No, we want a lazy VP
Oh no, it turns out Kamala Harris is too ambitious to be Vice President. So unlike Biden, who thinks he’s just the right guy to be president even though he’s 78 years old and has a scary shiny facelift.
… reporting on deliberations inside the campaign suggests their decision-making is being shaped by the same sexist concerns about women in leadership that helped keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House four years ago. While it’s unclear if the accounts are accurate or present a complete picture, the story they tell is deflating, familiar, and harmful—that the campaign is distrustful of women who are ambitious or who otherwise display leadership traits that somehow don’t seem to bother people when exhibited by men. They want a woman, just not that kind of woman. Sound familiar?
The issue seems to mainly come up in talk of Kamala Harris, the California senator and former presidential contender. Harris has been the most obvious choice for months because she checks so many boxes; she has plenty of experience, she’s endured the national spotlight, and she’s a woman of color just like the base of the Democratic Party.
But uh oh, uh oh – she’s ambitious. (How can you do a job like that if you’re not ambitious? It’s not a slacker kind of thing.)
Ambition, campaign insiders fret, might drive her somehow to be disloyal to Biden, meaning she can’t be trusted. In one Politico article, someone described as a “close Biden ally” explained that the problem with Harris (and, for that matter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren) is that she is not a team player. The story does not attempt to explain why she isn’t a team player, and instead just takes for granted that the junior senator from California, who has co-sponsored lots of legislation alongside other senators, is somehow not a team player. This designation, without any explanation, sounds a lot like a euphemism for female ambition and the fears tied up in it.
Besides, being a “team player” isn’t really part of the job description, is it? Isn’t that part of the point? It’s not the Congress, it’s the presidency. (The whole thing is turning out to be a mistake, given the havoc a narcissistic moron can create with it, but until we change it that’s what it is.)
Biden is one of the most ambitious politicians alive; he served in the Senate for decades, ran for president twice, served as vice president, and then in his seventh decade decided to run for president again. Now, somehow, he reportedly thinks that an ambitious woman won’t support him even as he desires—as his confidants whisper to the press—a vice president like he was to President Barack Obama…
… It seems like the ultimate insult to a woman vice presidential pick that in order to clinch the post she has to convince the campaign that she possesses just the right amount of ambition—enough to rise to the top tier of American politics but not so much that she cannot be trusted to actually do the vice president’s job of putting the president first.
Well let’s face it, women just can’t be trusted.
I’m honestly not sure if Harris would be Biden’s best VP pick. But this? This is some Grade A sexist bullshit coming from these Biden “allies”.
Oh yeah, this is about Biden so I probably should have said it was “malarkey”. :)
Jesus, did Kamala not bake him cookies or something? This stuff reminds me why I never really liked him.
Joe, your job is to win the presidency and then GTFO the way for the next generation. Leadership is what you want, Joe! Your warranty is up. You may keel over in a year and you need someone ready to go.
How can anybody not feel like “not a team player” means something different for women than it does for men? What did women do on your team, Joe? Oh…. that’s right. They were cheerleaders. Is that what you want now?
Not disputing the sexism and double standard, but I don’t understand why an ambitious person would want to be VP. It’s a terrible stepping stone—only four sitting VPs have been elected President (Bush Sr was the last; the other three were pre-Civil War), and I believe Biden would be only the second person to be elected President after leaving the Vice Presidency (Nixon being the other). Her best path to the top job as a VP would be Biden dying in office (admittedly not an unlikely scenario). She’d be much better off staying in the Senate or running for governor of California, where she carve out her own agenda rather than working on whatever scraps Biden throws her.
Given all that why why WHY did we get stuck with Biden? As all those much better people got brushed off one by one? It drives me nuts.
Because he got an overwhelming percentage of Black votes, especially in the south.
The Politico article this is based on (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/27/biden-vice-president-contenders-382115) says Biden saw himself as a team player when he was Obama’s VP and he’d like his VP to be the same for him:
The “team player” thing is one comment in the Politico article from “a Biden ally” who may not have anything to do with the selection process and who is more making the point that all the candidates have perceived flaws so it will come down to whom Biden can trust.
All of Mother Jones’s angst about Biden allegedly disliking ambitious women seems to come from this single sentence:
I’m honestly disappointed in Mother Jones. This seems beneath them.
The Veepstakes have entered that stage where different factions are leaking, sending up trial balloons, etc. I would take all of these statements from “an anonymous source familiar with the process” or whatever the phrase is, with huge amounts of salt.
Maroon @3,
The thing to remember about that statistic is that it has more to do with the difficulty of one party winning three consecutive presidential terms. (And the fact that, until the late 20th century, the vice presidency was often a low priority afterthought, such that VPs weren’t likely to be strong candidates.)
In a modern media environment, VP is a huge plus. There’s simply no way Biden would have won the nomination if he’d spent the last 12 years in the Senate. The last 3 sitting VP candidates who ran won their party’s nomination (Biden, Gore, GHB Bush), and a fourth (Mondale) won four years later. If Biden serves two terms, it’s going to be difficult for any Democrat to win in 2028, just like Hilary had an uphill battle in 2016.
Of course, it’s being openly questioned whether Biden would run for a second term, so being his VP is even more attractive.
Oops, of course Biden was not the sitting VP when he won the nomination, he belongs in the second category with Mondale.
I really can’t see Biden making a second term (although I couldn’t see Trump getting elected months out either). This makes selection of a VP to be President in waiting all the more important. Is Kamala the right one? I don’t honestly know enough about her. I understand in the past she’s very much been in the ‘law and order’ camp. That might count against her somewhat in the current environment.
I think they may be only SAYING that’s the reason they are backing off on Harris, and they may be only saying it and not really backing down at all, just to see how the news plays out.
The longer Biden can wait to choose, the shorter the period of time the Reps will have to savage her, whoever he chooses. If it were me, I might go to Stacy Abrams, for a Black woman, very savvy, from the real South, where Biden’s Black support is coming from. I think she’s capable of taking the reins of the head office should the need arise.
Screechy,
But that just underscores my point. If you’re ambitious, why would you want to sit around for 4 or 8 years doing nothing unless the President throws you a scrap, when you could be doing ambitious things in another office? Sure, it might not get you elected president, but the odds of winning the presidency are pretty minute anyway.
In any case, if Harris doesn’t get the VP nod, I suspect she’ll be offered a cabinet position.
Isn’t he 78? So it is nine years since he was in his seventh decade. Which means he decided to run for president before Obama got his second term. Was Biden happy as vice president for a second time, if he wanted to be president?
Re #12, I suspect they are making the all-too-common error of thinking that “seventh decade” and “in his seventies” are the same thing. See also “in his 78th year” and “78 years old” getting confused.
Now being considered for Biden VP running mate, Susan Rice and Karen Bass (according to CNN.com). I would prefer to see either of these women chosen than either Kamala Harris or Stacy Abrams for one reason; they havent succumbed to the (mis/ogyny) pronoun fad (as of yet). I actually voted for Stacy in the ’18 Gubernatorial here in Georgia, but she has since added the dreaded pronouns to her twitsky bio. I refuse to vote for pronoun people.