Sore loser Stacey Abrams for VP? Don’t do it, Uncle Joe! – Washington Examiner

If any single candidate in the 2020 presidential race can galvanize the Obama base and swing the disaffected center and Never Trump coalition of the Republican Party, it’s former Vice President Joe Biden. For all his gaffes and faux pas, Uncle Joe is uniquely positioned to burst back into the scene and on the center of the debate stage.

Yet Biden may be throwing a wrench into not just this strategy but his candidacy as a whole if the rumors that he’s actively courting Stacey Abrams to announce not just his presidential bid, but the failed gubernatorial candidate from Georgia as his running mate at the same time. Axios reports that despite opposition from his advisers, Biden specifically requested a meeting with Abrams to seriously consider bringing her onto the ticket from the start.

To recap, Abrams’ resume includes a few years as a tax attorney, another as deputy city attorney for Atlanta, a decade in the Georgia General Assembly, and an anonymous career as a romance writer.

That’s it. That’s her entire career.

She hasn’t spent a single day in national politics and couldn’t even win her own gubernatorial election. Not that she’ll concede she lost fair and square, of course. She still maintains that, despite Republican Brian Kemp beating her by 1.4 percent of the vote, the election was stolen from her.

Announcing Abrams as his running mate from the start would render Biden’s campaign dead on arrival for a laundry list of reasons, but first and foremost because it would end any possible alliance he could forge with Obama-to-Trump country. While Abrams campaigned effectively for a red state, she’s made a decisive leftward pivot since ending her campaign.

To the Right, choosing Abrams would look like a declarative shot against the most tepid of 2016 Trump voters. To the Left, it would look like straight tokenism, selecting an unqualified running mate just to make the ticket less white and male. To the entire country, it would serve as the sole reminder of Biden’s greatest liability: he is very, very, very old.

Biden will be 78 on Election Day. That would make him the same age as Ronald Reagan on his last day in office, the oldest anyone has ever been while serving as president.

To beat dozens of young, angry candidates and, most importantly, the shamelessness and brash bravado of President Trump, Biden must lean into his reputations as a fighter and a stalwart of institutional power. He has to have the same, terrifying game face on that both horrified and beat Paul Ryan in the 2012 vice presidential debate. He certainly can’t look like a man too old to run without a backup option, nor can he look like one who knows it. He cannot make the same mistake as the late Sen. John McCain and put a charismatic but untested neophyte a heartbeat away from the presidency out of sheer insecurity.

As the Washington Examiner‘s Philip Klein has correctly noted, Biden’s best day of his campaign will almost certainly be his first day. In the aftermath of his son’s death and in the midst of Trump-era chaos, Biden’s been able to position himself as an elder statesman and above the fray of degraded politics. The moment he announces, he’ll receive fire from all sides, ranging from virulent socialists and (rightly) from the Trump campaign, which reportedly fears him more than any other contender.

Biden will have to build a coalition, but he’ll have to do it in earnest and refuse the temptation to pander. He has to look as much the strongman as Trump, a fighter who won’t take an attack lying down, but not one who’ll desecrate himself by going too deep into the gutter as Harris and the likes already seem keen to. Eventually Biden will be inclined to choose a progressive who hasn’t alienated the center with nasty rhetoric — perhaps South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg or even Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but he can’t go too far if he hopes to take back the Rust Belt from Trump.

Biden is the obvious heir apparent to the Resistance. He has to bolster himself with strength, not let himself fall through the center of simply sitting on too many chairs. Selecting Abrams as his running mate from the outset would almost certainly stretch him too thin and too frail.

It’s Biden’s nomination to lose. All he has to do is make his first move from a position of power.