BIDEN – HARRIS: A TICKET FOR THE AGES?

It’s done. Former Vice President Joe Biden

named California Senator Kamala Harris his vice presidential running mate. We tapped Harris as the favorite in our July 13 posting of odds on the contenders. Her selection didn’t come as a surprise, despite its historic nature. Now, she and Biden face two and a half months of campaigning in the weird world of a pandemic and resulting economic devastation against an unpopular, but cunning incumbent who’ll likely do anything to keep power.

The Person

The 55-year old Harris checks many boxes for a spot on a national ticket – elected three

times to statewide office in California, administrator of the second largest justice agency in America, experience on key senate committees (Judiciary and Intelligence). That experience and her education immunize her against tokenism charges. She ran for president in 2020 and acquitted herself well in the early debates, though she faded and dropped out before the primaries started. 

Harris represents several firsts. No black woman has been on a national ticket before nor has an Indian-American person of either gender. She’s the first graduate of a

historically black university (HBCU), Howard University, on a national ticket. Its alumni and former students include novelist Toni Morrison, civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, actors Phylicia Rashad and Chadwick Boseman, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.  She’s the second black person nominated by a major party for national office. If she and Biden win, she’d become the first female vice president. 

The Biden Connection

A long-standing connection exists between Harris and the Biden family. In her campaign

memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, Harris wrote glowingly  of her working relationship with Joe Biden’s now-deceased son, Beau, then attorney general of Delaware. While Harris held that position in California, they worked together on lawsuits against predatory mortgage lenders who precipitated the 2007 housing crisis. Harris called Beau Biden an “incredible friend and colleague” and “a man of principle and courage.” Joe Biden, in announcing he’d chosen Harris, alluded to his son’s high opinion of her.

Some thought her attack on Joe Biden in the first debate last summer might fray the relationship and keep him from picking her. She went after the former vice president over how he’d opposed busing in the 1970s. He demonstrated his political maturity by picking her anyway, noting recently that he doesn’t hold grudges.

The Politics

Much of the immediate discussion about Harris’s selection focused on what impact she might have on the race. Her graduation from

Howard and membership in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and connection to  similar sororities offered the possibility of a massive mobilization of professional black women, the acknowledged backbone of the Democratic Party.  Some thought she might benefit from the “exotic factor” of Jamaican and Asian parentage, something akin to Barack Obama’s Africa-Kansas heritage. Others cautioned that Harris isn’t at the top of the ticket like Obama and the thrill of a person of color on a national ticket might be gone.

Calculating the impact of Harris’s prosecutorial background also occupied a lot

of attention. Some  progressives, especially African  American ones, regard  many prosecutors

with skepticism. Some give Harris credit for reforms while she headed the San Francisco district attorney’s office, but others don’t.

One certainty exists. Trump will try demonizing Harris. Right after Biden announced her selection, Trump labeled her “nasty” and “mean.” His campaign ran an ad claiming she’s a radical leftist who’d abolish police forces, raise taxes, and destroy the oil and gas industry. Some thought her selection, potentially putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency, will motivate Trump’s base to vote in larger numbers. 

Harris embodies many things Trump and his backers love hating – a woman, black, daughter of immigrants, progressive, and an

advocate of the rule of law. She faces the challenges women face in American politics. She must thread the needle between aggression and passivity, the classic cognitive dissonance dilemma.

The Bottom Line

In our May 11 post, we suggested Biden first focus on “what, not who” in the matter of a running mate. We noted the importance of picking someone “ready to play,” selecting a candidate compatible with him (we asked “Are they on the same page?”), and the need for choosing someone who could help heal a fractured, divided nation left in shambles by a historically inept president. We called that “Restorative Capacity.”

Despite the political analysis concerning the pick, we think Biden might have selected Harris because she best met the criteria we laid out. She had the most positives, given her combination of executive and legislative experience in government.  She also had the fewest negatives. Most of the things we can pick at her about are small or fixable.

Biden and whoever he picked, if they win, will have a huge job, much of it about things other than political ideology. The pandemic will likely remain with us when they take office.

They must dig the nation out of the economic hole the pandemic and Trump’s ineptitude indealing with it have caused. They have to restore respect for the rule of law and our basic institutions. They face a massive chore in reclaiming America’s standing in the world, beginning with repairing our alliances. Then there’s the racial divide the George Floyd case exposed. The list goes on.

We suspect Biden probably believes Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko when

they said in their book Do Running Mates Matter that vice presidential candidates don’t yield many votes. But, given his own experience as Barack Obama’s wingman, Biden also knows they can make a big difference in governing. Maybe that’s why he picked Kamala Harris.