Opinion: Why Joe Biden Must Pick a Black Woman Running Mate

In a world overcome by uncertainty, it’s nice to know you still can count on some things: black folks voting Democrat is one such thing. Consequently, Joe Biden will win the African American vote handily in November. The margin won’t even be close. It won’t even be a contest. What is much less certain is how enthusiastically black voters will support Biden, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, and how many Biden will turn off by committing a world of unforced errors. Message to Joe Biden: Stop telling black people they “ain’t black,” and don’t make the mistake of picking any running mate who isn’t a black woman.

Pushback came swiftly when it got out that Biden’s campaign now is vetting Amy Klobuchar as a potential VP candidate. Any other time, the senator from Minnesota would be a solid political consideration, checking off some boxes you’d want checked in a running mate – Midwest appeal, experience governing, former prosecutor, that suburban white woman thing. But this year, no shortage of black folks would find a nod to Klobuchar plainly disrespectful.

While I intend to vote for Biden regardless of whom is his running mate, be it Klobuchar, Warren, Marcia Brady, Marcia Clark, Tony the Tiger, or the Tiger King (or Queen), I think it would be a slight of the highest order to black people – particularly black women voters, who, in the most literal sense, resurrected Biden’s campaign.

It’d be like sending the white ER doctor an expensive bottle of wine and flowers for saving your life while merely patting on the back (or in Biden’s case massaging the shoulders) of the black woman who gave you CPR when your trifling butt fell out at Costco. She’s the reason you didn’t just die in the toilet paper aisle.

Without black South Carolina voters who pumped Biden’s chest and puffed in his mouth when he was three or four seconds from walking into that bright light, Biden is vetting no one but the family dog this morning; he’s holed up in his basement watching Westerns, flipping through old photo albums of him and Barack.

The magnanimous me wants to say let’s not play identity politics, race shouldn’t matter. But, now more than ever before, it absolutely does. What better repudiation of all things Trump than to replace Pence with Harris or Abrams or Demings, even Susan Rice, who would be an excellent choice?

Looking to someone other than a woman of color when that group long has been the most reliable, loyal soldiers in your army — in the 2016 presidential election and defeating the alleged pedophile in the Alabama Senate race — would suck the wind out of the sails of Biden’s most essential voting bloc. And, I’m not sure that’s a risk he’d care to take.

Furthermore, picking a white woman when black voters have done the heavy lifting, tugging the Old Ship of Biden safely ashore when he floated perniciously adrift, would reinforce the growing notion that the Democratic Party really does take its black constituency for granted. It would be one more time Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, just one more sleight of hand to the black voter base.

And although black voters ultimately are practical enough to vote for the Michelin Man if he’d unseat the orange one, the long term damage to black, Democratic Party loyalty would be devastating. There’s only so much okey doke people can fall for. Just ask Chuck Brown.

Jonathan Clarke is a writer and content creator, blogger, communications consultant and a regional Emmy Award winning reporter and producer.To read more of Jonathan’s writing, visit couldntkeepit.wordpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @Jonclarkewrites.