Biden’s running mate

If Joe Biden gets the Democratic nomination, it’s a good bet he will select a woman as his running mate. Biden has mentioned four women he might pick. They are Sally Yates, Stacey Abrams, Jeanne Shaheen, and Maggie Hassan.

Yates has spent her entire career as a lawyer, not much of a recommendation for the second highest office in the land. Her biggest claims to fame are helping to set up Michael Flynn for prosecution and, as acting attorney general, refusing to enforce Trump administration immigration policy.

These actions made her a hero to the Trump resistance. However, they do not recommend her for the second highest office in the land.

The highest office Stacey Abrams has held is Georgia secretary of state [correction, she was state House Minority Leader, not secretary of state]. Her biggest claim to fame is losing the race for governor to a relatively weak opponent, and then baselessly insisting for a year that she won that race. Abrams’s lack of a robust sense of reality is one of several reasons she is not fit for the second highest office in the land.

Shaheen and Hassan are Senators from New Hampshire. Shaheen has been in the Senate for a decade and served for six years as New Hampshire’s governor. She would be a serviceable vice president, but is almost as old as Biden.

Hassan also served as governor, but has only been in the U.S. Senate for three years. She is 61 years old.

It seems clear that Biden mentioned these two mainly with an eye to the New Hampshire primary. It’s not likely that he would select either as his running mate.

Indeed, it’s not likely that he would pick any of the four women he mentioned. I think the odds are probably better that he would pick one of the women currently running against him — either Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris.

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