With fewer than three months to go until the potentially virtual Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden has formally asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar to undergo formal vetting as he considers tapping her as his running mate. The move was widely expected, and Biden is surely vetting a handful of other contenders, but the revelation sparked backlash from some liberals. It shouldn’t have, because of all the women Biden is reportedly considering for his vice presidential nomination, the Minnesota senator is Biden’s best bet, and it’s not particularly close.
The first rule of running mates is to do no harm. That tenet alone gives Klobuchar an extraordinary advantage. Unlike many of her likely top contenders, Klobuchar never chased Sen. Bernie Sanders to the left during the presidential primary, rendering her and Biden closely ideologically aligned. Like Biden, Klobuchar supports codifying Roe v. Wade but crucially supports late-term abortion restrictions. And unlike her competitors, Klobuchar’s rhetoric about abortion is relatively moderate, at least in the scope of the current extremism in the Democratic Party. She’s celebrated a reduction in the abortion rate and declared that pro-life Democrats are still welcome in the party, a necessary concession given that nearly 3 in 10 Democrats still identify as pro-life.
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