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.
