After President Barack Obama’s two terms, the next Democratic nominee for president wasn’t Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, but his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, whom Obama had defeated in the 2008 presidential primaries.
According to 2008 public opinion surveys, the American people were so dissatisfied with the Republican Party, President George W. Bush’s alleged compassionate conservatism, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Republican presidential candidate was almost certain to lose the next election.
That meant the winner of the 2008 Democratic primary would become the next president.
2008 public opinion polls also suggested that Americans wanted more than simply policy reforms. Americans believed that political leadership should reflect the diversity of the electorate and not be dominated by White males like in the previous Republican administration. The Democrats made certain that they did not squander a historic opportunity to demonstrate their diversity by electing the first woman or African American to the White House.
During their campaigns, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama promised to make their administrations more diverse than the previous Republican administration, but when Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he did not prioritize diversity when he chose 65-year-old Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
Securing key states often leads to the selection of vice presidential candidates, but that was unnecessary in 2008 because the Democrats predicted a landslide victory. However, Obama still needed a running mate to balance what voters saw as his shortcomings. Biden was selected for three reasons. 1) Obama’s advisers were concerned that many Americans would feel uneasy voting for a newcomer to Washington. Biden balanced Obama’s inexperience because he was a senator for 35 years. 2) Biden had foreign policy knowledge that Obama lacked. 3) Biden’s working-class background counterbalanced Obama’s Harvard elitism.
Once Obama took center stage as the first Black president, Vice President Biden faded into the background. The Democratic Party and the Obama administration expected that they would break racial barriers and shatter glass ceilings at the highest levels for the next two decades.
This future vision did not initially include Biden.
When Obama’s two terms expired, Biden wanted to be his successor, but Democrats believed that the era of White male dominance had come to an end. Biden had no support for running for president. Then Biden’s 46-year-old son died from brain cancer. Biden stated that he couldn’t run for office after such a tragic loss to his family; the timing wasn’t right.
All political experts thought that was the end of Joe Biden’s long political career.
However, Democrats believed that the timing was right for the first woman to become president, and Hillary Clinton emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee with few primary challengers. Furthermore, when Donald Trump emerged as the Republican frontrunner, the Democrats projected a sure victory in the 2016 general election. To be on the safe side, Clinton rejected the diversity mandate when choosing her running mate.
According to John Cassidy, a staff writer at the New Yorker, Hispanic groups were disappointed that Clinton did not select a Latino running mate. Clinton chose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for two reasons. 1) Virginia was a swing state. Kaine was added to the ticket to secure Virginia’s electoral votes. 2) Kaine was a moderate who counterbalanced Hillary’s progressive views.
To the nation’s surprise and dismay, Donald Trump was elected president. (Trump nominated Indiana Governor Mike Pence as vice president in an attempt to unite the sharply split “conservative movement” behind his nomination.)
During Trump’s presidency, Biden told reporters he regretted not running in 2016.
In 2020, the Democrats fielded over 25 diverse candidates in their primaries. The majority of these candidates were too left-wing to defeat President Trump. The party encouraged Biden to enter the presidential race, seeing the need for a moderate candidate. However, there were doubts about Biden’s age and mental competence.
After the majority of minority candidates withdrew from the primary owing to low poll numbers and a lack of funding, they all complained that the remaining Democratic field was all White, male-dominated, and lacking in diversity. In keeping with the trend of breaking glass ceilings in high-level government positions, Biden indicated that he was a “transitional candidate” and would choose a woman as vice president.
After Minneapolis police killed an unarmed Black man, riots erupted across the nation. Biden responded to the racial outrage by pledging to choose a Black woman as his running mate, ultimately settling on California Senator Kamala Harris.
Political strategists said Harris offered little more than symbolism to the ticket. Harris did not provide assistance in a swing state. Her politics were not going to make up for Biden’s inadequacies. More crucially, during her own presidential campaign, she revealed that she was unprepared for the national spotlight and incapable of assuming the presidency if Biden’s health deteriorated.
Biden and Harris barely defeated Trump in 2020.
Now it’s 2024, and Trump is running to regain the presidency. However, President Biden’s health has deteriorated to the point where half of the Democratic Party does not support him for a second term and wants him to step down. The other Democratic Party members grudgingly back Biden, understanding that pitting an ill-equipped Kamala Harris against the seasoned former president is political suicide.
The Democratic Party would not be in this predicament if Biden selected his VP for political reasons instead of symbolic ones.
About Post Author
