The Announcement
Joe Biden announced his running mate yesterday – California’s Senator Kamala Harris. The choice represents a first: the first Black (and Indian-American) woman to be on the national ticket. There have been two other women chosen as Vice Presidential candidates, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008. And, of course, Hillary Clinton led the Democratic ticket in 2016.
Senator Harris was the right pick from the start, back when Biden secured the Democratic nomination in March. She fulfills the number one qualification for any Vice Presidential candidate – she is prepared to serve as President of the United States. Harris has three times won statewide election in California, the largest state in the Union. Twice she was elected to the state Attorney General, administrating the largest Justice Department outside of the Federal government. And in 2017, she was elected to the United States Senate.
And since the death of Floyd George, and the ascent of the Black Lives Matter movement, the selection of a Black woman as Vice Presidential candidate is a statement by Biden and the Party. Not only does Biden acknowledge the importance of Black women to the base of the Party, but he also recognizes the unique reality of our times. He could have turned back, to a more typical candidate, a white man who would “fit in” with the other forty-eight pictures on the wall.
Making A Statement
But Biden recognized the opportunity of making history, and making a statement to the American people. He originally did that by pledging that his Vice President would be a woman. Some say he cut the candidate pool in half, but in reality, he doubled his choices. Consideration of women opened whole new opportunities.
And he had great options. But none of the candidates had the qualifications of Harris. Not only was Harris tested in the hot spotlight of a national campaign, but she was also one of the few candidates to actually challenge Biden directly. Because of that, Joe Biden was able to make another statement with his choice. He wants people around him who are going to question, to challenge, and even be willing to oppose him. This contrasts to the current President who only wants “yes” men and women around.
Biden has a unique perspective of the Vice Presidential role, having served eight years in the job. The most important qualification for Biden was the ability of the Vice President to work with the President in governing the nation. And in Harris, Biden chose a person he can depend upon to work with him.
Some say that Harris’s Presidential campaign failed, and that failure should disqualify her from the ticket. But Joe Biden has a different view of that: his 2008 Presidential campaign failed as well, but his selection by Barack Obama led to eight years in the White House.
Politics
So what are the political implications?
Harris is only slightly more progressive than Biden. She was more aligned with him than with the Sanders/Warren wing of the Democratic Party. So the ticket is moderate/progressive, even though the Trump Campaign will try to brand them as “socialists” or “communists”.
The political danger of Harris is that the Sanders wing will decide not to support the ticket, as some did in 2016. But Sanders himself has strongly supported Biden, much more so than he did Clinton. And the Biden campaign has adopted some of Sanders issue positions, particularly when it comes to the environment. So, while there will always be some dissatisfied with “moderation”, most will come along with the ticket.
And Kamala Harris is uniquely tied into the core base of the Democratic Party, Black women. Harris is a graduate of Howard University, and a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, an important and historic link to Black women leadership. Harris represents a new generation of Democratic leaders along with several of the other primary candidates for President. Her obvious energy and enthusiasm will help energize the Party. Both are critical for Democrats, the majority political party in the United States. It only needs to get its voters to the polls to win.
The Campaign
Trump 2020 was already prepared with attack ads against the Biden/Harris ticket; some were running on social media last night. The current Trump narrative is that Biden/Harris is a “socialist” ticket, as if Trump was running against Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But he’s not, and the American people recognize the difference.
Depend on things to get ugly, with personal attacks on both Biden and Harris. The whispers will be that Biden is somehow “diminished” and that Harris is, well “a woman”. But both Biden and Harris have shown they can take hits and come back strong. And Americans are not going to fall for the old tropes that might have worked twenty, or even four years ago.
Biden made the right choice. Harris has “the right stuff”.
