A vicious xenophobic demagogue who has been fomenting rebellion against the U.S. government for less than four years is likely to occupy the White House this fall. And for now, the only alternative to him is a hugely unpopular aging Democrat who advertises on national television that he can’t speak in complete sentences.
This is the reality we face after Joe Biden’s dismal performance in the presidential debates Thursday night. A comprehensive account of how we got to this dark moment would require several volumes of history. But one cause of our current predicament is worth emphasizing: Democratic presidential candidates have repeatedly failed to select their running mates with the party’s long-term interests in mind.
Vice Presidents do not always become presidential candidates. But it often happens that way. In a partisan primary, few resume items are more advantageous than a term as successor to a beloved president. Given this reality, presidential candidates should aim to choose a running mate who they feel is right for them. highly Elections are possible.
Unfortunately, the last two Democratic presidents did not prioritize politics when choosing their vice presidents.
Barack Obama didn’t choose then-Delaware senator Joe Biden because he thought he would make a great Democratic candidate in 2016. On the contrary, by most accounts, Obama thought Biden would be a completely unviable candidate by the end of his hypothetical presidency. And that’s exactly why he chose Biden.
According to a senior Democratic official interviewed by New York magazine’s Gabriel Debenedetti in 2019, Obama thought Biden would be too old to run for president by 2016. And he reasoned that would make Biden a particularly loyal second-in-command. Lacking political aspirations of his own, Biden would not hesitate to put Obama’s interests and goals above all else.
Ironically, Obama misjudged his running mate in many ways. In retrospect, Biden was likely a stronger candidate in 2016 than Obama’s hand-picked successor, Hillary Clinton.
Nevertheless, Obama was certainly right eight years ago that Biden, then 71, was much older than the ideal presidential candidate. Instead of making a Delaware senator his running mate or giving Clinton a thumbs-up, Obama should have found a vice president who was in his prime and had a proven ability to compete in swing states. Instead, he put the interests of his own campaign and future administration ahead of the long-term interests of the Democratic Party, and in the process, he likely ruined his own legacy.
Biden's choice of Kamala Harris in 2020 was even worse. When he made that choice in August 2020, there was little reason to believe that Harris was one of the most politically powerful Democrats in the country.
Harris had just begun her exceptionally sluggish bid for the presidency. Harris, then a California senator, entered the race for the Democratic nomination with strong donor support and an early surge in the polls. Despite this early advantage, Harris failed to hold together, much less build, a coalition in the months that followed, and her campaign collapsed before the first vote of the primary was cast.
Harris' electoral record before 2020 was also not particularly encouraging. She has never won an election in a swing state or competitive district. And in her first statewide race in deep blue California in 2010, Harris beat her Republican rival by less than 1 percentage point. Two years ago, Barack Obama won that state by more than 23 points.
Given that Biden was 77 years old in August 2020, the odds that his running mate would one day become his party's standard-bearer were unusually high. It was very likely that his health problems would force him to retire before the end of his first term, and even more so his second term. And if Harris becomes her incumbent president, no other Democratic candidate has a chance of beating her in a contested primary. For this reason, the first thing Biden considered when choosing a running mate was his electability.
Instead, he gave enormous weight to demographic considerations. “I think he came to the conclusion that he should choose a black woman,” former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid told the New York Times in the summer of 2020. “They are our most loyal voters and, in my opinion, a black woman deserved a black vice presidential candidate for America.”
Undoubtedly, it is good for a vice presidential candidate to energize the Democratic Party's most loyal voters. That's one aspect of electability. But it's not clear whether Harris actually had that ability. Ultimately, her 2020 campaign resonated so little with Black voters in South Carolina that she had to step down before that state's primary.
In any case, the ability to appeal to swing voters is far more valuable electorally than the tendency to please loyal Democrats. Attracting stay-at-home Democratic voters increases the margin by 1 point, and shifting Republican voters to the column increases the margin by 2 points.
The desire to give historically marginalized groups representation at the pinnacle of American power is a right one. Such representation has the potential to shift cultural perceptions of race and gender in a progressive direction (although it also has the potential to spark a reactionary backlash, as seen during Obama's presidency). But such diffuse cultural change ultimately matters less than public policy, above all for the most vulnerable in American society. Working-class black women have more to lose from a Congress abolishing Medicaid and a civil rights department prioritizing white discrimination than they have to gain from seeing a national election squandered by someone of their race and gender.
In 2020, there were plenty of nonwhite male Democrats with a proven track record of appealing to swing voters to make Biden their choice. Amy Klobuchar continued her landslide victory in light-blue Minnesota. Tammy Duckworth won her Senate race after unseating a Republican in a purple Illinois House district. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer showed her appeal to Rust Belt independents. Tammy Baldwin repeatedly won Senate races in Wisconsin.
Instead, Biden chose a running mate who few in his party considered a worthy candidate for the general election, even though Harris would likely become the party's leader in the near future if Biden won.
Harris’s poor poll numbers over the past two years and the lack of confidence among Democratic insiders in her political acumen have reduced pressure on Biden to step down, allowing his party to select a younger, less popular candidate. Many party leaders seemed to think Biden was a safer choice than his vice president.
As of Thursday night, that view appears to have been wrong. Despite all her responsibilities, Harris’s approval rating is slightly higher than Biden’s at this point. The vice president is a gifted orator and has no shortage of energy. Given the enormous difficulty of supporting a candidate other than Biden, there is now a plausible case to be made that she is now the Democratic Party’s best choice.
But given the importance of removing Trump from power, we deserve better choices. And if Obama and Biden prioritized their party's long-term best interests when choosing a running mate, chances are we will too.