“I’m not here for false equivalencies — you have a president who is making not-so-veiled threats of violence at people who are in the middle of uprisings over a murder caught on video,” Rashad Robinson, president of the Color of Change coalition, said of the VP search. “At the same time, Biden should not go into this election thinking that he has black folks, and particularly young black people and black progressives, sewed up.
“He’s going to have to do things to activate that,” Robinson added. “In this moment, he needs to pick a partner that can help him do the heavy lifting of both bringing people together and moving us forward. And that partner has to be someone that has a level of trust and has a connection to the community.”
Klobuchar isn’t the only contender to take heat. At a news conference last week in her pandemic-stricken state of Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had to explain why her husband invoked her to help him get his vessel in the water before the Memorial Day weekend. Then it was Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, defending her purchase of jewelry during widespread business closures.
“This is unprecedented,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. “It does seem that this year we’ve seen a more open vetting process, not only by the campaign itself, but by the candidates who are being vetted.”
Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who has shared with Biden’s campaign a list of her own preferred picks, said she thinks the vice-presidential nominee should be a woman of color — and that she would be concerned about picking a senator from a state with a Republican governor.
“Right now, we need to heal. We need a healing person,” Boxer said, stressing that Biden’s personal rapport would be the decisive factor. “I think it should be a woman of color. I think that would be an amazingly exciting and unifying pick.”
Along with Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a former prosecutor and state attorney general, and Rep. Val Demings, a former police chief, the list of black vice-presidential contenders includes Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia House Democratic leader who lost a close race for governor in 2018, and Susan Rice, the former Obama administration national security adviser.
In part, the heightened attention on the vice-presidential selection process may be a result of the dearth of other movement in the presidential race, with the coronavirus pandemic putting rallies and other events on hold.
“The vice-presidential thing, that’s the one thing people can write about and talk about,” said Scott Brennan, a Democratic National Committee member from Iowa.
Source: politico.com
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