Can Biden Make Nice With Rice?
Never the sharpest tool in the shed, Joe Biden really painted himself into a corner several months ago when he promised to choose a woman as his running mate. Soon after that, the pressure to choose a woman of color began to mount. That pressure is no doubt even stronger after the past couple of weeks. The one stipulation that the diversity checkbox fetishists over in the Democratic party and on Team Biden forgot to place on the process was that the woman he eventually chooses has to be a Democrat.
An Op-Ed written by an author who purports to be an independent voter in The Hill makes a rather interesting case for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to get the number two spot on the Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep ticket.
In short, as an independent, I wanted to hear substance, not talking points. I don’t expect to hear much concrete from Biden in the coming campaign. His main message is that he’s not Donald Trump. That will carry the day for Democrats, regardless of their race or ethnicity.
But most independents are looking for more than someone on the left with a running mate who is even further to the left. They believe that our real problems don’t merit right- or left-wing answers. They deserve intelligent, first-best answers. In addition, they realize that Biden’s veep will need to be ready to immediately step into the president’s shoes given that Biden would be our nation’s oldest president.
The best candidate is clearly Condoleezza Rice. As a black woman, she can help bring our country together.
Earlier in the piece the author said that Biden and the other candidates (with the exception of Bernie Sanders) “said largely what people wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear.”
Anyone who paid attention to Condoleezza Rice’s career certainly wouldn’t accuse her of pandering.
Many of my conservative friends still believe that Kamala Harris has the inside track to win the Biden veepstakes, including our own Stephen Green. I respectfully disagree with them. As a former Californian, I know what a true lightweight Harris is. Let us not forget that she was the first of the “top tier” candidates to be drummed out of the primaries. She would be practically toxic for Biden in the general election. As a Republican, I’d love to see her on the ticket, of course, but I have to think she makes Biden’s handlers cringe.
And let’s face it, he’s going to win California anyway. Heck, it would still be a landslide for him in the Golden State even with Condi Rice on the ticket.
The Independents Are Back
What’s interesting about this article — however outside the box it may be — is that it’s one of the rare discussions about independent voters I’ve read during this election cycle. We usually hear about them ad nauseam in a presidential election but we all know that this has been a weird year. I’m deeply curious as to what flyover country independent voters are thinking after the last three months.
If Biden were a bit more lucid, he might even be amenable to having Rice on the ticket. The author mentions that “She’s a Republican, but she’s no ideologue.” Despite his weirdness in this cycle and the fact that he was The Lightbringer’s Veep for eight years, Biden really isn’t either.
Even though this Op-Ed is mostly a flight of fancy, a lot of us on the right would obviously chuckle inside if Condi Rice were on the ticket. The consensus is that Biden’s V.P. will actually be the next president if he actually manages to win the election.
Better that it be Condoleezza Rice than Susan Rice.
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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
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