Biden's Vice-Presidential Search: Who's on the List and Where It Stands
((Interesting and thorough article, I'm not trying to 'beat a dead horse.'))
'The search committee is conducting interviews and seeking private documents, and prospects like Val Demings and Keisha Lance Bottoms are getting a closer look as political currents influence the search.
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advisers have conducted several rounds of interviews with a select group of vice-presidential candidates and are beginning to gather private documents from some of them, as they attempt to winnow a field that features the most diverse set of vice-presidential contenders in history.
The search committee has been in touch with roughly a dozen women, and some eight or nine are already being vetted more intensively.
Among that group are two contenders who have recently grown in prominence, Representative Val Demings of Florida and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta. One well-known candidate, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, has lost her perch as a front-runner. And some lower-profile candidates, like Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, are advancing steadily in the search process.
The New York Times spoke to an array of people who are familiar with the vice-presidential search and the activities of the Biden team, and the interviews yielded the fullest picture yet of the list of candidates Mr. Biden is considering, who is advancing and who may be fading, and the dynamics at play.
Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential search has taken a bifurcated course so far, with one path unfolding in the open — joint appearances on television or in virtual events with potential running mates — and another in an environment of strict discretion. People involved in the confidential part described it on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss a process that is designed to shield Mr. Biden’s thinking and the participants’ privacy. . .
Though Ms. Demings and Ms. Bottoms are far less known to the national electorate than other figures on Mr. Biden’s list, they have played crucial roles in a cascading civil rights crisis: Ms. Demings, a former police chief in Orlando, Fla., has become a major figure in the law-enforcement debate, while Ms. Bottoms’s handling of chaotic demonstrations in her city earned her national acclaim.
Both women have spoken with the vetting team, and Biden advisers have reached out to their allies to seek information about them. . .
Mr. Biden insisted in an interview with CBS this past week that the last few tumultuous weeks had not meaningfully changed his thinking about the vice presidency, except to put “greater focus and urgency on the need to get someone who is totally simpatico with where I am.”
“I want someone strong,” he said, “and someone who is ready to be president on Day 1.” . .
If Mr. Biden wins the November election, he might well take office under the darkest conditions of any president in half a century, with economic stagnation and a deadly pandemic shadowing his new administration.
That unsettling reality has bolstered the view among many Democrats that Mr. Biden must choose a running mate who could be a full partner in governing rather than someone who is useful chiefly for tactical purposes in an election season.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/us/politics/joe-biden-vice-president.html?
= new reply since forum marked as read
. . .served as National Security Advisor and the US ambassador to the UN.
#newrostrong