This past June, I met a retired teacher named Linda Felix at the African American Leadership Summit, which was organized by the Democratic National Committee and held at a hotel in downtown Atlanta. Several Presidential candidates spoke at the event, addressing a crowd that consisted mostly of older activists and retirees like Felix. “They want our votes,” she told me. “They have to come ask me for mine and explain why.” Felix had been watching the televised town halls and had recently become a fan of Elizabeth Warren’s positions, “like getting rid of tuition and student-loan debt,” she said. She was in favor of taxing the wealthy more, too, explaining, “You share your blessings.” Cory Booker spoke that afternoon, and Felix described him afterward as “very inspiring,” adding, “I think he’d make a wonderful H.U.D. Secretary.” Listening to Pete Buttigieg, she called him “a great young man,” but saw “too many obstacles” in his way—“age, history, and, yes, sexual orientation.”

Felix said that she was “leaning towards” Joe Biden, who has held a commanding lead among black voters, and particularly older black voters, since he joined the race. “He was a loyal supporter and Vice-President to President Obama,” Felix noted. But Felix’s son, a theatre professor at Clark Atlanta University, preferred Warren. “We’ve fought about the 1994 crime bill,” Felix said, explaining her son’s disagreement with her. Biden wrote that bill and still defends it, despite a widespread consensus that it contributed to the problem of mass incarceration, particularly of black men. (Bill Clinton, who signed the bill, has called it a mistake.) There was also, when it came to Biden, “the Anita Hill thing,” Felix said. “I was so mad with the Democrats about that back in the day, but we all have to move on.” Felix was most concerned with finding a candidate who could beat Donald Trump. “Joe knows what to do,” she said. She liked the idea of a Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. “I don’t know if America is yet ready to have a woman be President,” she added, recalling the way that Trump physically loomed over Hillary Clinton during a televised debate. “I think Biden is the person to say to Trump, ‘Go over there and sit down.’ ”

I called Felix on Wednesday, shortly before ten Democratic candidates debated in Atlanta, at the film studio built by the producer-director Tyler Perry. She was still supporting Biden, she said. She was less enthusiastic now about Harris. “She came at him about busing,” Felix said, referring to Harris’s jab at Biden during an earlier debate. “Really, girlfriend? Nobody liked it. Yes, it was good for some people, but to bring it up in this day and time, I thought it was just so fake. So that kills her to me.” Warren, meanwhile, seemed too risky. “We’re not trying to have revolutionary change,” Felix said. “I’ve gone sour on her because the whole Medicare for All idea is going to fail.” She felt similarly about Bernie Sanders. As for Buttigieg, Felix acknowledged his recent surge in the polls in early-primary states, but pointed to his ongoing difficulty courting African-Americans. “He’s doing very well in Iowa, where there’s probably seven black people. And New Hampshire, where there’s five more.”

As we spoke, Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union, was testifying as part of the impeachment inquiry into Trump, and I asked Felix if the proceedings had affected her feelings about Biden at all. “The unsuccessful attempt to make this about the Bidens,” she said, referring to Trump’s dubious efforts to tie Biden to corruption in Ukraine, “just proves my point that Joe Biden is the greatest threat to this incumbent President.” She added, “I felt before and I still see that it’s going to take an old white man to beat this old white man.”

But there was more than one old white man on the debate stage on Wednesday. That night, I attended a watch party and “Trap Trivia Contest” at Atlanta Technical College. (The contest’s winning teams were Black with No Chaser and the Quid Pro Hos.) The event was hosted by Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and other local progressive groups. It was attended by a mix of political newbies and noted activists, including Phillip Agnew, the founder of the Dream Defenders and a Sanders supporter, and Marcus Ferrell, who served as director of African-American outreach for Sanders during the 2016 campaign. The party was held in a large conference room with two large projector screens, catered food, and a cash bar. One attendee referred to those gathered as “the hood coalition, which is what put Obama in office.”

Previewing the debate, Ferrell picked three likely winners. “Biden—not that I support him,” he began. “I think Kamala is gonna come in at No. 2. And I think that crazy lady, Tulsi”—Representative Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii— “is No. 3, only because she ain’t got shit to lose.” As for Sanders, Ferrell said, “Message- and issue-wise, he’s still the best. But how you treat your black staff is important.” Ferrell has suggested in the past that Sanders did not do enough to actively court African-American voters during his first Presidential campaign. “He has some people around him—and I’m not talking about the black people, I’m talking about powerful white consultants making decisions in a bubble.”

Ferrell added, “The race is gonna be won along the black belt in Atlanta, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Places where black turnout has to happen. The reason why Hillary Clinton didn’t win in 2016? Black people in Milwaukee didn’t vote for her.” Ferrell said that he was open to supporting multiple candidates, including Sanders, Castro, and Warren. “I don’t like anybody who is a blatant neoliberal,” he said. “I don’t do Joe Biden. I’m probably not gonna do Deval Patrick because I don’t know if he’s neoliberal or not.” He went on, “Joe Biden created the crime bill, and he doubles down on it. It’d be different if he took the Bloomberg approach: Stop and frisk, it was a little fucked up. I’m sorry.”

A few hours earlier, Ferrell had organized a conversation among forty-five men who were taking part in an event called Brothas Be Voting. Many had rarely or never voted. “Five hundred thousand black men in the state of Georgia didn’t vote from 2016 to 2018,” Ferrell told me. “They weren’t purged off the rolls. They weren’t blocked from voting. They just decided they weren’t gonna vote. And, in our conversation today, we found out why. They don’t see anybody that looks like them or talks their language, knows their issues.” He listed a few: jobs, fatherhood, and “cops not killing us.”

Looking around the crowd as he began to make his rounds, Ferrell said, “This is the SWATS,” a nickname for southwest Atlanta. “The blacks doing our thing. We’re the fucking organizers, but it’s a public invitation in Georgia. You might see some Biden people.”