Democrats Have a Real Problem, Part IX
The female Vice President
As Joe Biden was in the final stages of chasing Bernie Sanders from the 2020 Democratic primaries, he made a well-publicized promise to choose a female vice presidential candidate as his running mate.
Partisan ghouls emerged to criticize the gesture (as they always do), but most observers embraced it and why not? Gender clearly has no bearing on an individual’s ability to lead and, if the country insists on dragging its feet before we see our first female President of the United States, a female VPOTUS could be the next best thing. Especially since there’s a fine chance this particular vice president will graduate to the main stage in the event Biden gets elected and decides for whatever reason to be a one-termer.
It might’ve been pandering, but it’s the right kind of pandering. Biden would blunt the loss of female voters who are growing justifiably disillusioned with the party while those voters would put a woman one heart beat from the presidency. Neat, clean, and as sturdy a transaction as DC has to offer.
Then Tara Reade went and blew the whole thing up.
Reade accused the former vice president of sexually assaulting her in 1993 when he was a senator and she worked for him. Since telling her story to journalist Katie Halper, at least five people have confirmed that Reade told them of suffering some form of harassment at work soon after the alleged assault. Two more have corroborated Reade’s professional situation suddenly changed soon after the alleged assault. The most damning of these confirmations are the neighbor’s roughly contemporaneous account of Reade specifying the assault was nonconsensual digital penetration and a video clip of Reade’s now-dead mother calling into Larry King’s CNN show in August of ’93 to discuss her daughter having problems with a high-profile senator.
Reade has also filed a criminal complaint with the DC police to establish she is willing to cooperate under oath and face criminal consequences if she is lying. There is also the matter of Joe Biden’s long-standing and creepy habit of invading the personal space of others:
Compare this with Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault at the hands of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Most observers will recall Ford’s proponents have never produced a shred of evidence that establishes she had ever been in the same room as Kavanaugh, let alone met him. No corroborating evidence of any kind existed until 2012 when Ford mentioned the alleged assault to her therapist and then Kavanaugh by name to her husband. It was purely her word against his and the Democrats went with Ford, labeling her a hero and Kavanaugh an attempted rapist by implication.
Now, Reade has rolled a live grenade into the middle of the room in the form of sexual assault allegations that, at the moment, look exponentially more credible than Ford’s (which is not to suggest Ford is lying).
The problem here—beyond the obvious implications of yet another high-profile, high-powered man credibly accused of sexual improprieties—is clear. Robby Soave does an excellent, succinct job of detailing the argument over at Reason. The long and the short of it is that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have spent years attacking due process principles as applied to alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault, culminating in the virtually evidence-free prosecution of Kavanaugh in 2018.
Frankenstein’s #MeToo monster has officially turned on its creators, which brings us back to the promised female vice presidential candidate.
Although Biden could go all John McCain maverick, the smart money is on him selecting one of his colleagues with a major national profile. That is, political sharps expect Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Stacey Abrams, or Gretchen Whitmer to emerge from the scrum and claim the gig.
All of which sounds great until you turn a bit of scrutiny on these options:
Elizabeth Warren—Senator Warren has the progressive bonafides that would make her the perfect fit according to those who believe Hillary Clinton could’ve won the presidency in 2016 had she selected a progressive veep rather than Tim Kaine. This may be true. It’s undeniably true, however, that Warren famously nuked Michael Bloomberg’s campaign over his mistreatment of women, made her own #MeToo experiences a central theme of her campaign, and threw impassioned support behind Ford while promising to re-open an investigation into Kavanaugh should she be elected POTUS. There’s also this:
“Vote for Biden so we can impeach Kavanaugh” seems like a message of questionable efficacy.
There are also practical matters. Tabbing Senator Warren would (1) open up a seat in the Senate to be replaced by a Republican governor; and (2) pair Biden with a VP candidate who would badly outshine him on the campaign trail.
Kamala Harris—Senator Harris has more dubious progressive credentials than Warren, but she is a razor-sharp, multi-racial woman who is ferociously effective when given a bit of leverage. Of course, her most spectacular demonstration of these attributes came at Biden’s expense during the whole busing kerfuffle early in the primaries. While a bit of nuance might credibly justify the racial about-face, Harris will have a harder time explaining away the screaming hypocrisy of serving as Biden’s top proxy in light of her own #MeToo advocacy and personal crusade against Justice Kavanaugh. The latter of which includes, like Warren, publicly calling for his impeachment less than a year ago:
Our society is littered with glaring examples of the rich and powerful facing minimal consequences for their actions — often until their secrets are unearthed and public outcry ensues. In some cases, the rich and powerful not only escape accountability altogether, but are handed even more power despite what they have done…No person, no matter how rich or powerful, should be above the law or escape accountability.
Also like Warren, Senator Harris would be the far more dynamic, magnetic presence on the campaign trail should she be paired with Uncle Joe.
Amy Klobuchar—Senator Klobuchar makes the most sense for Biden if you think Kaine was a solid pick for Clinton in ’16. She is as smart and capable as either Warren or Harris, and is the most ideologically consistent with Biden of the three. She is a well-known political commodity after her surprisingly successful presidential campaign and an effective campaigner, but not so effective that she would badly overshadow Joe. Plus, her posture during the height of the #MeToo movement is most amenable to hopping on the Biden bandwagon. She took a more nuanced position than most when Al Franken got chased from his seat as her fellow Senator from Minnesota. Nor did she provide any radioactive sound bites when siding with Ford and voting against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Unfortunately, she excites progressives about as much as Biden and risks further alienating them in the same way Kaine did, possibly leading to a repeat of Hillary’s humiliation in the general election.
Anyone else—the gigantic advantage owned by all three Senators is that no thinking person should have reservations about any of them taking over the reins of the country. Once you look further down the list, though, that question becomes disqualifying. Abrams is a former state legislator whose national claim to fame is losing the Georgia governor’s race. Whitmer is also a former state legislator who’s been governor of Michigan for less than 18 months and reviews of her performance have been mixed. This is especially true with regard to her handling of the COVID-19 crisis, which has launched her national profile and drawn praise from the left despite her state sagging under the most fatalities outside the New York metropolitan area.
The degree of concern multiplies as the list turns to names like Michelle Obama, Catherine Cortez Masto (Senator from Nevada), Tammy Duckworth (Senator from Illinois), Val Demings (Congresswoman from Florida), etc. The more progressive of these candidates would also have their own public advocacy for believing women undercut the sincerity of their beliefs, either in #MeToo or in Biden. Maybe both.
Consequently, the vice presidential candidate will either be Biden’s centrist doppelganger; someone who will be attacked as a shameless hypocrite by the left and right; or someone with a highly questionable national profile, if any at all.
