I Have A Running Mate For Joe Biden

Now that the unabashed Democratic Socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, has suspended his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, Vice President Joe Biden is now the presumptive nominee of the party.

So pending the formalization of Biden’s nomination at the party’s upcoming convention, the stage is now set for Trump to face the one Democrat he most feared. Trump was so worried about Biden that he began to take preemptive strikes that got him (Trump) impeached. 

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Biden’s first consequential decision will be to select a running mate. He has already committed himself to selecting a woman running mate, which narrows the field considerably.

Biden presents himself as an “Obama Biden Democrat.” In essence he seeks to reconstitute the winning coalition of Americans that made Barrack Obama a two term president of the world’s greatest democracy.

So how does Biden almost automatically rekindle the electoral magic of Obama/Biden campaign organization? I submit that the surest way for him to do that would be to flip the brand from Obama/Biden to Biden/Obama. How? Michelle Obama. That’s how.

Michelle Obama rose from the status of a reluctant wife of a politician to become perhaps Barrack Obama’s most effective and the Democratic Party’s most beloved political asset. And by the time she and Barrack left the White House in January of 2017, Michelle had eclipsed her husband as the most popular Democrat in the nation. 

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is a Harvard Law School alumnae. Before that she graduated from Princeton in my hood with her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and African American Studies. Her career in law brought her in contact with the young man, also a lawyer, who would marry her and become the first African American president of the United States of America.

She has served as an executive officer in academe (University of Chicago) and in hospital management (University of Chicago Medical Center). As the nation’s First Lady from 2009 to 2017, she gave voice to poverty awareness, education, healthcare, physical fitness, and nutrition for children.

Biden has told us he would select a woman. He has also told us that he would select a running mate that aligns with his centrist political views. It is also imperative that his running mate selection be a nod to a younger generation, especially in light of Biden’s age. There can be no doubt that Michelle Obama ticks off all categories with aplomb. The Obamas and the Bidens had become like long-standing family relatives by the end of Obama’s presidency. Both are at ease with each other. Michelle not only energizes the most loyal base of the Democratic Party (African Americans, especially African American women), she will bring a knowledge of the White House that virtually no woman Democratic (other than Hillary Clinton) would bring.

There is only one problem. Michelle Obama has told us that she is not interested in elective office for herself. However, as history beckons, and as over 50% of the American electorate is chopping at the bits to keep Trump to one term, might we be so blessed to have a Biden/Obama ticket in 2020?

The author, Dr. Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji, is the Executive Director of the US-based African Writers Endowment, Inc. and the Global Coordinator of GoBigNigeria (www.GoBigNigeria.com).