The Vice Presidency

Vijaya Chandrasoma

August is the month of Party Conventions in the United States during election years, when Democrats and Republicans formally announce, amidst great fanfare, the nominations for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency of their respective Parties.

Trump is the assured nominee of the Republican National Committee, and he has confirmed that Vice President Mike Pence would be his running mate for 2020. There were some rumours floating around, as his ratings keep tanking, that Trump may make Pence the scapegoat for his mismanagement of the pandemic and replace him on the ticket. However, now that he has settled on his latest scapegoat – China – to take the blame, the 2020 Trump/Pence ticket seems to be a certainty.

The Convention was to be held in grand style in Jacksonville, but it was decided to change the venue because of a surge in Covid19 cases in Florida, the current US epicenter of the disease. Delegates are now scheduled to meet in Charlottesville, North Carolina on August 24, and formally anoint Trump as the Party’s standard-bearer again.

National Party Conventions are usually media bonanzas, with political parties seeking to spread their messages with the election under three months away. However, the Republicans have decided, citing the continuing Covid19 surge, that Trump will accept the Party Nomination in private, and the event will be closed to the press for the first time in history.

The Democratic National Committee Convention is scheduled to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 18 – 20. The Committee announced, “We are committed to providing seamless access and opportunities for equitable participation for all of our delegates and convention guests…. If you are a member of the media, we’re here to provide you with the resources you need.”

Vice President Biden is the Presumptive Nominee of the Democratic Party, but there has been much speculation about the second half of his ticket. Biden has long indicated that his running mate would be a woman, probably a woman of colour.

It is high time that women, especially black women, who have supported the Party through the ages, are finally being recognized for national leadership. It should be remembered that the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting against systematic police brutality against minorities now gaining momentum in the country, was founded by three black women.

This choice of a Vice President has become of paramount importance to the Party for two reasons. One, Biden is 77-years old, and has unofficially indicated that he probably will be a one-term president. Two, so the selected running mate should be ready and able to take over the presidency seamlessly on Day 1.

The front runners for this important position are:

1. Kamala Harris.

Senator Harris, 55-years-old, is widely considered to be the front runner. She has a diverse background, with an East Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She has served in the US Senate as California’s junior senator since 2017. She is a moderate who endorses single-payer healthcare, the single most important issue facing the country today. She has gained a national profile with her incisive Senate questioning of Trump administration officials, including former Attorney General Sessions and current AG Barr, and Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Senator Harris has already displayed abundant political skills: “strong on the stump, a warm manner with voters and ferocity with the opposition that seemed to spell trouble for Mr. Trump.”

2. Karen Bass, 66-years-old, has recently emerged as a leading contender for the job. A congresswoman from California since 2011, she has also served as the Speaker of the California State Assembly. She is the Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and serves on numerous House committees, including the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs. She believes that Climate Change presents one of the greatest challenges facing the country, supports universal health care and campaigns for gun control. She was one of the first members of the Congress to endorse the Green New Deal, the proposed new program popular amongst progressives, which aims to aggressively address climate change and economic inequality.,

3. Susan Rice, 55 years old, is making a comeback in politics. She served in the Obama administration as the US Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor. She is one of the most accomplished African Americans in the Party, with a long and close relationship with Biden, who, like all potential presidents, values loyalty. However, her role in the Bengazi debacle during the Obama administration, her sometimes abrasive personality and lack of political experience may prove to be insurmountable complications.

4. Gretchen Whitmer, 49-years-old, is presently the governor of Michigan. She is a rising star in the Party, and as Vice Presidential candidate, will almost certainly deliver Michigan, a must-win state for Biden. She recently gained fame when she publicly criticized Trump for his lack of a federal Covid19 strategy. Predictably, this gained the ire of the President, who refused to send help to Michigan “because she wasn’t nice to him”. Her exceptional handling of the pandemic in Michigan has garnered praise, and she has moved to being a viable running mate for Biden. Whitmer and Senator Elizabeth Warren are the two white aspirants for the job.

5. Stacy Abrams, 46-years-old, has made no secret of her desire to run on Biden’s ticket, saying that she is capable of getting a larger slice of the national black vote. A failed gubernatorial candidate in Georgia with limited political experience, it is doubtful that she would be able to take over, if necessary, the responsibility of the presidency on Day 1.

6. Senator Elizabeth Warren, 71-years-old, has been at the forefront of Democratic political leadership since 2014, and was even considered a potential candidate to succeed President Obama in 2016. She has been the senior senator from Massachusetts since 2013 and a candidate for the 2020 presidency, being one of the last to drop out during the primaries. A tenured law professor at Harvard, Senator Warren has been cautioning various administrations since 2000 that the US system works against the middle class and enormously benefits Wall Street, banks and the billionaire class. She was closely associated with one of the most progressive politicians in the Party, Senator Bernie Sanders, who was the last to drop out in the presidential primary contest. With his delegates count in the Primaries, second only to Biden, Sanders commands much leverage in the choice of a Vice President. Though Biden has indicated that his VP choice will likely be a woman of colour, Senator Warren is still believed to be one of the top contenders. She will be an admirable Vice President, whose vast experience in progressive politics makes her ability to assume the presidency seamlessly beyond question.

There may be others. Names like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Florida Congresswoman Val Demings, are being bandied around. Vice President Biden has promised to announce his choice before Saturday, August 8. You should have the name of the presumptive Democratic VP before you read this article. Maybe he’ll surprise us all.

Of course, this selection will become an exercise in futility if Trump has his way. With Biden leading him by 10-15 points in the polls, Trump is setting the stage for refusing to leave the White House in November, on the grounds that mail-in-voting will be rigged and render the election illegal.

Voting by mail is the sensible alternative to personal voting during this virus, with obvious difficulties in establishing and staffing polling stations, especially in rural areas.

In a recent Fox interview with Hannity, Trump lied: “The USPS (United States Postal Service) is the most corrupt and anti-American way of voting, and has a huge voter fraud rate. Believe me. If I have to shut down the entire mail system in the months leading to the election, I will. It’s the only way this election won’t be rigged by the evil Democrats”.

Trump is demonizing mail-in-voting because such voting will be made easier, especially for Black, Hispanic and poorer voters, who will likely vote for the Democratic candidate.

On July 30, Trump tweeted:

“With Universal Mail-in Voting (

not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

The initial reaction to this preposterous, unconstitutional proposal to delay the election has been hostile. The Federal Election Commissioner, Ellen Weintraub flatly stated that the Executive branch does not have the constitutional power to delay the election, tweeting:

“No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to unilaterally to move the election. Nor should it be moved. States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so that they can properly run the safe and secure election that all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”

Even Republican leaders, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have rejected the idea. McConnell said, “Never in the history of this country, through wars, depressions and a civil war, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. We will find a way to do that again on November third.”

All official evidence

proves that election fraud by mail voting is so insignificant as to be inconsequential. The conservative Heritage Foundation, found just “14 cases out of roughly 15.5 million votes cast, representing an infinitesimal percentage, in Oregon since that state started conducting elections by mail in 1998”. The Post Office authorities have also confirmed they are fully equipped and able to handle the mailings.

In these circumstances, a real President intent on a valid and legitimate election would summon a bipartisan team, composed of everyone connected with the election – Congress, governors, election authorities, etc. – and demand a Plan for conducting a legitimate, fool-proof election by October 1. That would give him one month to fund and implement consensually agreed recommendations, so that a fair election will be held on the appointed day. But we don’t have a real president.

What we do have is a Justice Department, with Trump toady Attorney General Barr leading it, and a Supreme Court stacked with Trump loyalists sycophantically compliant with even Trump’s most unconstitutional behaviour.

When Chris Wallace asked him at a recent interview whether he will accept an election defeat, Trump said, “I’ll have to see. I won’t say yes. I won’t say no”.

We seem to be rushing headlong towards an autocracy similar to Germany’s Third Reich, with the horrors of White Supremacist tactics and final solutions to the immigration problem. A wannabe Hitler is already firmly in place.

So perhaps it doesn’t matter what 2020 Presidential ticket the Democrats choose. Perhaps the Trump/Putin ticket is here to stay. For life. Or at least till the next US civil war.