,” Lee said of the possibility of replacing Biden with someone other than Harris. “Black women do vote at very, very high rates.”

Lee’s comments are similar to those of South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, a power player in national Democratic politics who played a pivotal role in getting the state’s Black voters to back Biden in the 2020 primary.

Clyburn said Tuesday he would support Harris if Biden were to drop out, even as he urged the importance of continuing to support Biden.

In a call with campaign staff Wednesday afternoon, Biden said he is not leaving the race.

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win,” Biden said, according to Politico.

Lee called Trump’s performance in the debate “startling” and said the former president displayed that he was an “existential threat in real time.”

Before addressing Biden’s widely panned debate performance, Lee said the central question of the race should be focused on the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority and recently issued decisions that could aid Trump with his court cases and weaken federal agencies.

“If we are acknowledging and accepting the trajectory of the court and accepting the trajectory of the ongoing insurrection that Republicans have been engaging in over these years, then we have to make sure that (the Supreme Court) is literally the central question,” Lee said.

But Lee added that the American people deserve to hear directly from Biden following the debate, and the onus is on Biden to restore a standard of confidence to the voters.

“They assume that we will hear from our president in times of turmoil, in times of disarray, in times of discomfort,” Lee said. “When the American people are afraid, we expect our leaders to be front and center.”

Biden has held rallies and offered scripted comments since the debate, but he has not taken questions or completed interviews. He is scheduled to complete his first one-on-one interview this week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which will air in part on Friday and in full on Sunday.

Lee represents Pennsylvania’s 12th District, which includes Pittsburgh, parts of southern and eastern Allegheny County, the Mon Valley and Westmore­land County communities such as Murrysville, North Huntingdon, Penn Township, Sewickley Township, Jeannette and parts of Hempfield.