Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee is about to choose his running mate for the Presidential election that is to be held in a hundred days time. On the face of it he could elect Lady Macbeth or Elizabeth Taylor and it wouldn’t matter as every parameter points to a Trump lambasting and a Blue avalanche. However the seventy - eight year old Biden has made it quite clear that he is seventy - eight years old and that he is looking at two central characteristics for his vice president, (VP), pick: that she be ready on day one to be President and that she be a woman. While the electorate may give Biden a pass on his selection in 2020 if that Vice President is the Democratic candidate in 2024 she needs to be electable. So this is one mighty important decision.
BIDEN, THE DEMOCRATS, HIS VP AND HISTORY
For the moment Biden has united the Democrats like never before - a refreshing change from 2016 where Sanders fought Hillary till the bitter end. Obama’s former VP has included the booming “socialist” in all the policy making decisions, been in public fora with Stacy Adams, loved Amy Klobuchar, reassured on Kamala Harris, campaigned with Mayor Pete, acknowledged Elizabeth Warren’s wisdom and generally been the unifying factor he hopes to be for a divided nation.
At the risk of stating the obvious this election is the most crucial in the Republic’s history since 1860. In addition there is a parallel to the post depression period in the 1930’s when America was in the depths of despair. So as far as Jay H. Ell is concerned there’s a third crucial consideration to his VP election - the arc of history. This is the first real opportunity that the Democrats have had, other than a short period in the 1960’s, since the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, to be transformative. This cannot be a two year legislative blip as it was with Obama nor a treading water operation as it was with Clinton. While both stopped the cascade of Goldwater conservatism, Nixon thuggery and Reaganomics, which resulted in the social and economic inequity in America today, neither were able to effect any major changes. Even Obamacare is hanging on by a thread.
There is one further factor in whoever may be his Vice Presidential pick, she will be in the public eye with a vengeance from the moment she is named. This is something that Biden is not. At the moment he is in his basement while Trump is running a highly successful campaign against himself. Never the less the POTUS is still hanging onto his cult base which always keeps him in with a chance. Soon the other sixty percent of the electorate have to put a cross next to Biden and his VP running mate’s name. No one is too exited about Biden to start with so doubts might begin to enter…. As matters are proceeding at the moment he is fine… but complacency is dangerous.
Biden is in a powerful position at the moment as Trump wails that nobody loves him any more. Even the extermely conservative leader of the Federalist Society has called him a Fascist. The Democrats meanwhile are poised for a legislative trifecta other than the Presidency. First and foremost is the Senate where the masked McConnell and the Republican President regularly don’t see eye to eye. The Republican Senate leader’s latest leaked injunction to a dozen or so embattled Senators is to distance themselves from Trump if they believe it will enhance their chances at re election. Then Pelosi is on the path to increasing the House majority while for the first time for decades the Democrats may well win the majority of State Legislatures. In all four electoral contests the Democrats are far outraising the GOP which is very telling indeed.
TRUMP IS NOT GOING TO ROLL OVER
However there is still nearly a hundred days to go. The Trump team are going to reinvent Biden. The advantage he has of being “normal” is a disadvantage as well. The Trump/Barr machine have the microphone. They are going to smear him off the face of the earth. Giuliani will emerge from the gutter with the garbage he has been collecting for months. With the Federal New York Attorneys axed by Barr, Giuliani who was under criminal investigation, must be heaving one big sigh of relief. Trump will be announcing the arrival of a vaccine whether it is premature or not. There is the ongoing voter suppression, a national disgrace from which no one historically escapes blame, coupled with the illegitimitising of the election making it essential that this be a clearcut victory.
The Trump campaign is in disarray having suspended their campaign ads to reassess the parlous situation with his new campaign manager. However in addition to the negative tactics the battle plan is the same - hang on to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida while aiming to increase the electoral college via Minnesota and New Hampshire. While that may look like fantasy at the moment with Texas, North Carolina et al on a line as well as all of the former appearing a lost cause, this is how he won the electoral college last time. So Biden better watch these areas because those white workers that switched to give Trump the electoral College victory need to agree with the someone who is after all the Obama Vice President - the same Obama they turned against the last time. Maybe they will give, on rethink, Trump a pass on the virus and buy his vaccine as the solution, even with, by then, close on two hundred thousand dead. A long shot but one Biden must keep the possibility in mind.
SHOULD SHE BE FROM THE MID WEST?
So if this is going to be more than a hiccough in the Trump march to authoritarianism, the electorate need to be reassured that Biden’s pick is more than a gesture to right centuries of wrong to women. To quote Jim Clyburn the House Chief Whip there can’t be another Geraldine Ferraro or Sarah Palin. Now Jim Clyburn the seasoned African American campaigner from South Carolina is where it is all at. If it wasn’t for him there would be no Joe Biden - “We know Joe and Joe knows us”. Just when Bernie Sanders was getting up steam with three wins under his belt Clyburn made it quite clear that the Democrats weren’t going to have another George McGovern. Alluding to Alexandria Occassion Cortez he opined that it was all very well winning in a liberal area from another Democrat but the House was reclaimed by Democrats beating Republicans in Red districts.
Up and till the murder of George Floyd and the resulting widespread national acceptance of the violence toward African Americans, the front runner for Biden’s Vice President slot was Amy Klobuchar. The latter was highly capable, a former Attorney General, from the Mid West and a seasoned campaigner and legislator who had never lost an election. She bowed out like the team player she had always been in the knowledge that as Attorney General of Minnesota where the Floyd travesty had occurred several deaths at the hands of police had gone unprosecuted. As Clyburn sadly noted, history sometimes turns out unfavorably for certain people. Amy stated that she was withdrawing her name in the belief that a woman of color needs to be elected.
Jay H. Ell believes regardless of the Biden position now the original thinking of the securing the Mid West should still be an important parameter. There are still a hundred days to go.
THE PROCESS CONTINUES
Supposedly it was extremely important that the Vice President nominee and Biden be sympatico. Well that is just a luxury nobody can afford.The eleven or so candidates that are supposedly in the running represent incredible talent and promise of a magnitude that the Republicans cannot begin to replicate. However that isn’t enough. What is needed is someone who is tough, experienced, will help the ticket and crucially will inspire enough confidence to continue a transformative agenda in the years to come.
Well, before Jay H. Ell begins, he wants to eliminate one supposed front runner Susan Rice, former National Security Advisor to Obama. This highly capable and articulate politician however is toxic. She is already on the hit list being so closely associated with one or other smear campaign. Her name was unfairly coupled with the Hillary Clinton smear campaign on Bhengazi but politics is a tough game. Most significantly she has never run for public office.
Another highly rated candidate is the Chairperson of the Black Caucus in the House, Karen Bass. She is no spring chicken at sixty - six but that isn’t her biggest problem. She is largely unknown and as discussed that is a luxury the Biden/VP bumper sticker can’t afford. Similarly with several other candidates, such as Tammy Baldwin Senator of Wisconsin, Michelle Grisham Latino Governor of New Mexico, they haven’t the public profile for this task.
Then there is the highly visible Elizabeth Warren who at seventy - one represents the progressive wing. She, in addition to her age, is very polarizing even being at odds with the acknowledged leader of the “Progressive Wing”, Bernie Sanders. Stacie Adams, the African American who was robbed, by voter suppression, of the Governorship of Georgia is somebody one cannot casually axe. Biden has made a point of appearing with her publicly. However she is only forty - six, unashamedly ambitious and many thought that she should have been running for the Senate in Georgia rather than unabashedly pursuing her VP ambitions. Senator Tammy Duckworth a military vet who lost her legs in combat is from the Mid West is yet another who is in the public eye who merits consideration. Her drawback is that she is hardly the most inspiring speaker, nor has the broad national experience necessary for the task.
Val Demmings and Keisha Lance Bottoms are two terrific African American candidates who cannot frighten away suburban Republicans. The former is from Florida and the latter from Georgia - both well within Biden’s electoral sights. Demmings is a former chief of police, highly articulate and with the limited opportunity afforded to her in the House was a star among stars in the impeachment process of Trump. Ms. Bottoms has shown her mettle as Mayor of Atlanta in the Covid crisis getting afflicted herself. Although Biden won’t be doing himself a disservice by putting either of these on his campaign buttons they do suffer from limited national experience.
This brings this down to Jay H. Ell’s final two - the Senator from California, a woman of color, Kamala Harris and the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, who convincingly won the Governorship of this 2016 Trump State. Neither can have warm fuzzies with Biden. Both are recognized public figures. Harris is the sharpest tool in the legislative shed, she chewed up both Barr and Kavanaugh at their confirmation hearings. She is as tough as nails and has to be the front runner at the moment. As a former Public Prosecutor she has her problems with the more progressive wing of the party but they really haven’t a viable candidate at the moment. Whitmer has been sensational on the national scene in her management of the coronavirus and Trump. Her husband has caused some minor embarrassments if focussed on would appear ridiculous in comparison with the Trump disasters. She is from the Midwest where if it is remembered where this all started when Amy Klobuchar was the front runner.
Jay H Ell believes it should be between the above four all of whom are known and none of whom could terrify that fifty percent who are backing Biden at the moment. However he will probably narrow it down to Harris or Whitmer.
CLYBURN HAS THE LAST WORD
Jim Clyburn when bluntly confronted with the question as to whether Biden’s choice has to be a woman of color stated he had three African American daughters but that wasn’t the overriding factor. This wily campaigner has seen too much racism, too many lost opportunities, has been in the struggle too long and knows what is at stake to make a selection solely on those grounds.
One thing is for sure he will mobilize the African American vote for whoever Biden chooses in the manner he mobilized it for Biden himself. This in the belief that Biden was the stabilizing candidate for these times to dump Trump and move the arc of history on. He has waited too long since the victories of the sixties to do anything that will impede progress. He is part of dying breed several of whom have passed recently - Cunningham, Reverend Vivian and of course the greatest, after King, John Lewis. All of them understood the politics of power which flows from the politics of the ballot box in pursuit of Thomas Jefferson’s vision that, “All men were created equal”. Jay H. Ell is quite sure Jefferson meant women as well!
AT THE END OF THE DAY
This is no ordinary time. This is no ordinary election. Neither is the choice of who should be a running mate to a Presidential candidate an ordinary one. Whoever is the pick she needs to get ready to be the center of the media attention and to take on Trump from day one of the announcement. Also she has to be able to stand up to the invective, abuse, misogyny and smearing from an individual who has defied every norm of decency.
One outcome is for sure whoever Biden picks he won’t be telling the rest of America where to get off on inaugural day on Friday, January 20, 2021.
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