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The Quest for the Next VP, A Woman in 2020

The clock is ticking in 30 days when Former Vice President Joseph Biden announces that important decision of his chosen VP on this ticket. As how this blog was originally created was a time when then Gov. Sarah Palin was selected by the then Presidential Candidate John McCain. With a slogan came to be known as a distinguished hockey mom versus lip tick rule, this was the last attempt to elect a woman to one of the second highest office in the United States, 

Yet we do know we had the first democratic presidential woman candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, for many she won not just on the popular vote. Historians will write this piece of history but also credit her to be the first to win a presidential candidate nomination, Twelve years later, with Mr. Biden the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee, the frenetic final months of the 2008 race stand as perhaps the most consequential stretch of his campaign career. It is a chapter at once critical to understanding Mr. Biden’s present thinking, according to former aides and allies — a moment, like this one, shadowed by grave national uncertainty and economic crisis — and freshly relevant after his pledge in March to name a woman to the ticket.bBiden has long described himself as a champion of women, and his competition then in 2008 Sarah Palin, the last female vice-presidential nominee of a major party, is consistent with a public arc in which he has seemed to figure prominently.

As Joe Biden considers his options today for prospective vice presidents, his position mirrors then Sen. John Cain’s in 2008, to an extent: a former Vice President and septuagenarian statesman-candidate, primed to face a political celebrity in the general election, hoping that his choice can inject urgent energy into his campaign while sending a powerful signal to black and  women of color  voters whom might have hoped to see a minority woman atop the ballot in November.

When Geraldine Ferraro accepted the vice presidential nomination at the 1984 Democratic convention, the history of the moment wasn't just palpable — it was the point.After Ferraro's nomination, 24 years after another woman, Republican Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, would be selected as a running mate. But now, Democrats say it would be nearly impossible to create a list of running mates without including a significant number of women. The confidence of the women on today's shortlist comes after a record number of women ran for president this cycle, and in 2016 as  stated when, for the first time in history, a major party nominee was a woman, Hillary Clinton.

As the speculation brews, several potential contenders, like Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Stacey Abrams, and Elizabeth Warren, have said outright they would take the job, breaking with the tradition of demure sidestepping when asked. Senators Amy Klobuchar (who recently vowed out) and Catherine Cortez Masto are also said to be in contention for the role, as well as Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham just to name a few. Biden recently said he was destined to make an announcement next month in August. 

In our new book, “Do Running Mates Matter?,Kyle Kopko and Christopher Devine analyze half a century of political science survey data to examine what effect a running mate has on the success of presidential candidates.

They claimed that in general, voters are very unlikely to choose a presidential ticket simply because they like or dislike the second-in-command.

But for the Democratic nominee this year, good politics matches good governance as never before, because voters’ No. 1 question will be: Is this vice presidential nominee ready to be president? This why Joe Biden had stated this over and over since March.

Mr. Biden’s campaign creates a vision  to fight for progress, not revolution; to value inclusion, not whipping up the base; and to return a basic goodness to U.S. political leadership. His running mate has to embody that promise, too.

                                                           First In Line

From the author of the New York Times bestsellers First Women and The Residence, an intimate, news-making look at the men who are next in line to the most powerful office in the world—the vice presidents of the modern era—from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden to Mike Pence.

Vice presidents occupy a unique and important position, living partway in the spotlight and part in the wings. Of the forty-eight vice presidents who have served the United States, fourteen have become president; eight of these have risen to the Oval Office because of a president’s death or assassination, and one became president after his boss’s resignation. John Nance Garner, FDR’s first vice president, famously said the vice presidency is "not worth a bucket of warm piss" (later cleaned up to "warm spit"). But things have changed dramatically in recent years. In interviews with more than two hundred people, including former vice presidents, their family members, and insiders and confidants of every president since Jimmy Carter, Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain and reveals the sometimes cold, sometimes close, and always complicated relationship between our modern presidents and their vice presidents.

Who Vice-President Biden wants remains a mystery; he can speak from eight years of experience about what does and doesn’t work. We know that he wants it announced by Aug. 1 and that the former vice president wants someone with whom he’s “simpatico” — and that he sees himself as a "bridge" to a new "generation of leaders." His campaign didn’t comment for this column.



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