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When James Corden asked on "The Late Late Show," Biden said he wanted a woman "capable of being president of the United States tomorrow," a phrase that will be applied to whomever he chooses. When a Pittsburgh TV station asked about Michelle Obama, Biden said he'd "take her in a heartbeat," though the former first lady consistently rules it out. Biden, who famously told reporters in 2008 that he was "not the guy" Sen. Barack Obama would pick as a running mate, knows how little any of this chatter matters.
At the end of this coming week, Biden will officially put together his vice presidential search team, turning the speculation into a different, more serious-looking form of speculation. Biden has already thinned the pool of applicants by promising to pick a female running mate. We know plenty about the factors that each potential candidate would bring to the ticket. We know less about what matters to Biden.
We know how Biden has approached this in the past. In 2015, when he considered, then abandoned, a run for president, he met with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and reportedly pitched her on the vice presidency. Last year, even as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., was running against Biden, some in the Congressional Black Caucus floated her as a running mate, and Biden didn't shoot it down. And at other points in 2019, Biden allies suggested that former Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams, who has focused on voting rights since narrowly losing a 2018 bid for governor, could not only join the ticket but boost Biden if he chose her before the primaries.
Biden himself has riffed on his choice, when prompted, with names that are unlikely to appear on a shortlist. He has suggested that former acting attorney general Sally Yates would be a good vice president, as would both of New Hampshire's (female) Democratic senators.
None of them has been floated by Democrats who are trying to raise the profiles of their favorite candidates; Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., for example, turns 74 next year, and a Republican governor would get to select her replacement. The Democrats nudging into this conversation have usually done so to promote lesser-known candidates, such as Rep. Val Demings of Florida, a former police chief; or Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who would be the first Latina vice president; or Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, whose popularity has surged during the novel-coronavirus pandemic.
We can apply three basic tests to the women most often mentioned as Biden running mates, tests only a few of them pass right now.
The excite-the-base test
Biden, unlike many presumptive nominees, starts his vice presidential selection process with a lead in the polls. But he has vulnerabilities with younger voters and Latino voters, who heavily supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the primaries, and he was the nominee least trusted by many left-wing groups at the start of the primary. Biden, who performed best in the primary with suburban whites and black voters of all kinds, has not run as strongly as Barack Obama did with the party's most liberal voters.
Outside groups have been trying to shape his opinion, putting together letters that ask him to pick a black woman (Abrams, Harris and Demings are on their list) or insist that he could unite the left behind him by picking Warren.
The left's pitch is somewhat strained; some Sanders allies resent Warren for never endorsing him, and there is no other well-known, female liberal being touted as a running mate. The pitch from black women comes with more options, and Abrams herself has broken from precedent by explaining why she should be picked. The chief reason: She drove up turnout in her 2018 race, even while losing, in a way Biden would want to emulate.
"If you look at what we were able to accomplish in Georgia, the growth of the numbers and the composition of the voters, I would put my capacity to win an election as the VP running mate alongside anyone's," Abrams told The Atlantic this week.
There is, at the moment, far less pressure on Biden to pick someone who could appeal to white Midwestern voters or moderates. Part of that grows from confidence that Biden appeals to those voters already, while part is a hangover from 2016, when Hillary Clinton passed over some VP candidates with left-wing credibility to pick Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. He was a safe pick, a partner who Clinton was confident could replace her if the worst happened, and when she lost, it clouded the very idea of playing it safe.
The ready-to-serve test
Some candidates for president - Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Donald Trump - faced questions about their relevant experience and picked running mates whom they could pitch as governing partners. Biden's Washington résumé is longer than anyone who has ever sought the presidency, sparing him this problem. But while he has cryptically called himself a "bridge" to the next generation of leaders, he has also suggested he will pick someone who can be president at a moment's notice.
Abrams is the only frequently discussed candidate who is chased by worries about her résumé. Polling has been sparse, with Fox News testing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's appeal in Michigan (she was popular, but did not improve Biden's numbers), and the liberal group Data for Progress finding rank-and-file Sanders voters most happy with Warren. Harris, Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have the advantage of having run against Biden. What matters is not how they ran; it's that they faced national scrutiny, built followings of various sizes, and got voters thinking about them as presidents.
Does it matter whether voters immediately view a running mate as credible? It's only clear that a running mate who becomes viewed negatively can hurt. Voters have previously decided that a running mate was not up to the big job: in 1988, when George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle, and in 2008, when John McCain picked Sarah Palin. Both came to the national stage with relatively thin profiles, but voters did not begin to doubt their experience until Quayle and Palin gave erratic performances.
First impressions of running mates have been all over the map. On June 16, 2016, when Trump announced Mike Pence as his running mate, he trailed Hillary Clinton by 5.8 points in an average of polls. One week later, he trailed by 5.9 points. When Clinton picked Kaine on July 29, she led Trump by 2.6 points; one week later, the race was tied. Four years earlier, when Mitt Romney added Paul Ryan to his ticket, he shrank his deficit against Barack Obama from 4.7 points to 3.4 points in a week. Only Palin was able to boost her running mate into the lead, briefly, a phenomenon that faded as she faced more scrutiny, and as an economic collapse closed off McCain's chances.
The do-no-harm test
Obama's final shortlist consisted of Biden, then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, and then-Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. Of those three, only the Biden pick did not hand Republicans a key office; Kaine would have been replaced by a Republican lieutenant governor, and Bayh's successor would have been picked by Indiana's Republican governor. (Biden's seat could well have been lost in the 2010 midterms, but Republicans fatefully nominated a conservative activist named Christine O'Donnell over well-liked moderate Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del.)
Obama was more careful than Al Gore, who picked then-Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., for his ticket, even though the state's Republican governor had the power to replace him. Clinton was more careful than either, picking Kaine, who by that time had been elected to the Senate, in part because Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, would have chosen his replacement.
Today's Democrats are more nervous than ever about the Senate, particularly about the risk of handing Republicans a seat at the start of a Biden presidency. Just two of the longlist candidates would risk that. Warren would, under current Massachusetts law, be replaced by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker until a special election could be held, though the state's Democratic supermajority could change that law and override a veto. (It's changed this statute twice in the past 20 years.) Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., would be replaced by no one, as Wisconsin law empowers the state legislature, now controlled by Republicans, to set an election to fill the seat.
No other Democrats being discussed have those precise issues to work out. Klobuchar, Harris and Cortez Masto would all be replaced by Democratic governors, though Klobuchar's departure from the Senate would set up a special 2022 election for her substitute; Harris' and Cortez Masto's replacements would simply fill out the rest of their current terms. Whitmer and Lujan Grisham would both be replaced by their own, Democratic, lieutenant governors.
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