Biden ends the drama by promising female VP [View all]

The assumption that there is no practical way the Democratic Party can put forward a presidential ticket with two white men has become so widely accepted in journalistic and political circles that a major development at last night’s debate was greeted in some quarters with something of a shrug.

But Joseph Biden’s firm public commitment that he would select a woman as his running mate in the event he stays atop the Democratic race and is the party’s 2020 nominee is historically unprecedented: No major candidate has ever made such a pledge based on demographic characteristics, nor has one narrowed the field of potential vice presidential nominees this early in the year, several months before the decision is usually made.

Bernie Sanders, the only other candidate still competing in an election cycle in which debate stages once had to accommodate as many as 20 candidates over two nights, matched Biden’s hard pledge with a soft one, saying that “in all likelihood” he would also name a women as long as she shares his progressive views and that “my very strong tendency to move in that direction.”

It is the former vice president, however, who is increasingly in command of the nomination fight, and so it was his forthright declaration of his intentions—with little of the usual stoke-the-drama coyness that usually surrounds such picks—that echoed in such a revealing way.



https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/biden-debate-female-veep-131610