On Sunday morning, President Joe Biden visited Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ, one of the biggest Black churches in Philadelphia. In a concise seven-minute speech, he shared a message of hope and unity. “I, honest to God, have never been more optimistic about America’s future if we stick together,” he reassured the congregation.

Across the country, the mood among Democrats was the opposite. Ten days earlier, the president gave what MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called “the worst debate performance in modern history,” a painful display of meandering half-thoughts and mumbled utterances that sent party donors, liberal columnists, and lawmakers into a panic. The president dismissed this setback as the result of a nagging cold, and traveled to Philadelphia to convince Black voters to, in so many words, save him. Biden’s plea was more overt in a call with members of the Congressional Black Caucus the following day. “I need you guys,” the 81-year-old president said, according to Politico.

The thrust of Biden’s post-debate damage control strategy has been to show that, while some party elites and “self-important podcasters” may have written him off as a desiccated has-been, his base still believes in him. “I think it’s interesting that not one African American member has called on the president to step down,” Cedric Richmond, a Black co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, told Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who described the Biden team’s motto as being: “It’s older Black women in church pews who will decide the nominee, thank you very much.”

Indeed, many rank-and-file Black lawmakers, from Ohio’s Joyce Beatty to California’s Maxine Waters, have rallied to the president’s defense, endorsements that have helped his campaign run roughshod over legitimate concerns about his cognitive fitness and reframe his refusal to step aside as a product of Black wisdom rather than his own hubris.

Unfortunately, Black people are not........

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