My point is that making decisions that way does not help to untilt things. It’s putting a fig leaf over inequality.
True progress in representation requires a different dynamic, wherein power flows up from the bottom, not down from the top.
With Biden’s recent successes - and his route to power - coming most significantly through the support of female and African American voters, I think what we’re seeing here is an example of that dynamic in play.
But this is something I think the left very often gets wrong, demanding the appearance of progress where it has not actually been made in the real world of politics and power. The illusion thus created makes it harder to change the true dynamic, because to many it looks like it has changed already.
And I think that’s something older black democrats in particular understand better than any other group in the US today. The implication from some on the left has been that most have just blindly gone for Biden because of his association with Obama, overlooking the direction in which power now flows in that relationship.
With both HRC and Sanders, power would always have been concentrated under their aegis (albeit by very different means). Like Trump, they have largely been around the edges of the game, and so moved into contention as singular candidates. Biden, by contrast, has always been right in the thick of it. And thus his candidacy is much less imperial in character, being grounded in the meat and drink of reciprocal power politics.
There is a philosophical/ethical problem with excluding men from contention as VP, and of excluding men AND white/Asian/Latina/Native American women from contention for SCOTUS. However, I think it’s okay to set aside this concern when a certain demographic has NEVER held that position. After the first time, though, I don’t think it’s right to make such a categorical promise (even if deep down, it’s what you intend to do).
Bingo. Pretty clever of him!
I think this significantly understates the significance to the party’s future of the nominee’s VP choice. Some VPs didn’t ever run for president. But over the past 67* years, every Democratic VP who sought the nomination was successful (and I’m counting Biden at this point). On the GOP side, it was almost as automatic, with (appropriately) Dan Quayle being the only one to try it and fail. So as long as you’re not a national laughingstock like Quayle, it’s pretty much a lock!
It strikes me as unlikely that Biden is going to pick someone who is ultimately uninterested in running for president herself. So if their ticket wins and she becomes veep, she’s very likely to win the nomination in 2024 or 2028, depending on whether Biden decides to run for reelection. That means there probably won’t be an open race for the Democratic presidential nomination until the 2030s (and maybe not even then!).
*I had to cut it off at this point because in 1952, well before the modern era when primary voters chose the nominee, Alvin Barkley made an unsuccessful bid to get the Democratic nomination. But he was 74 (which was really old then), and had quite publicly suffered heart trouble. The delegates at the convention openly dismissed his suitability on that basis alone. So if you eliminate him as a kind of outlier, you can go a good bit further back.