Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) turned the tables on speculation that she might be Joe Biden’s running mate next year, telling reporters in New Hampshire on Thursday that Biden might be her own pick for the bottom of the ticket instead.
“I think that, sure, if people want to speculate about running mates, I encourage that, because I think Joe Biden would be a great running mate. As vice president, he’s proven that he knows how to do the job.”
“And there’s certainly a lot of other candidates that would make for me a very viable and interesting vice president,” she added.
Harris appeared to be responding to a proposal floated by the Congressional Black Caucus, and reported by Politico last weekend, for a “dream ticket” featuring Biden as the presidential candidate and Harris as his running mate.
The proposal was apparently made in light of Biden’s dominance of the polls, both in early primary states and nationwide.
But Harris’s response indicates that she is not willing to take a back seat to Biden — or anybody.
Observers have noted, with some surprise, that despite the importance of identity politics in the Democratic Party, the top four contenders at the moment — Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) — are all white males.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.