Who could Joe Biden pick for a running mate? Women make up the most obvious options
With former Vice President Joe Biden’s victories on Super Tuesday, many are wondering who could pick as a running mate, and when, if he ends up clinching the nomination over Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Biden hasn’t started naming names, but that doesn’t mean pundits and political watchers aren’t debating possible running mates for the man who spent eight years as President Barack Obama’s VP.
Biden is currently leading the delegate count with 477 to Sanders’ 418, according to Vox. Warren so far has 36 delegates. Biden has opened a massive lead in betting odds after Super Tuesday as of Wednesday afternoon, now given more than an 80 percent chance to be the Democratic nominee to take on President Trump in November.
A candidate needs at least 1,991 delegates to win a majority of delegates and avoid a brokered convention.
Most of the names coming up are familiar to people following the Democratic primary campaigns, and most of them are women: Sen. Kamala Harris, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and others.
Some on Twitter have even hoped he’d bring Obama on as VP.
While campaigning in Iowa in late January, someone asked Biden about the possibility of picking Stacy Abrams for his running mate. “There’s at least nine women I can think of who are fully capable of being president,” Biden said, according to Steve Peoples with the Associated Press.
Speaking in Iowa in November, The Des Moines Register reports, “(Biden) said the most important thing is to pick a running mate who aligns with you philosophically and who you can trust with big assignments.”
That could put Warren out of the picture if he feels she’s too far to the left of him. And as the Washington Post pointed out recently, if a Biden-Warren ticket won the election, her senate seat would be left open for the Republican governor of Massachusetts to fill with his own pick.
Other options could be former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Sen. Amy Klobuchar, both firmly in the moderate camp. And they both dropped out of the race just before Super Tuesday to endorse Biden.
Abrams, who narrowly lost the election to be governor of Georgia in 2018, is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Politico reports. She had been the minority leader in the state house before running for governor.
Earlier this year, Abrams, 46, told the website FiveThirtyEight that she plans to become president of the United States by 2040.
Harris, a former prosecutor and now senator for California, dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in December.
When she dropped out, Biden complimented Harris, calling her a “solid person, loaded with talent,” according to the Associated Press.
Harris criticized Biden’s record on race, busing and segregation during a debate last year.
“Senator Harris has the capacity to be anything she wants to be,” Biden said after Harris dropped out, according to Politico. “I talked to her yesterday. She’s solid. She can be the president one day herself. She can be the vice president. She can go on to be a Supreme Court justice.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Who could Joe Biden pick for a running mate? Women make up the most obvious options."
