Back in the summer, the man set to become the oldest president in the nation’s history seriously considered naming Keisha Lance Bottoms, the promising Atlanta mayor and former judge, his running mate. Mere months later, he reportedly offered her the insultingly low-priority post of the ambassadorship to the Bahamas.
This snub was probably strategic. Joe Biden appears to be paving the way for Kamala Harris to have an uncontested path to replace him as president come 2024.
After an unproductive four years in the Senate and an embarrassing presidential run, Harris managed to become Biden’s running mate anyway. She was the obvious candidate, both as the only black woman in the Senate in a nation devoid of black female governors and as a telegenic politician with massive fundraising appeal and less political baggage than her competitors. In normal circumstances, any outgoing vice president becomes a, if not the, front-runner of a party’s presidential primary, but four years of Biden staffing his Cabinet with rising stars constrained by the virtue of their Republican-leaning states could change all of that.
Bottoms’s electoral prospects are deeply hampered without Biden upgrading her to Washington with an administration pick. Georgia won’t have another Senate race in six years, and Stacey Abrams has already designated herself the Democratic nominee for governor yet again. Absent a vacancy in Georgia’s House delegation, not even Bottoms’s clear political acumen would be enough to overcome the political reality that she could win few job promotions in Georgia.
So Biden’s snub isn’t just an ungrateful one given Bottoms’s early endorsement of his primary bid but also a deeply defeating blow to her long-term career prospects, which may very well be the point.
Tammy Duckworth, the senator seen as a strong candidate to run the Defense Department, was snubbed for the relatively unprecedented nomination of retired Gen. Lloyd Austin. Susan Rice, like Duckworth and Bottoms once considered by Biden to serve as his running mate, was also snubbed in favor of Tony Blinken to run the State Department. Michelle Lujan Grisham reportedly rejected the relatively low-profile post of Interior Secretary in the hope that Biden would let her run the Department of Health and Human Services, a post he then gave to Xavier Becerra. Former presidential hopefuls and notable eventual Biden backers such as Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, and Amy Klobuchar have all remained snubbed by his transition team, and even Pete Buttigieg was relegated to run the Transportation Department, which has as much to do with his experience as a mayor and Navy lieutenant as Neera Tanden’s Twitter trolling has to do with running the president’s budget.
Barring the possibility of Biden tapping Klobuchar or Abrams as attorney general or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as labor or commerce secretary, Harris will emerge as the uncontested highest-profile candidate fulfilling all the demographic priorities of presidential primary voters.
It’s a strategic mistake, not just in terms of lackluster talent hindering Biden’s ability to govern, but also for the long-term prospects of the party. Barack Obama failed to cultivate rising stars during his own presidency in an attempt to coronate Hillary Clinton as his successor, and it resulted in Donald Trump becoming the 45th president. Four years of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer warring with the Orange Man and “the Squad” again crowded out the young Democrats who could have been cultivated into strong presidential contenders, and it once again almost cost them the election.
Biden is a dying breed of Democrat. He embodies a devotion to retail politics and reaching across the aisle increasingly rejected by the loudest voices in the party. He won the primary resoundingly, and preserving his eventual legacy will likely require a candidate who can a) win a primary, b) win a general, and c) beat a Republican (likely) not named Donald Trump. In 2019, voters decided Harris wasn’t it. If Biden continues to snub the candidates, disproportionately including other women of color, whom it could be, 2024 could look like 2016 all over again.
