Given the corner Joe Biden has backed himself into, Democrats may not want his running mate pick to matter. But there’s no question his decision will be among the most electorally consequential veep choices in the nation’s history.
On Inauguration Day, the former vice president will be older than Ronald Reagan, our oldest president ever, was on his last day in office. If Biden wins and lives long enough, he will turn 80 during his second year in office. After multiple brain aneurysms, surgeries, and years of grief, he seems every bit his advanced age.
He leads in the polls, but he cannot outrun his mortality. His running mate could become president at any moment.
Of course, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to believe this choice matters.
“I don’t think it matters who the vice presidential candidate is, historically,” the House speaker said on MSNBC. “It has never mattered. Lyndon Johnson for victory, Sarah Palin for defeat, but by and large, it’s really all about the two candidates for president.”
Sure, historically, running mates haven’t made or broken elections. But historically, near-octogenarians haven’t been elected as major-party nominees. Consider if Jimmy Carter had turned 80 while in his first White House term, he’d have had to run in 2000. John F. Kennedy would have had to run in 1992, and Barack Obama would have to run in 2040, two decades from now.
But considering how scanty Biden’s running mate options are, it makes sense that Pelosi would want to downplay the risks.
Biden boxed himself into the promise that he would select a woman as a running mate, and despite his continued dominance among black voters both in the primary and the general, the fallout of the police killing of George Floyd has put ample political pressure from the base to pick a woman of color, and preferably a black woman.
For a myriad of reasons — yes, including aftershocks of racism that marginalized black women from positions of power — there simply aren’t many qualified black women for Biden to choose from. There is one black woman in the Senate and no governors. Kamala Harris, arguably the most qualified, didn’t quite prove herself during her own presidential bid.
Harris would bring a strong fundraising machine and fire to a debate against Mike Pence, but she also comes with the baggage of her days as California’s top prosecutor and her messy relationship with the San Francisco machine. Fellow reported front-runner Susan Rice comes with zero proven electoral appeal, no geographic benefit to the ticket, and an entire U-Haul full of baggage ranging from backing foreign dictators to Benghazi, arguably the most ripe fodder for Trump to turn this election into a referendum on Biden and the Obama White House.
Karen Bass is a cult-and-Castro sympathizing commie who would cost Biden Florida. Val Demings, a centrist liberal with anti-Trump bonafides from managing impeachment and the ability to deliver Florida, isn’t even included in most reports of Biden’s thinking on the matter.
Biden won the primary by refusing to fall into the party’s ever-leftward-shifting line. From supporting Israel to refusing to back “Medicare for all,” Biden has made himself about as palatable as possible for independents and Republicans skeptical of Trump. But at last, his divergence with the rest of his party may cost him. He now seemingly has no option but to choose a candidate who will harm the ticket in the middle.
