WASHINGTON – Ask Joe Biden what he’s looking for in a vice president and he fondly describes his tenure as second-in-command to President Barack Obama.…
WASHINGTON – Ask Joe Biden what he’s looking for in a vice president and he fondly describes his tenure as second-in-command to President Barack Obama.
Their eight-year relationship was one of trust, candor and respect, he says, a bond forged as fellow senators and presidential-campaign-rivals-turned-friends. As Biden told supporters recently, he wants someone who is “simpatico with me, both in terms of personality as well as substance.”
It is in many ways a conventional standard recited by generations of presidential candidates before him, with a premium usually placed on deep Washington experience, particularly membership in the Senate or leadership in the House, or executive experience at the state level.
But as Biden enters the final stretch of a decidedly unconventional search process – he has promised to pick a woman, and is vetting several African American contenders who would make history amid a growing racial justice movement – the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is facing growing pressure to break from an old playbook that has resulted in white men being tapped all but two times in the country’s history.
Few black women have had the opportunity to serve in the nation’s highest state and federal elected jobs stymied by a history of systemic racism and sexism in U. S. politics. Two black women have been elected to the Senate, and no black woman has ever won a governorship.
“Hopefully the political class will have evolved sufficiently to understand that some of the rules that they set out are no longer applicable,” said Carol Moseley Braun, who in 1992 became the first black woman elected to the Senate. “The fact of the matter is we’ve never had black women in a lot of these positions so how can you go to say experience in it is the prerequisite? Otherwise, what you get is that old circular firing squad and you wind up never getting anybody.”
Putting aside the old standards could prove especially challenging for Biden, 77, whose long Washington career means many of his deepest political alliances are with people of similar backgrounds, mainly white men.
“He has to recognize that even his set of relationships, I’m quite sure, are geared toward his world,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which educates and mobilizes black people to participate in the political process. “This isn’t about just who he aligns with.”
“Maybe 20 years [ago], having somebody like he said, ‘simpatico,’ that might have been enough,” Brown said. “That’s not enough in the moment that we’re in right now. In the moment that we’re in where every single system is on the brink of crumbling. . he does not have the luxury of his white male political relationships to move him forward.”
The death of George Floyd, a black man who pleaded for his life as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, has forced the nation to confront institutional racism and discrimination in a way that it didn’t even during the tenure of the first black president. Some activists have said that by choosing a black woman, Biden would make a statement about moving the country toward greater equity for marginalized groups. Practically, it would also acknowledge the contribution of black women as the Democratic Party’s most loyal group of voters.
Only one black woman on Biden’s reported list – Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. – has won statewide elections. Harris, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidential nomination, is the only black woman besides Moseley Braun elected to the Senate.
Other black women said to be in the running include Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., who was one the managers of the House’s impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump; Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and former speaker of the California state assembly; Susan Rice, a former national security adviser; and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who is of Thai and Chinese descent, has emerged as a strong contender. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Latina Democrat, also is being considered.
Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, the first black woman to win a major party nomination for governor, is said to have fallen off the list, with many citing the fact that the highest office she held was a Democratic leader of her state legislature. When asked about her readiness to be vice president, Abrams has asserted that she does believe she has the experience to do the job.
Since Shirley Chisholm, D-N. Y., became the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968,47 black women have served in Congress. Black women have chaired subcommittees and held deputy posts in the House Democratic caucus; two have chaired standing committees, and none have served as caucus chair or whip.
