She’s also likely to bring big money to Biden’s campaign. Observers believe she will be an intense opponent for the more subdued Pence. Harris gained national popularity after her intense questioning of various Trump nominees, including Brett Kavanaugh and Jeff Sessions, during their Senate confirmation hearings. Harris and Biden have been friendly for years, and Harris was close with Biden’s late son, Beau.īecause the pandemic has limited in-person campaigning, Harris’s most important job will be debating Vice President Mike Pence this fall. Throughout the vetting process, Biden considered running mates who had supported his campaign early on-such as Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms-and those who had tried to connect with him on a personal level, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Representative Karen Bass of California, according to people who’ve spoken with him along the way. That won’t be so easy to keep up if he is president, and is forced to expand his top staff from the same “graybeards,” as younger aides sometimes refer to Biden’s confidants. He is able to talk out his thoughts with them-he likes to talk out his thoughts a lot, and at length-while feeling secure that they won’t turn on him.

An unmistakable aspect of Biden’s campaign, and one he will likely carry with him to the White House is his small, stable circle of aides who have been with him for years and are intensely loyal to him. Unlike news out of the Trump White House and the Trump 2020 campaign, very little of Biden’s running-mate selection process leaked to the press, despite the efforts of reporters and activists with grievances, both sincere and performative. “Glad to finally have the veepstakes drama behind us and start beating on Trump instead of each other,” one relieved top Democratic donor texted me after the Biden campaign’s announcement this afternoon. An early candidate was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who officially took herself out of the running after her prosecutor days came under attack after the murder of George Floyd. Biden made it clear in March that he was committed to running alongside a woman. In that time, countless vice-presidential potentials emerged, and most faded. Biden has effectively been the Democratic nominee for five months. Instead, the 2020 “veepstakes” portrayed Biden as a candidate who takes especially long to make up his mind-then stretches out the process a little longer. If the Democratic National Convention hadn’t been delayed, Biden would have revealed his running mate much earlier in the summer. The pandemic continues to upend every milestone of this election.

“In the selection of a vice president, he’s created a deep contrast between the pettiest of men and a man who obviously has no pettiness within him,” Tanden told me, minutes after Harris was announced.

Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, says that Biden’s selection of a Black woman with Indian and Jamaican parents shows that Biden is running a very different campaign than Donald Trump. Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate-the first woman of color to appear on a major-party ticket-was precisely that sort of careful, drawn-out decision.

I f Joe Biden is elected in November, his presidency will likely be defined by history-shaping decisions made after long, deliberative, some might say operatic processes.

Vice president harris