House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sounds like she is setting expectations low for the Biden campaign’s running mate announcement, claiming Friday that, in the grand scheme of things, it does not matter who the nominee picks to run at his side.
Call it the soft bigotry of low expectations.
“I don’t think it matters who the vice-presidential candidate is historically. It has never mattered,” Pelosi Friday during an appearance on MSNBC. “Lyndon Johnson for victory, Sarah Palin for defeat, but by and large, it’s really all about the two candidates for president, and I’m so proud of Joe Biden.”
Pelosi is correct that vice presidential nominees generally do not matter in terms of electoral victory. But she is wrong if she thinks some voters are not deeply concerned about who would succeed President Joe Biden, the 77-year-old who lashed out this week after a reporter asked if he would submit to a cognitive test before taking the White House.
Just think: his choice would become the president of the United States should Biden’s mental or physical health decline while he is in office.
I can think of at least one person who is very much interested in knowing not just the answer to the succession question but would like also to be comfortable with it.
“I always defer to the judgment of the candidate in selecting the vice president, in terms of who he has confidence in,” the Speaker said Friday during her MSNBC appearance, “that he can work with, who could serve in case of emergency, and also that would do no harm in the presidential, but it’s not, I think, making a difference.”
She reiterated, “I’m very proud, though, that so many women of color are among those being—well, he has a vast array of talented people to choose from.”
Biden’s VP shortlist reportedly has been whittled down to at least two top contenders, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Rice seems like the safe, albeit boring, bet. Harris, on the other hand, would probably do more to excite big parts of the Democratic base, as she is a flashier, more craven partisan demagogue than even Rice. But it would also be a real trip in this anti-police brutality environment for Biden to go with Harris, considering the senator’s storied history of abuses as a prosecutor.
Does any of this really matter? Pelosi may not think so, but chances are she’s in the minority.
