With no sports on television, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time paying attention to free agency in the National Football League, and its upcoming draft of college players. These are really the only things of any consequence that are still generating interesting articles in the sports world. Recently, the league’s general managers petitioned the commissioner to delay the draft because they aren’t able to do their normal due diligence. Specifically, they can’t bring the players in to get medical examinations or psychological evaluations, and they’re also hampered by being locked out of their facilities where they’d normally be holding meetings to set up their draft strategies. The commissioner ignored their requests and the draft is set to go on as scheduled beginning April 23.
At New York magazine, Gabriel Debenedetti has a piece on Joe Biden’s process for selecting a running mate. Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 crisis has affected him in much the same way as it has affected the NFL’s general managers.
In a world dominated by social-distancing measures, it’s not clear to them how Biden is supposed to get to know his potential running mates, which is usually an important part of the process, and one on which Biden is likely to put an extra emphasis given his tight relationship with Obama, say those close to him. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carved out time from her busy campaign schedule to spend days on the trail with options like Warren, John Hickenlooper, Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker, and Tim Kaine (her eventual pick) even before submitting them for formal vetting or meeting the finalists for interviews at her home. Biden was only able to hold one rally with [Amy] Klobuchar and one joint event with [Kamala] Harris and [Gretchen] Whitmer before the campaign trail shut down earlier this month.
This is impacting the schedule for making a decision. The pandemic is also impacting the primary schedule as future contests are pushed off. This delays the date on which Biden will mathematically eliminate Bernie Sanders, and the Biden team is mindful that he’ll need the support of some of Sanders’ supporters. He doesn’t want to antagonize them.
Perhaps the biggest question looming over [Elizabeth] Warren’s chances is how much work Biden thinks needs to be done to win over Sanders’s voters, and how useful Warren would be to achieving that goal.
That question is one reason Biden has been careful not to talk too much about this process in public, especially since Sanders could decide to remain in the race into the summer, as more primaries are delayed to June due to the virus. “We don’t want to piss off Bernie, and rushing to talk about this could end up pissing off his supporters, too,” said the congressman. “Don’t discount this concern.”
Biden has already made a public commitment that he will pick a woman as his running mate, and Debenedetti says that former rivals Klobuchar, Harris, and Warren will be on the eventual shortlist once the initial vetting process is complete. Other people mentioned in the article include governors Michelle Lujan Grisham (New Mexico) and Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Representative Val Demings (Florida), and Georgia’s House minority leader Stacey Abrams, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Biden obviously knows some of these women better than others. His problem is that it’s not easy to meet with any of them in person. This would be important in any circumstance, but Biden views his tight-knit relationship with Barack Obama as the key to their successful partnership, and he wants to have confidence that anyone he selects will work with him in the same way. How can he get a feel for that if he doesn’t have a chance to get to know the candidates?
He wants to have an ideological kinship with his vice-president, and this is also something he’d want to explore in person. For someone like Elizabeth Warren who basically got her start in politics opposing a bankruptcy bill promoted by Biden, this could require an extensive feeling out process. Can they get comfortable with each other?
For others who might lack obvious credentials for the presidency, Biden will want to get a sense of what they know about the federal government and how it operates. A lot can be done over the phone, but it’s a poor substitute for having someone sit down in your living room.
Fortunately, Biden has more power over the process than an NFL general manager and he won’t be forced to make any decisions before he’s ready. Yet, he’s not in total control of the schedule.
He’s been quarantining himself in Wilmington, Delaware, but should he become infected with the COVID-19 virus, he wants to party to be in a position to go forward, possibly without him. This, too, is having an effect on his decision process:
When the camera is off, though, a handful of high-ranking Democrats who have the former vice-president and his advisers’ ears have begun agitating for him to expedite the running-mate selection process in the interest of presenting a ticket that can provide a clear signal of presidential readiness to contrast with Trump, can seize the spotlight from him, and can even minimize potential chaos before the party’s convention if something does, indeed, happen to Biden.
So, he’s under pressure to act quickly while still mindful that Sanders has not conceded the race. The convention is still 16 weeks away and his advisers Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer have recommended a veep vetting process that lasts at least eight weeks. That process could get truncated and the field of potential running mates could be winnowed. Just as coronavirus disruptions might cause a college football player with health issues to fall in the NFL Draft, they might keep some candidates from getting a full consideration from Biden. And, just as operating with imperfect information might cause an NFL team to make a bad draft decision, operating under these less than ideal conditions might cause Biden to make a less than ideal choice.
There are plenty of video conferencing and video chat tools that he can use now that would probably be more effective now than a simple phone call. Like everyone else he will have to go virtual. Certainly they can find a creative way for him to interact with potential running mates
Sure, but they’re not the same as interacting in person. Particularly for an old-school pol like Biden, who’s spent 50 years doing business face-to-face, video conferencing just isn’t the same. (It might be the best available option, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same.)
I’m sure there are younger folks around him who can help him get the hang of it. I speak as an old attorney among a community of old attorneys who are now taking to platforms like Zoom, often over our own internal objections, and discovering it’s not so bad. In fact, we’re kind of blown away by how well they work. It’s amazing how the best platforms can simulate reality.
4
If he is worried about bankruptcy being an issue or M4A this might be a good time to pick Warren. They are both timely issues at the moment. That will also help bring along the pest and his supporters. But he may also feel an obligation to his African American supporters and that could mean Kamala Harris. They both seem well qualified and he can have initial interviews on line and then invite each to meet perhaps in a neutral and virus free place. Is this something he needs to complete immediately?
Thanks for your comment. A couple of responses:
With a disease that’s communicable for several days after infection and before initial symptoms show up, there’s no guarantee of a “virus free place” anywhere.
I think the answer to your closing question is: no, and there are multiple good arguments for why Biden should take full advantage of the 3-4 months before he has to announce his pick:
1) the aforementioned “what will Bernie do?” consideration;
2) precisely because it’s harder right now to fully vet candidates (and because Biden’s age makes it a higher stakes decision), all the more reason to deliberate carefully (and be seen as deliberating carefully) before making a decision;
3) rolling out the decision closer to the convention, and as part of a larger “using the convention to get a bounce into fall” strategy, could have a slightly positive impact for the campaign;
4) by all indications the country’s about to get slammed by COVID-19 over the next month or two, so there’s no reason for Biden to do anything that shows he cares about anything other than the suffering the American people are enduring.
I think Warren would be a very good choice. The downside is she’s older and would be on a ticket that needs youth. It also needs the excitement of a new face. I really like Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico. She’s smart and progressive, with a long history of healthcare activism. She’s handling the Covid-19 crisis in New Mexico really well, getting far out in front of it in a way no one else has — which makes her rather fearless, as she’s standing up to those who pray at the alter of the god of money. She’s also an exciting fresh face. I’d be delighted if Biden chose her (though sad for the people of New Mexico, who would be left with very big shoes to fill). So glad the Governor of my state, Jay Inslee, is not among the finalists. He’s not a terrible person but rather an old fashioned Democrat, not nearly progressive enough or otherwise distinct from Biden.
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If he selects Warren isn’t there a chance we lose that senate seat? Massachusetts has a republican governor. And yes there would be a special election but Scott Brown proved nothing is certain that we hold that seat. Not only that, but if I’m not mistaken the special election would come a couple of months after Biden is inaugurated meaning in the first few months he’d be an office we’d be one Senate seat short. I really don’t think that’s a good idea.
Someone has to explain to me why journalists are so obsessed with photos of Joe Biden eating an ice cream cone.