Biden could be picking the next president: VP choice more important than ever

There are ten reasons to pick a vice presidential running mate. Reason number one: Pick someone who will help you win. The other nine reasons don’t matter.

Biden’s choice of running mate will be exceptionally important this year because of Biden’s age. If he wins, Biden will be 78 years old on Inauguration Day — the oldest president ever to take office (Donald Trump was 70, Ronald Reagan was 69). Biden has to pick a vice president who is clearly qualified to take over. He said so himself last week after meeting with former President Obama. “I’ve actually talked to Barack about this,” Biden said. “The most important thing is that it has to be someone who, the day after they’re picked, is prepared to be president of the United States of America if something happened.”

Say Biden is elected. He will be 81 years old when it’s time to run for re-election. If he decides not to run for a second term, his vice president will be the obvious favorite to claim the Democratic nomination for president in 2024. So Democrats will very likely be nominating their next two candidates for president this summer. And Democrats will be asking voters to vote for the next two presidents.

Under normal circumstances, Americans don’t vote for vice president. You can prove it with two words: Dan Quayle. Voters never believed that Quayle was qualified to be president, but they elected him vice president anyway. For Biden, his running mate’s qualifications could be a real issue. The bottom line for Biden is this: No Sarah Palins. And no (female) Dan Quayles.

Biden’s commitment to name a woman to the ticket was clearly aimed at healing the division in the party between centrists and progressives. As well as reaching out to the many women who are infuriated by Donald Trump. What about Bernie Sanders supporters? The prospect of a second term for Trump is likely to keep the “Bernie bros” in line. There probably won’t be many Sanders supporters who end up staying home or voting for a third party in November because they don’t see any difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Experience is not usually a top-of-mind qualification when Americans vote for president. In fact, it may be the only job where experience is actually a disadvantage. Voters often look for outsiders who are not part of “the mess in Washington.” Being inexperienced in Washington helped Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama and Donald Trump get elected.

This year, President Trump’s lack of experience in government has become painfully evident in his handling of the public health crisis. This time, voters may actually want a candidate with extensive experience in government. That would clearly work to Biden’s advantage. But Biden also needs to pick a running mate who can claim experience.

Fortunately, Democrats now have many well qualified female candidates. But there is another constituency that has huge claim on Biden: African-Americans. “To look up and see a black woman on the biggest stage I think would say a lot about how much we value the most committed Democratic constituency,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta told the New York Times. Because the fact is, Biden owes his political survival to black voters.

Biden’s candidacy had been given up for dead after he lost the first three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. The turning point came on Feb. 29 in South Carolina. Fueled by strong support (61 percent) from African-American voters, Biden beat presumed frontrunner Bernie Sanders by more than two to one (49 to 20 percent). Three days later, blacks were again crucial when Biden won 10 out of 14 contests on Super Tuesday.

Why did blacks save Biden? The obvious reason is that he had been Obama’s vice president for eight years. Moreover, a few days before the South Carolina primary, Biden won the endorsement of the most influential African-American Member of Congress, Rep. James Clyburn, often labeled “the godfather of South Carolina Democrats.” Still another factor may have been important for black voters in South Carolina — stopping Bernie Sanders.

African-Americans are desperate to defeat Donald Trump. Trump — whose base is overwhelmingly white — threatens to reverse many of the gains blacks have made over the last 60 years. In the latest Gallup poll, Trump’s job approval rating among blacks is just 17 percent. Blacks were apparently alarmed by the prospect that Sanders could win the Democratic nomination and then lose the election to Trump. Sanders’s momentum had to be stopped. Black Democrats felt it was their responsibility to do it. And they did.

It was truly impressive that Biden’s momentum was reinvigorated so quickly and spontaneously once black voters were heard from.

There are several black women Biden could pick. The one most often mentioned is Sen. Kamala Harris — a former district attorney, California attorney general and presidential contender. Biden said about Harris the day she dropped out of the presidential race, “She could be the president one day herself. She can be the vice president.” There’s also Stacey Abrams, a former state legislative leader and candidate for governor of Georgia who delivered an eloquent rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union address last year.

Here’s another possibility. Joe Biden is not the most exciting candidate Democrats could come up with. What if he named former First Lady Michelle Obama, the most admired woman in the world, to the Democratic ticket? Imagine the excitement that would create.

Bill Schneider is a professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of ‘Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable’ (Simon & Schuster).