Veep-veep
Who's going to be Joe Biden's running mate?
This is a rare Saturday newsletter, because Joe Biden’s looking like he’s going to announce his Veep choice real soon now. Also: I meant to send it yesterday, but life got in the way, so…
This is how close we were to Evan Bayh being vice president. I snapped that photo 12 years ago, the weekend before Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate and eventual vice president.
In August of 2008, Barack Obama’s choices came down to three men: Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, and Joe Biden. Two senators and a governor (Kaine later was elected senator). Obama’s dilemma came down to a few elements, from what I recall, and what people involved in the process told me after the fact. Briefly:
Bayh was the safest choice, in keeping with his cautious mien. Picking him would mean doubling down on the “no-drama” nature of the campaign; his vetting was the least dramatic of the three. It also called back to when Bill Clinton - like Obama, an “outsider” to Washington politics - picked Al Gore as his wingman. Both Bayh and Gore were sons of legendary liberal senators, both distinguished themselves by being more centrist than their fathers, and both had Washington experience the presidential nominee lacked. While no one would be exactly excited about an Obama-Bayh ticket, no one would need to worry about Bayh stealing the spotlight — again, just like Clinton-Gore in 1992.
Kaine was probably the emotional choice. Like Obama, Kaine was a newcomer to national politics; he’d only been elected governor of Virginia in 2006. Both Kaine and Obama had unusual backgrounds - Kaine spent nine months in Honduras helping Jesuit missionaries as a young man, and later on worked as a lawyer litigating fair housing lawsuits before going into politics. Picking him would emphasize the outsider nature of the campaign. It would also be risky, given the relative lack of national governing experience, especially at a time of crisis.
Biden was probably the “savvy” choice. He’d been a senator since Obama’s childhood, had tons of legislative experience, and therefore would reassure anyone skeptical about Obama’s lack of experience. The challenge was two-fold: Biden hadn’t just been one of Obama’s challengers for the Democratic nomination, he’d rankled folks on the campaign by making some rather unfortunate remarks about him early in the campaign. Which dovetailed into the other issue facing a Biden pick - his propensity for gaffes and grabbing headlines.
We know how this wound up. Biden reassured Obama’s advisors that he’d be a team player, and that he’d have no issues with being a disciplined campaigner. Moreover, over the course of the “veepstakes” - the nickname for the vice presidential selection process - Biden and Obama crafted a very collegial relationship, with Obama making it clear that Biden would be a trusted governing partner.
So what does this tell us about Biden’s process, now that he’s The Guy making that choice?
Like I told my friend Dave on Twitter, not a particularly educated one. Here’s where I think we stand, based on what Biden himself has said - "I’m going to have a choice the first week in August and I promise I’ll let you know when I do," Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Del., where he'd just unveiled his plan to combat racial inequality in the United States.
TL;DR: I think it’s down to three women, and the choice is going to look obvious in retrospect, but not necessarily right now. He probably hasn't made the final decision yet, but he knows in his gut who he’s going to pick, and what’s happening now is a confirmation of that gut decision.
The circle of who actually knows where Biden is in the process is extremely small - former senator Chris Dodd is the guy “heading” it, but it probably includes campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior advisors Ron Klein, Mike Donilon, and Anita Dunn, communications director Kate Bedingfield, the lawyers working on the vet, the digital director, maybe a few others.
Sure, there’s people who are talking to reporters, but I strongly suspect those folks aren’t as much “in the know” as they’d like you to think they are. The folks who know, aren’t talking; the folks who don’t, are. Like me, they’re drawing inferences from past experience and history.
Anyway: we know that the Democratic “convention”, such as it’ll be, runs from August 17-20. The third night’s traditionally when the nomination takes place; that’s Wednesday, August 19th. So the latest we would possibly know is Tuesday, August 18th; but we’ll know way before then. That’s both because Biden said he’d make a choice the first week of August - i.e., next week - and because his campaign probably has a week’s worth of “events” showcasing the ticket laid on.
In a non-pandemic world, that would look something like an announcement tease next week, with the digital department driving list signups via text and email all week. You know the drill: 🚨🚨🚨Sign up NOW to be the FIRST TO KNOW! 🚨🚨🚨, etc., etc. The announcement itself would probably happen Friday evening (August 8th), with a big kickoff rally for that Saturday (the 9th). That then leads into a whole week of events for the ticket leading up to the convention, all designed to amplify earned media and create footage for paid media, as well as drive enthusiasm for Biden and his veep.
But that’s not the world we’re in.
The digital rollout probably stays the same. In fact, if anything, it takes on much more urgency, because it needs to stand-in for things the campaign won’t be able to do, like in-person events. It’s a solid opportunity to do some innovative, vibrant stuff. I know Biden’s digital team has some truly talented, sharp thinkers and makers, like Rob Flaherty and Sarah Galvez, among others, and they’re probably deep at work designing what that looks like.
Beyond the digital side: there’s probably going to be a few in-person events, but don’t be surprised if the formal announcement is much more muted than you’d expect. The bottom line is that Biden’s team will almost certainly use it to underscore their central argument: that Biden and his vice presidential pick will be ready to govern from day one, unlike Trump, who’s unfit to govern.
ok ok OK, man, but who is he gonna pick?!
Fine. I promised a prediction, so here it is. I’m putting it down, so if I’m wrong, you can come back with a big ol’ told you so. Without further fuss, here’s who I think the shortlist comprises:
Elizabeth Warren
Kamala Harris
Susan Rice
It feels like Warren and Harris have been on some kind of shortlist from the start, so that shouldn’t surprise anyone. They both ran for president, and for various reasons, fell short; I won’t belabor why I think that is. Both fulfill the primary function of the vice presidency, which is the ability to be president from day one.
In fact, Warren and Harris are such obvious choices that it feels to me we’ve been running around trying to think who else Biden could potentially select, given that he narrowed his choices from the start by committing himself to selecting a woman as his running mate. This explains (to me, anyway) why we’ve seen flurries of attention directed towards various other women.
First it was Stacey Abrams. Then it was Gretchen Whitmer, followed by Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; Val Demings got the spotlight, as did Tammy Baldwin and Michelle Lujan Grisham. Tammy Duckworth, too, and Susan Rice — and now it’s Karen Bass.
You see where I’m getting at. This is what happens when you let people like Chris Cillizza and Josh Kraushaar and Jon Swan be your lead political analysts — folks who treat politics as sports, as if DC were Bristol, Connecticut, but with danker weather. You end up talking about literal life-or-death matters like who should be ready to step in for the oldest man ever elected president with all the breezy abandon of Dave from Reston calling into 106.7 FM The Fan yakking about how Dwayne Haskins has way more upside than Kyle Allen now that Ron Rivera’s coaching him.
It’s a town full of nerds who’ve never heard of backup quarterback syndrome. There’s always someone who seems like they could be the savior, even when you don’t need one. The backup always is filled with possibility, while the guy on the field is a known, limited, boring quantity.
This is why we’re now talking about an obscure 66-year-old California congresswoman whom hardly anyone would’ve considered as a potential president prior to last week. It speaks volumes about the poverty of Washington “savviness”. Most of these folks scoped her Wikipedia biography for the first time last week; and somehow that leads them to think that Karen Bass is the person who should be one 78-year-old heartbeat from leading this country through a catastrophic pandemic, massive civil strife threatening to turn into armed conflict, and a cataclysmic depression?
…what?
Let me be clear: this isn’t a dig at Bass, who’s got the kind of long and low-key political career that accomplished legislators tend to have. But that’s precisely the point; in contrast to Warren and Harris, nothing in Bass’ career would lead you to see her as a potential executive.
Anyway.
People seem to think that the “obvious” choice is Kamala Harris, and I get it. If Biden wanted to pick a Black woman as his veep, then she’s the most obvious choice. And that’s the thing: to me, it feels like people are letting the idea of Kamala Harris™ overshadow the reality of Kamala Harris. The idea of Harris being that, in short, she’s the woman version of Barack Obama. Which, again, I get it. They’re both bi-racial; they’re both political trailblazers, on and on and on.
But the reality falls short of the idea, and Harris’ presidential campaign gave plenty of evidence for it. Its best day was its first; she never made a clear case for why she should be president, and the campaign struggled to meet what people expected from her as an idea. Does that mean Biden won’t pick her? I don’t know, but I’d be shocked if her performance didn’t weigh on Biden. Moreover, Biden’s biggest weakness isn’t ideological, it’s that he’s not an Ideas™ guy, aside from foreign policy, where he considers himself an expert. Harris doesn’t do anything to address that weakness, and to the degree he’s ideologically vulnerable from the left, she amplifies those weaknesses as well.
Speaking of ideas and policies…
The case for Warren is clear, and brief: she’s been the leading policy mind in this presidential cycle, and what’s more, it’s becoming more and more apparent that she’s the only Democrat willing to come up with the kinds of ideas and policies equal to the crises we face. That was the gist of her campaign. What should make people take note is that she and Biden seem to have forged a solid working relationship since he became the presumptive nominee, and that Biden’s moved to the left on various areas as a result.
For a brief moment in the fall, it looked as though Warren was the frontrunner for the nomination, or at least poised to supplant Biden as the frontrunner. It didn’t happen, for lots of reasons. The campaign’s end didn’t stop her from generating plans and ideas; she’s kept on doing that all through the spring and into the summer, and if it wasn’t for her - and to a lesser degree, Bernie Sanders - it’s clear to me that no Democrat would be engaging in this.
Selecting Warren does two things. One, it definitely galvanizes members of Biden’s coalition who aren’t exactly stoked to vote for Biden (as opposed to voting against Trump). Two, it absolutely sledgehammers home Biden’s central argument: that he and his vice president are ready to fix this shit right from the start. No other potential nominee does that for Biden.
So let’s talk about my third choice, Susan Rice.
Of all the wildcard choices, she’s the most likely, because they have a pre-existing relationship from the Obama years. Biden is already comfortable working with her, which he considers key for his vice presidential choice, and they see eye-to-eye on foreign policy, even if they might disagree on specifics here and there. She’s a Black woman, which checks the demographic box that folks (notably Jim Clyburn) have been urging on Biden. She’s deeply experienced in foreign policy and national security, and because of her service in both the Clinton and Obama presidencies, familiar with the nuts and bolts of presidential administration.
The only thing is that the crises facing a President Biden on January 21, 2021 are domestic in nature. Rice’s positions on domestic policies are utterly unknown; we can make some assumptions, I guess, but they’d frankly be scientific wild-ass guesses. Picking Rice would be, frankly, somewhat risky — and I suspect that Biden knows that deep down inside. Again, does that mean he won’t? I don’t know! But you’d be silly to dismiss it.
So there it is. At the end of the day, the choice is clear in retrospect: it’s Elizabeth Warren.
OK, that’s a wrap. I love y’all. Sorry for the lack of newsletters; I’m dealing with some personal health and family issues, plus waves arms around. Take care of yourselves, and let’s take care of each other. We’re only getting through this together.