Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Obama listens to his running mate Biden at a rally in Springfield, Illinois, August 2008.
The art—because it sure ain’t no science—of picking a vice-presidential running mate typically consists of what invariably are the same very few considerations: Who can bring me a state or two? Who’ll help me mobilize my base? Who’ll reach out to voters I may not otherwise get? Who can unify my party? And—usually ranking dead last—who can be a good president should I fall into an open manhole?
At least one of these hoary considerations has long since proved to be a dead end. The last vice-presidential pick to help his ticket carry a state was probably Lyndon Johnson, who may have helped John Kennedy carry Texas in 1960. But the other considerations have been invoked as reasons for Joe Biden to select one candidate or another as his running mate this year.
Some of these considerations should carry more weight than others.
Base-voter mobilization—in particular, heightening turnout among African Americans—has been invoked by those making a case for Stacey Abrams or California Sen. Kamala Harris, or even Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta. The notion that an African American running mate will prod more black voters to the polls, however, is by no means self-evident. This year’s primaries have already shown a high level of black turnout, redounding to Biden rather than Harris, even in heavily African American Milwaukee, where Republicans did everything in their power to suppress the vote.
The minority group where Biden needs more help is the Latino community, but here, the two primary options—New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto—have virtually no national profiles.
Biden’s campaign recognizes that he can’t just run as the candidate who’d restore the Obama Era of Good Feelings but must run as the candidate who can move the nation forward.
The who’ll-be-a-good-president consideration yields two possible front-runners: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Whitmer benefits, as my colleague David Dayen notes today, from being a swing-state governor who’s won a national reputation for her handling of the coronavirus crisis (to which fearful Republicans have responded by activating their usual trashing machine). Warren, of course, is the Democratic policy star, who churns out detailed positions for crises near and far. Whitmer’s claim as presidential material, in other words, is managerial, while Warren’s is more all-encompassingly political (that is, her ability to formulate creative, workable policies and mobilize support for them). Given Biden’s age and frailty, presidentiality looms larger than usual this time around as a VP criterion.
Looking closely at Biden’s more particular needs heightens the salience of the veep pick’s capacity to bridge the gaps among this year’s Democratic voters, and win reluctant Democrats and independents to his column. In the primaries, Biden demonstrated that he can win one set of semi-independents: suburban white moderates, including some Republicans (women especially) who’ve had it with Trump. His main weakness was among Democrats under 45, who overwhelmingly preferred the more social democratic Bernie Sanders.
This is the gap that Biden most needs to close if he’s to lead the Democrats to the kind of victory the nation desperately needs (winning not just the White House but also the Senate, while holding the House). Thematically, his campaign seems to recognize that he can’t just run as the candidate who’d restore the Obama Era of Good Feelings (which, of course, featured constant Republican vitriol), but as the candidate who can move the nation forward, who can create not just a more tolerant but a more egalitarian nation.
His vice-presidential pick should help him drive that home, which would go a long way to bridging the age and ideological gaps that one state primary after another made plain for all to see.
Library of Congress
Team of rivals: a campaign poster circa 1860
Bridging that gap has often been the primary consideration of presidential candidates. In 1860—another crisis year—the Republican Convention anointed Maine Sen. Hannibal Hamlin as Abraham Lincoln’s running mate, endeavoring to bridge the still fledgling Republicans’ very real gap between former Whigs (like Lincoln) and former Democrats (like Hamlin). Such considerations loomed very large in Lincoln’s Cabinet picks as well, as Doris Kearns Goodwin has documented in Team of Rivals. Though former Whigs made up the clear majority of Republican voters in the 1860 balloting, Lincoln divided his Cabinet evenly between former Whigs and former Democrats, and between moderates and liberals on the anti-slavery continuum. By so doing, Lincoln hoped to preserve a united front against a domestic enemy the likes of which the nation had not previously encountered—the violent, secessionist South.
In today’s political climate, which, astoundingly, is not all that less polarized than in 1860 America, Biden, like Lincoln, needs to bridge the very real gap among all those who will or may support him against Trump this fall. To me, that argues for Warren to be his choice. (Warren, to be sure, is 70 years old—albeit, the most energetic and forward-looking candidate in this year’s voluminous Democratic field.)
It certainly also argues against Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who comes closest among the possible veeps to being Biden’s political clone.
Each of these choices has downsides of its own. In selecting any senator, Biden would temporarily diminish by one the number of Democrats in the next Senate. Klobuchar and Harris come from states with Democratic governors, who would surely appoint a Democrat as their temporary successor until a special election could be held to fill out the balance of their term. Klobuchar’s Minnesota is a swing state, in which a Democratic victory in that election cannot be assumed. Same with Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, who has also been mentioned as a dark-horse candidate. Warren comes from a state with a Republican governor, who would likely appoint a fellow Republican as her temporary replacement (unless the supermajority Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature change the vacancy law and override a gubernatorial veto). Nor is a Democratic victory in the ensuing election to be assumed, either. Indeed, Republican Scott Brown won the 2010 special election to succeed the late Ted Kennedy. With control of the Senate up for grabs, Harris is the only one of the leading Senate-based veep candidates for whom a Democratic successor is assured.
By the way, I note that no consideration has been given to Trump’s own vice-presidential pick, on the assumption that he’ll automatically re-up Mike Pence. I have just a smidgen (well, a semi-smidgen) of a suspicion, however, that if Trump lets Trump be Trump, he’ll dump Pence in favor of Donald Jr. Such a choice would be in keeping with both his favorite system of government (authoritarian monarchy) and his ideology (narcissism).
Just sayin’.
