A plurality of Democratic voters, 36%, believe Joe Biden should pick Elizabeth Warren as his running mate. Seeing as Warren was a momentary front-runner in the 2020 primary, this makes sense. It also logically follows that Biden probably won’t pick her for the job.
Biden is only considering female candidates for the job, so, naturally, Warren, the highest consistently polling woman in the presidential primary, would lead vice presidential polling. But that doesn’t mean Biden would be wise to listen. The rule for choosing running mates is first to do no harm, and, for the 77-year-old Biden, the oldest presidential nominee in history, the veepstakes are higher than ever. Warren isn’t just an unsafe option; she’s also an option that doesn’t bring what Biden needs to the table.
Warren ran a campaign almost as far left economically as that of Bernie Sanders, and, arguably, her campaign was even woker than that. Sure, Sen. Kamala Harris and most of the rest of the pack paid lip service to the altar of wokedom, but how much more of a turnoff would Warren’s sneering comments about conservative Christians and college campus language explaining intersectionality be to the crucial suburban women who flipped the House for Democrats in 2018? A running mate such as Amy Klobuchar probably wouldn’t enthuse voters in San Francisco and the Upper West Side, but she could make those 80,000 voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania who won Trump the White House feel like Biden will actually commit to governing more like Barack Obama and less like Sanders.
Furthermore, Warren is all risk, no reward. A black running mate brings obvious benefits, as does a centrist or a Midwesterner. But Warren thrived with white, college-educated liberals, a demographic that already overwhelmingly rejects Trump.
What would a running mate Warren bring to the ticket? Perhaps slightly higher enthusiasm among the champagne socialist set that reside in safely blue states, a whole lot of baggage, and not much else. There’s no additional benefit to getting San Franciscans even more amped up to defeat Trump.
