On Biden's promise to nominate a woman for vice president
Amid the COVID-19 spread and associated economic catastrophe, it may be easy to dismiss this, but it matters. Why? Coronavirus dramatically changed the 2020 election. Trump was headed for an easy second term, either through legitimate or illegitimate means. Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee (go away, Sanders), and Trump's political position is now deeply imperiled. And bluntly put, Biden is old. Whomever he selects has a high likelihood of taking the oath of office before 2024. This matters.
Back in October of 2019, I wrote a veepstakes post, because why not? I posed the following rule. No matter who the eventual nominee was, that nominee would never select a white male. From the vantage point of October, 2019, putting it in those stark terms could have come across as rather crass. And yet, this week, Joe Biden announced that his vice presidential nominee will be a woman. Nothing coded, no wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more.
The fact of Biden's decision rule was as difficult to predict as the sun rising in the east. What is more interesting is the fact that he isn't bothering with the wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more.
There's a lot to unpack here, and I'll start by going back to my first book, Hiring & Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections. There is a common analogy in political science scholarship. Elections are like markets. Candidates are like firms, competing for votes in a market. So, competition is vital for democracy, just like competition is important in a market. Blah, blah, blah. The analogy sucks. If you aren't cloistered in academia, you don't know how pervasive the analogy is, but it bugs me. So, I wrote a book because that's what we do.
What is an election? It is a way of hiring or firing someone. That's it. Full stop. "President," and, "vice president," are jobs. "We the people," hire people for these jobs with a thing called, "an election." That's not a metaphor, simile, analogy, or anything like that. It's just the straight-up, literal truth.
With that boring, mundane, but widely ignored observation out of the way, let's make a simple observation. Suppose an employer announces, "hey! I'm only hiring women. Men need not apply. I'll throw your applications in the garbage. I won't even read them. I see a male application, and I don't care how much experience you have, how qualified you are, or anything like that. If you're not a woman, you aren't being considered for jobs here."
Lawsuit city, baby!
Hiring discrimination. Most of the time, in most places, it will tend to benefit white males. Why? Lots of reasons, and the subject of much scholarship and many digressions. Always, though? No. According to paranoid right-wingers, the only real racism is directed at white people, and men are the only ones facing real oppression, but at the societal level, there's a little thing I like to call "empirical reality." However...
While the left will deny that discrimination ever cuts the other way, there are times when it does. There are employers who will discriminate against white people, against men, and so forth.
The overall statistical tendency in American society is that the net effect of all discrimination combined biases things in favor of white people, and men. That doesn't mean that there aren't individual acts of discrimination against men, and against white people. They're just the exceptions rather than the rule.
But, the way the law is written, they're all illegal. It's just that employers are almost never stupid enough to come out and say, in no uncertain terms, "hey! Y'all! Men need not apply!"
This is where we get into the complicated politics of the term, "affirmative action." What do you think it means? Many people think that it means the use of quotas for race and sex and/or gender in hiring, admissions and so forth. Actually, that stuff is illegal. There are a wide variety of policies that are constantly under legal scrutiny because of the question of differential treatment on the basis of race, sex, gender, etc., and I'll leave it to the lawyers to address where the legal lines are at any given point in time, but legally speaking, quotas are about as kosher as a ham & cheese on leavened bread on Passover. With mayo. No pickle.
Does that mean nobody employs discriminatory employment practices? Of course not! It's just that most employers aren't stupid enough to say it as bluntly and publicly as Biden did. Ya' know... lawsuits.
Lawsuits... Lawsuits are messy.
Sometimes necessary, though.
That said, is it illegal for Biden to refuse to nominate a man? No. Why not? The nomination isn't quite a hire. He is nominating someone as a running mate. Voters will decide whether or not to hire Biden, and whomever he selects as a running mate, and voters can do whatever they want. So, he can say and do whatever he wants. However, if you run a business, or have control over hiring, make sure you don't say what Biden said.
Or, if you do, be prepared for lawsuits. You're gonna get 'em. And remember, the job of vice president is just a job. This is all one big, elaborate job interview. I wrote a book about the implications of that. Going back, I'd add a chapter about hiring discrimination. I can't believe it didn't occur to me to do that.
Oh, well.
If I'm being honest, that's probably white male bias. Huh.
Anyway, getting back to the Biden thing, the promise to select a woman was predictable, and interesting. Let's address the politics here. A contrarian, poke-the-bear type might ask, if it were so important for the Democratic Party to have a woman, why'd the race come down to two old, white dudes? If "dude" is appropriate for either Biden or Sanders. When I think of a "white Russian" in politics, I think of Trump.
Moving on, let's move back. In October, I posed a no-white-males rule for vice presidential nominees. Here's a nominee-- a white male-- promising to select a woman. Why? In October, I put it in terms of the demands of "the party." Well, what is "the party?" Let's revert back to good, ole' Valdimir. That's V.O. Key. A party consists of three facets-- the party in government (PIG), the party in the electorate (PIE), and the party as organization (PAO). PIG-PIE-PAO. Damn, that pneumonic device really does stick. Biden is not responding to Democratic Members of Congress, the Senate, governors, or anyone like that. This isn't the PIGs leering at women, so to speak. This also isn't the DNC telling Biden they'll refuse organizational support if he doesn't nominate a woman. This is all about the PIE.
You know, the PIE that is in the process of nominating an old, white male, as opposed to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, do I bother to mention Gabbard... OK. So, if it were so important to the PIE to have a woman, why didn't they bloody well nominate one?! They had several options, ranging the ideological spectrum, none of whose eyes exploded on the debate stage.
A snarky skeptic might say that the Democratic Party is demanding to be protected from itself. Stop me before I vote for another white male! I just can't help myself! Of course, they haven't nominated a white male for the top of the ticket since 2004, so obviously "the party" can vote for people who aren't white males. Really, what's going on is more complex.
Basic point from social science: You cannot treat a group as though it is an individual. A party is not a "unitary actor." It is a group of, in this case, millions, with a variety of different preferences. There is a subset of the Democratic Party-- and at this point, I mean the PIE-- which is the identity politics subset. If I'm going to put this in democratic theory terms, the term would be "descriptive representation," which we distinguish from "substantive representation." Descriptive representation means having people in office whose demographic characteristics resemble your own. Substantive representation means having people in office who pursue your policy interests. The identity politics faction of the Democratic Party places a premium on descriptive representation, often to the point of ignoring everything else. What is most important to this faction is having people in office who are of various minority categories so that those categories have descriptive representation, and ideally, intersectionality.
The point, though, is that this is one faction, and not the only faction. Biden had strong support from the African-American community for a wide variety of reasons, and the Clyburn endorsement was a turning point in the contest. The gender issue, though, is unresolved. This had the potential to be stickier for Biden. With the African-American community, his association with Obama gave him a lot of credibility, and more than Sanders ever had, given that Sanders's class-based view of the world prevents him from seeing racial issues in society, given his desire to wave everything away as false-consciousness. Biden, though, has that ugly history going back to his mistreatment of Anita Hill, and plenty of other stuff. Add in Clinton's loss, some of the gender dynamics of the debates (see, for example, Klobuchar vs. Inslee), and Biden was going to have a harder time with the faction of the party demanding descriptive representation for women.
Why didn't the people demanding a woman support a woman? Well, some did, but a) not enough, and b) even the ones who supported one of the women at some level had other criteria. But that doesn't mean Biden has no need to reach out to them for the sake of party unity.
And that is precisely the kind of analysis I gave back in October. In October, my top pick for Biden was Warren. This was based on the status of the race at the time, when Warren was in the lead. Warren is still a reasonable pick for Biden. Biden just defeated Sanders, so he needs to reach out to the far left. Warren does that, and she's a woman, whose campaign had a profile in part because of a faction in the party that wanted to nominate a woman. Given his promise to nominate a woman, Warren solves a bunch of Biden's problems. So, I still think Warren is in that mix.
Stacy Abrams. High in the mix. I put her high on Biden's list at the time, and I still think she's high on that list, but an additional reason now. Clyburn's endorsement and the strong support of the African-American community turned it around for Biden. Abrams is the solidify-his-base pick, while also reaching out to the left. She isn't as far-left as Sanders, but the left-wing base likes her a lot. Part of the issue for Biden now is to reach out to Sanders supporters, and Abrams has the potential to do that. Do I think she is a good pick? No. My reasons from October still stand. But, he might do it.
Kamala Harris? I disregarded her in October, based on her lackluster debate performances, but she seems to have come back into the mix. Biden hinted at a possible Harris pick, and that put her at the top of the mix in the betting. She's now followed by Klobuchar. Neither reach out to the left to seal that breach, and while Klobuchar sort of makes a centrist pitch, she doesn't give Biden a state he won't already win (nor does Harris, obviously). Are they possibilities? Sure, and with Warren's fall, that shuffled the mix. I'm not sure I see the reasoning, aside from the fact that they are high-profile women, though. Biden might pick either, but like I said, this is just a matter of high-profile women rather than looking for states that will help him win the electoral college.
In October, I put Whitmer high on the list for most potential nominees, but discounted her for Biden because he'd assume his ability to win Michigan on his own. Lujan Grisham should be in the mix, though.
Notice how this game works, though. It's never really about who is best-prepared for the job. Right now, that's a big problem, because this is a big crisis. The longer you have been reading my commentaries on politics, the more certain you are of who I'd put in charge right now.
Nancy Pelosi.
She happens to be a woman. If you had a person in mind as the one best-prepared, and it were a man, would you throw that name out, in a crisis like this, just for the sake of descriptive representation?
Back in October of 2019, I wrote a veepstakes post, because why not? I posed the following rule. No matter who the eventual nominee was, that nominee would never select a white male. From the vantage point of October, 2019, putting it in those stark terms could have come across as rather crass. And yet, this week, Joe Biden announced that his vice presidential nominee will be a woman. Nothing coded, no wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more.
The fact of Biden's decision rule was as difficult to predict as the sun rising in the east. What is more interesting is the fact that he isn't bothering with the wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more.
There's a lot to unpack here, and I'll start by going back to my first book, Hiring & Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections. There is a common analogy in political science scholarship. Elections are like markets. Candidates are like firms, competing for votes in a market. So, competition is vital for democracy, just like competition is important in a market. Blah, blah, blah. The analogy sucks. If you aren't cloistered in academia, you don't know how pervasive the analogy is, but it bugs me. So, I wrote a book because that's what we do.
What is an election? It is a way of hiring or firing someone. That's it. Full stop. "President," and, "vice president," are jobs. "We the people," hire people for these jobs with a thing called, "an election." That's not a metaphor, simile, analogy, or anything like that. It's just the straight-up, literal truth.
With that boring, mundane, but widely ignored observation out of the way, let's make a simple observation. Suppose an employer announces, "hey! I'm only hiring women. Men need not apply. I'll throw your applications in the garbage. I won't even read them. I see a male application, and I don't care how much experience you have, how qualified you are, or anything like that. If you're not a woman, you aren't being considered for jobs here."
Lawsuit city, baby!
Hiring discrimination. Most of the time, in most places, it will tend to benefit white males. Why? Lots of reasons, and the subject of much scholarship and many digressions. Always, though? No. According to paranoid right-wingers, the only real racism is directed at white people, and men are the only ones facing real oppression, but at the societal level, there's a little thing I like to call "empirical reality." However...
While the left will deny that discrimination ever cuts the other way, there are times when it does. There are employers who will discriminate against white people, against men, and so forth.
The overall statistical tendency in American society is that the net effect of all discrimination combined biases things in favor of white people, and men. That doesn't mean that there aren't individual acts of discrimination against men, and against white people. They're just the exceptions rather than the rule.
But, the way the law is written, they're all illegal. It's just that employers are almost never stupid enough to come out and say, in no uncertain terms, "hey! Y'all! Men need not apply!"
This is where we get into the complicated politics of the term, "affirmative action." What do you think it means? Many people think that it means the use of quotas for race and sex and/or gender in hiring, admissions and so forth. Actually, that stuff is illegal. There are a wide variety of policies that are constantly under legal scrutiny because of the question of differential treatment on the basis of race, sex, gender, etc., and I'll leave it to the lawyers to address where the legal lines are at any given point in time, but legally speaking, quotas are about as kosher as a ham & cheese on leavened bread on Passover. With mayo. No pickle.
Does that mean nobody employs discriminatory employment practices? Of course not! It's just that most employers aren't stupid enough to say it as bluntly and publicly as Biden did. Ya' know... lawsuits.
Lawsuits... Lawsuits are messy.
Sometimes necessary, though.
That said, is it illegal for Biden to refuse to nominate a man? No. Why not? The nomination isn't quite a hire. He is nominating someone as a running mate. Voters will decide whether or not to hire Biden, and whomever he selects as a running mate, and voters can do whatever they want. So, he can say and do whatever he wants. However, if you run a business, or have control over hiring, make sure you don't say what Biden said.
Or, if you do, be prepared for lawsuits. You're gonna get 'em. And remember, the job of vice president is just a job. This is all one big, elaborate job interview. I wrote a book about the implications of that. Going back, I'd add a chapter about hiring discrimination. I can't believe it didn't occur to me to do that.
Oh, well.
If I'm being honest, that's probably white male bias. Huh.
Anyway, getting back to the Biden thing, the promise to select a woman was predictable, and interesting. Let's address the politics here. A contrarian, poke-the-bear type might ask, if it were so important for the Democratic Party to have a woman, why'd the race come down to two old, white dudes? If "dude" is appropriate for either Biden or Sanders. When I think of a "white Russian" in politics, I think of Trump.
Moving on, let's move back. In October, I posed a no-white-males rule for vice presidential nominees. Here's a nominee-- a white male-- promising to select a woman. Why? In October, I put it in terms of the demands of "the party." Well, what is "the party?" Let's revert back to good, ole' Valdimir. That's V.O. Key. A party consists of three facets-- the party in government (PIG), the party in the electorate (PIE), and the party as organization (PAO). PIG-PIE-PAO. Damn, that pneumonic device really does stick. Biden is not responding to Democratic Members of Congress, the Senate, governors, or anyone like that. This isn't the PIGs leering at women, so to speak. This also isn't the DNC telling Biden they'll refuse organizational support if he doesn't nominate a woman. This is all about the PIE.
You know, the PIE that is in the process of nominating an old, white male, as opposed to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, do I bother to mention Gabbard... OK. So, if it were so important to the PIE to have a woman, why didn't they bloody well nominate one?! They had several options, ranging the ideological spectrum, none of whose eyes exploded on the debate stage.
A snarky skeptic might say that the Democratic Party is demanding to be protected from itself. Stop me before I vote for another white male! I just can't help myself! Of course, they haven't nominated a white male for the top of the ticket since 2004, so obviously "the party" can vote for people who aren't white males. Really, what's going on is more complex.
Basic point from social science: You cannot treat a group as though it is an individual. A party is not a "unitary actor." It is a group of, in this case, millions, with a variety of different preferences. There is a subset of the Democratic Party-- and at this point, I mean the PIE-- which is the identity politics subset. If I'm going to put this in democratic theory terms, the term would be "descriptive representation," which we distinguish from "substantive representation." Descriptive representation means having people in office whose demographic characteristics resemble your own. Substantive representation means having people in office who pursue your policy interests. The identity politics faction of the Democratic Party places a premium on descriptive representation, often to the point of ignoring everything else. What is most important to this faction is having people in office who are of various minority categories so that those categories have descriptive representation, and ideally, intersectionality.
The point, though, is that this is one faction, and not the only faction. Biden had strong support from the African-American community for a wide variety of reasons, and the Clyburn endorsement was a turning point in the contest. The gender issue, though, is unresolved. This had the potential to be stickier for Biden. With the African-American community, his association with Obama gave him a lot of credibility, and more than Sanders ever had, given that Sanders's class-based view of the world prevents him from seeing racial issues in society, given his desire to wave everything away as false-consciousness. Biden, though, has that ugly history going back to his mistreatment of Anita Hill, and plenty of other stuff. Add in Clinton's loss, some of the gender dynamics of the debates (see, for example, Klobuchar vs. Inslee), and Biden was going to have a harder time with the faction of the party demanding descriptive representation for women.
Why didn't the people demanding a woman support a woman? Well, some did, but a) not enough, and b) even the ones who supported one of the women at some level had other criteria. But that doesn't mean Biden has no need to reach out to them for the sake of party unity.
And that is precisely the kind of analysis I gave back in October. In October, my top pick for Biden was Warren. This was based on the status of the race at the time, when Warren was in the lead. Warren is still a reasonable pick for Biden. Biden just defeated Sanders, so he needs to reach out to the far left. Warren does that, and she's a woman, whose campaign had a profile in part because of a faction in the party that wanted to nominate a woman. Given his promise to nominate a woman, Warren solves a bunch of Biden's problems. So, I still think Warren is in that mix.
Stacy Abrams. High in the mix. I put her high on Biden's list at the time, and I still think she's high on that list, but an additional reason now. Clyburn's endorsement and the strong support of the African-American community turned it around for Biden. Abrams is the solidify-his-base pick, while also reaching out to the left. She isn't as far-left as Sanders, but the left-wing base likes her a lot. Part of the issue for Biden now is to reach out to Sanders supporters, and Abrams has the potential to do that. Do I think she is a good pick? No. My reasons from October still stand. But, he might do it.
Kamala Harris? I disregarded her in October, based on her lackluster debate performances, but she seems to have come back into the mix. Biden hinted at a possible Harris pick, and that put her at the top of the mix in the betting. She's now followed by Klobuchar. Neither reach out to the left to seal that breach, and while Klobuchar sort of makes a centrist pitch, she doesn't give Biden a state he won't already win (nor does Harris, obviously). Are they possibilities? Sure, and with Warren's fall, that shuffled the mix. I'm not sure I see the reasoning, aside from the fact that they are high-profile women, though. Biden might pick either, but like I said, this is just a matter of high-profile women rather than looking for states that will help him win the electoral college.
In October, I put Whitmer high on the list for most potential nominees, but discounted her for Biden because he'd assume his ability to win Michigan on his own. Lujan Grisham should be in the mix, though.
Notice how this game works, though. It's never really about who is best-prepared for the job. Right now, that's a big problem, because this is a big crisis. The longer you have been reading my commentaries on politics, the more certain you are of who I'd put in charge right now.
Nancy Pelosi.
She happens to be a woman. If you had a person in mind as the one best-prepared, and it were a man, would you throw that name out, in a crisis like this, just for the sake of descriptive representation?
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