'RepValDemings may be one of those once-in-a-lifetime politicians,' MollyJongFast says on why the congresswoman is the best running mate for Joe Biden right now.
It's no exaggeration to say that Joe Biden owes his status as the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party to black voters. After humiliating losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden entered the South Carolina a seemingly broken candidate, one who was on the verge of losing his third shot at the presidency and being vanquished by a surging and well-financed Bernie Sanders.
Then Jim Clyburn stepped in. Rep. Clyburn, who has served in Congress for 27 years and is the House majority whip, is among the most powerful African American politicians in the country, and certainly one of the most powerful politicians in South Carolina, where the Democratic electorate is overwhelmingly black. On Feb. 26, three days before the South Carolina primary, Clyburn propped up his faltering friend with a“I know Joe," Clyburn said. "We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us.”, 56 percent of South Carolina’s Democratic primary voters were African American, and they overwhelmingly supported Biden, who won 61 percent of their vote. Sixty percent of black voters cited the Clyburn endorsement as an important factor in their decision. Biden's campaign suddenly came alive. He won 10 states on Super Tuesday, then continued to role as one contender after another, including, finally, Sanders, dropped out of the race. Naturally, from the moment Biden seemed on his way to securing the nomination, the question was raised: How will the former vice president, a 77-year-old white man, pay back the black community for its support? He had already said he would choose a woman as his running mate. Should that woman also be African American? The very public pool of women that Biden has said he is considering as his VP pick have included, from the beginning, prominent women of color, like Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris, along with Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. More recently, the names of Val Demings, the black Congresswoman from Florida; Keisha Lance Bottoms, the black mayor of Atlanta; and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a Latina who served in Congress and as the state’s health secretary have surfaced as strong contenders. And Clyburn himself, in , said that "I would advise him that we need to have a woman on the ticket, and I prefer an African American woman."But picking an African American to be his running mate may no longer just be a political expediency or a canny campaign move by Joe Biden. After the events of the past week, itMonday's murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer, and the protests that have swept across the country in the past week once again laid bare the issue of race in the country, and the racial inequity so many have experienced. And this, of course, is hardly an isolated incident. On March 13, an African American EMT worker
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