Whitmer meets Joe Biden as he approaches VP decision Biden risks losing Black voters after race remarks

Lansing (US), Aug. 8: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer travelled to Delaware last weekend to meet with Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s first known in-person session with a potential running mate as he nears a decision.

Whitmer visited Biden on Sunday, according to two high-ranking Michigan Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly. The firstterm governor of the battleground state has long been on his short list of possible running mates. Flight records show a chartered plane left Lansing's Capital Region International Airport for Delaware Coastal Airport at 5:33 pm and returned at 11:16 pm.

The governor’s office declined to confirm or deny the trip. “We don’t discuss her personal schedule,” spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said. Biden’s campaign

Washington, Aug. 8: Joe Biden’s controversial remarks about race this week risk alienating young Black voters who despise President Donald Trump but are not inspired by his Democratic rival.

When pressed by Errol Barnett of CBS News on whether he’d taken a cognitive test, Biden responded that the question was akin to asking the Black reporter if he would take a drug test to see if “you’re taking cocaine or not? ... Are you a junkie?”

In a later interview with National Public Radio’s

declined to comment. He has spent months weighing who would serve alongside him if he wins in November. Biden has

Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Biden seemed to draw distinctions between Black and Hispanic populations in the US.

“Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” he told the Latina reporter. He later walked back the comment. Black voters as a whole delivered the Democratic nomination to Biden, powering his commanding win in the South Carolina primary,

pledged to select a woman and has conducted an expansive search, including Senators Kamala Harris of California and which rescued his floundering campaign. But that success was heavily dependent on older Black voters.

In a general election where Democrats say no vote can be taken for granted, young Black activists and elected officials say this week's missteps could make it harder to get their vote. “Trump is terrible, and he's a racist, and we have to get racists out of the White House. But then Biden keeps saying racist things,” said Mariah Parker, a 28-year-old county commissioner in Athens, Georgia.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, California Rep. Karen Bass and former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice.