Democrats' Biden faces vice president dilemma
US and Democratic party presidential candidate Joe Biden has a really big dilemma on his hands. Who will be his running mate?
Naturally, picking an election running mate is a complex process.
What is interesting about the current moment is that the Biden campaign is hugely under pressure to pick a black woman.
In April, a group of black women activists in the Democratic party wrote an open letter urging Biden to pick a black woman. They wrote: “It is a fact that the road to the White House is powered by black women, and black women are the key to a Democratic victory in 2020.
“Black women are not only the most loyal voters for the Democratic party — we are key to igniting black voters across all demographics to show up in record numbers.”
Black women form a distinctly reliable voting bloc for the Democrats. According to The Guardian, 90% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 elections against Donald Trump.
It seems clear that within Biden’s Democratic party base itself that there was a general openness to a potential woman vice-presidential candidate. With the failure of Clinton to become the first woman president of the US, there seems to be some sense that the Democrats ought to try to make history by at least having a woman vice president.
As such it seemed that Biden was getting closer to picking fellow presidential campaigner Senator Amy Klobuchar as his vice president.
Klobuchar appealed to the Biden campaign because of her gender as well as because she was considered conservative enough to find favour with similarly conservative suburban voters.
Klobuchar then would have ticked the “woman” box, without upsetting the conservative segments of the US that Biden’s campaign is trying to woo.
However, this plan seems to have been scuppered by the #BlackLivesMatter protests as within days of the protests breaking out, Klobuchar pulled out from the vice president running, and made a statement that is was time for a “a woman of colour” to rise to the vice president spot. Klobuchar did not do this out of some virtuous political principle. What made her candidacy untenable were potentially contentious aspects of how she had dealt with matters of policing and criminal justice in her previous career as a public prosecutor.
Given the #BlackLivesMatter context, there was no way Biden could proceed with Klobuchar, who was seen to not favour victims of police brutality.
Biden’s campaign has thus been pushed into a corner.
On one hand, they have to pick a black woman to show that they are not simply paying lip service to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The potential black vice president candidate would also have to come across as independent and holding their own, so that they are not accused of being mere window dressing for Biden.
On the other hand, Biden’s campaign also wants to steal away some conservative white voters from Trump. As such, he must find a black woman candidate who will not be rejected by white conservatives.
The whole process will be especially tricky because voters are aware that Biden may very well not finish his term of office due to his age.
His vice president may very well become president within his term.
The prospect of a black woman coming into a default presidency if Biden steps down may well make white conservatives vote for Trump, even if they like Biden.
Ultimately, of course, the debate on a black woman VP for Biden cannot substitute for structural issues.
A Joe Biden presidency is unlikely to bring about the kind of necessary economic and social policy reform that will help black Americans and the poor in the US in general.
While a black woman vice president would be a historic moment, it should not be a distraction from matters of policy substance.
Black women form a distinctly reliable voting bloc for the Democrats