Election 2020: Biden’s VP Escapade

“You might ask yourself, ‘Well, how did we get here?’”

-David Byrne, “Once in a Lifetime”

Mysteriously, just when we thought the ‘Goldilocks’ process of “vetting” a potential VP candidate to shoulder share the candidacy of Joe Biden, we are in front of a plethora of VP candidate candidates. Just when we thought the back room pondering of the DNC cum Biden campaign gurus had winnowed the field down to Harris-Abrams-Rice-Demmings, suddenly the potential field has exploded with a slew of “names”: Sally Yates, Cecile Richards, Karen Bass, Elizabeth Warren resurgent, “that woman from Michigan” Gretchen Whitmer. I haven’t named them all; the list is exhausting.

All women and this is a problem: why SO MANY women?

In a few words ‘misogyny at work.’ If it takes ‘a village…’it takes a gaggle of women to assume the VP candidate mantle. White male candidate choosing is done unctiously, quietly, nods to male ‘gravitas’: Joe Liberman, Tim Kaine, Biden, himself. And the white presumptive VP candidate is offered up. Not so for women — we need to look high and low, to convince ourselves that many can do the job. Which leaves Biden ‘evolving.’ Yes, he “committed to having a woman on the ticket.” Then a black woman on the ticket. Then a virtual pack of women, black and white in “the running.”

Buried is the pernicious misogyny of Biden, the Anita Hill slayer. Biden the white male from another generation of ‘adults in the room.’ As a friend spoke hyperbolically, Biden, the “perfect antidote to Trump.”

Well, as David Byrne teased, might we ask ourselves, how did we get here?

Well, “here” is not a pretty place right now. Save Fauci and Cuomo, women are driving home the seriousness of the pandemic AND the economic injustice, while predominantly white male Congress dithers. Nurses, teachers, ceiling busting business owners and union leaders — all women — crowd our TV screens with front line contact stories about coping with COVID-19. These women are exhausted and they deserve our veneration and support.

So why mock the picking process by hoisting up many, many women for the number two job behind an ‘evolving misogynist?’

August 5, 2020