{UAH} SUSAN RICE BRINGS JOE BIDEN NOTHING BUT BAGGAGE

OPINION

Susan Rice brings Joe Biden nothing but baggage

by Tiana Lowe, Commentary Writer 

 July 26, 2020 01:56 PM

 

With his unforced error of a promise that he would tap a woman as his running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden preemptively limited his options for the single most consequential choice he will make in his political career. To make matters worse, the prison abolitionist Left made Biden's safest and most electorally beneficial choice, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, politically toxic to the ticket by claiming that during her tenure as Hennepin County attorney, she failed to prosecute the police officer who killed George Floyd, though, in actuality, the case was dropped by a grand jury after Klobuchar had left the post.

Now the pressure is on for Biden to pick to a woman of color, and a black woman in particular. Biden didn't have many great options to begin with, and today he has even fewer. The fact that President Barack Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice is under serious consideration for Biden's running mate is a testament to the silent crisis plaguing an otherwise stellar presidential bid.

The presumptive front-runner of the veepstakes, California Sen. Kamala Harris, comes both with plenty of baggage and benefit for the Biden ticket. Sure, Harris may have been a dirty police officer who targeted sex workers, nonviolent drug offenders, and the mothers of kids who cut class as a California prosecutor, but she reinvented herself with at least some success in a series of Senate stunts and her presidential campaign. Although the notion that Biden needs a black running mate to secure the black vote is belied by the fact that Biden went two to one among black voters in the primary, Harris does bring proven fundraising prowess, relatively high favorability among Democratic voters, and a recent record not quite as polarizing as Elizabeth Warren.

A running mate such as Florida Rep. Val Demings would bring a crucial swing district in Florida, anti-Trump bonafides with her role as House impeachment manager, and deep ties to the black Christian community, though her history as top police officer of Orlando could also raise eyebrows. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth would bring a story of military heroism to the ticket, even if her name recognition is still limited. But Rice would bring nothing but baggage and the sort of headache that could fundamentally transform the race is a gift to the Trump campaign.

Rice is a career bureaucrat who bounced between Democratic presidential administrations and the Brookings Institute since a stint at McKinsey after graduating from Stanford and then Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. From a strategic perspective, she brings nothing to the table. Unlike Demings or Klobuchar, the D.C. native brings absolutely no electoral pull from vital voters, and unlike Harris or even Stacey Abrams, she has never proven her fundraising or electoral appeal, let alone ran in an election. She's a privileged swamp monster with friends in high places, and her record is even worse than the broad outlines would suggest. She would be an abysmal running mate, but she's a uniquely contemptible one for Biden in particular.

Biden is currently dominating the general election because he is significantly less unlikable than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, and 2020 is currently a referendum on Trump. Because Biden's unfavorability is about 10 points lower than Clinton's at this point in the race, this election is currently defined by the fact that two-thirds of Biden supporters don't align as such out of enthusiasm for Biden but rather to vote against Trump, whose unfavorability was only outmatched by Clinton. In order for Trump to win, he needs to reverse that dynamic, or at the very least, neutralize it, and selecting Rice as his running mate would do so flawlessly.

Tapping Rice would reignite every real Obama administration controversy that Democratic hagiography has successfully purged from public memory. As the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice spearheaded the lie that the 2012 attack on our Benghazi Embassy was motivated an anti-Islamic internet video, a malfeasance so politically toxic that it cost her the chance to replace Clinton as secretary of state. But Rice was no average anti-Israel, pro-Iran agent of the Obama administration. She is the link that ties together the Comey FBI's legally dubious crusade against Michael Flynn and Obama and Biden's White House. Rice is the one who "unmasked" the identities of Flynn and fellow Trump associates Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.

Trump would love nothing more than to relitigate "Spygate" and recast Biden from the affable elder statesman who's much more moderate than the rest of his party to a corrupt Deep Stater who's so proud of what folks like James Comey and Lisa Page did to undermine the Trump administration that he brought one of the Obama administration's worst faith actors on this matter.

By preemptively excluding options such as Hakeem Jeffries or Pete Buttigieg, Biden left himself with few good choices. But it's hard to think of one worse than Rice other than Clinton herself.

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

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