Joe Biden’s running mate announcement is more historic than you think
Last night Joe Biden announced that his running mate will be a woman. This will be the third time that a major party presidential nominee has picked a woman as a running mate, after Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and John McCain picked Sarah Palin in 2008. And of course we just had a woman nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, four years ago. All that said, Biden’s announcement last night made history.
When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro at the Democratic National Convention in 1984, he was behind Ronald Reagan in the polls by about ten points, meaning Mondale wasn’t really in contention at that point. The 2008 general election saw the polls bounce around a lot, but in the final late August poll before the Republican National Convention took place the first week of September, John McCain was behind Barack Obama by eight points.
Ferraro was a strong pick, while Palin was a terrible pick. But what both picks had in common is that they were seen as attempts at shaking up a race that the candidate was already on track to lose. What makes Joe Biden’s pick different is that he’s publicly committing to a woman as his running mate at a time when he’s the overwhelming frontrunner. The latest primary polls have Biden up by twenty to thirty points over Bernie Sanders, meaning Biden is set to be the nominee. The latest general election polls have Biden up by six to ten points over Donald Trump. While polls can and do change, Biden is the clear frontrunner right now.
In other words, this isn’t some high risk, high reward gamble aimed at shaking up a race that’s slipping away. This is the frontrunner simply acknowledging that this race was chock full of highly qualified women candidates, and that it’s well past time the United States finally has a woman for Vice President. Biden is making history by framing his choice of a woman running mate as simply the smart and reasonable thing to do, as opposed to some kind of stunt. Women have been fighting forever to push our sexist society to the point that the notion of a woman running mate seems more of an inevitability than a curiosity, and Biden’s choice means women have finally succeeded in forcing that particular issue.
Of course America is 240 years past due on having a woman as President and having a woman as Vice President. The sheer number of strong women who ran for President this time around makes clear that women candidates can’t simply be ignored. Hopefully the Vice Presidential glass ceiling will shatter in this election, and the Presidential glass ceiling will shatter in the next election.
