Joe Biden knows something about the vice presidential selection and vetting process. He went through it himself 12 years ago when Barack Obama tapped the 36-year Delaware senator as his understudy.
Now, after the pair served together in the White House for eight years, Biden is the one doing the choosing for vice president. He hasn’t yet clinched the nomination against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is staying in the race despite a poor showing in this week’s primary elections. But facing the likelihood of strong Biden finishes in next week’s round of voting in megastates Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, Biden can turn his attention to finding a running mate.
For Prime Policy Group’s Charlie Black, a top aide to former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, as well as Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2008 White House bid, his best advice to Biden was to select somebody “you know you can work with.”
Downplaying the importance of geographical balance in modern politics, Biden, 77, may need to pick someone for philosophical balance “to make the Sanders supporters happy,” according to Black.
“In his case, a younger person makes better sense than an older person,” he said.
Black, however, warned “a lot more VP nominees have hurt tickets than have ever really helped,” not providing examples.
Shortly after her unveiling in 2008, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin boosted McCain by countering the excitement generated by Obama. But while she remained popular with the Republican base, her inexperience in foreign policy became a drag on McCain’s long shot at electoral success that November.
After that losing national campaign, Palin quit the Alaska governorship eight months later, and she has effectively dropped out of national politics. She was last seen Wednesday on the television show The Masked Singer, where she rapped “Baby Got Back” while dressed as a furry bear.
Biden himself sometimes consumed a news cycle in the 2008 and 2012 general elections with gaffes on the campaign trail. It’s a habit he’s carried over into the 2020 Democratic race for the White House.
“The biggest mistake you can make is to not vet someone properly. You do not want surprises,” Black said.
Bipartisan Policy Center’s John Fortier, whose team published a report in 2016 about vice presidential nominee selection reform, emphasized that most voters cast their ballots for the top of the ticket since it isn’t a “co-presidency.” Yet, Fortier said it was important to choose somebody who “is seen as capable of stepping in,” particularly given Biden’s age.
One of the key recommendations from the report was to start the selection process early, allowing eight weeks to comb through potential nominees’ public records, have lawyers grill them, and for the candidate to get to know them personally.
“The tradition has been in recent years to name them roughly in the week before the convention,” Fortier said.
Adding that Biden had more leeway to pick an outsider or someone with less experience based on him being in politics for nearly half a century, the political scientist predicted there would be “a long list” of possible running mates, that list signaling “to different constituencies that, ‘Hey, look, I’m interested in all of the parts of the Democratic Party.'”
“There is a good chance he’ll select a woman. Women are a larger part of the Democratic Party than men,” he said.
Biden has floated a number of hypothetical vice presidents, stressing his desire for a person who was “in simpatico” with him: Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren to Stacey Abrams, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and Sally Yates, even Michelle Obama or a Republican.
Some, such as former Democratic rivals Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have already joined him on the stump after suspending their own bids, an audition of sorts to see how they’d fare as a partner again Trump and his No. 2 Mike Pence.
Harris is the odds-on favorite to earn the nod, according to betting aggregator US-Bookies.com, though she struggled with black Democrats over the course of her campaign and her home state isn’t a battleground. Harris is followed by Klobuchar, Abrams, and Warren.
In last Tuesday’s primaries, Biden asserted himself in Michigan, the prize of the night with 125 pledged delegates. He also dominated in Mississippi and Missouri, increasing the likelihood of a swift end to a once-fluid primary boasting a historically wide field of candidates.
