Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren vie as Joe Biden running mate

Joe Biden is closing in on his search for a running mate with Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren looming large.

Joe Biden (L) and California Senator Kamala Harris (R) speak while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders walks by after the third Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign. Picture: AFP.

Joe Biden is closing in on his search for a vice-presidential running mate with Democrat Senators Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren looming large in early speculation.

The campaign of Mr Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has started formally vetting around a dozen women for the crucial decision which will have a major bearing on his election chances.

The 78-year-old former Vice President has promised to choose a woman as his running mate but has so far given no public hint about who he might choose.

Early press speculation is focusing on the Californian Senator and former prosecutor Senator Harris as the probable favourite, narrowly ahead of Minnesota’s Senator Klobuchar and the liberal Senator Warren from Massachusetts.

Others mentioned include the former candidate for the Governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and even former national security adviser Susan Rice.

The 55-year-old Senator Harris, a former presidential candidate, was initially considered an unlikely pick after her high profile and heated clash with Mr Biden in a Democrat debate in June in which she portrayed him as racially insensitive over school bussing.

That clash earned Senator Harris a short-lived bump in the polls but it angered Mr Biden’s wife Jill who described it as a ‘punch to the gut,” given the family friendship between Senator Harris and Mr Biden’s late son Beau.

But Mrs Biden is said to have forgiven Senator Harris and she now shares Senator Harris’ posts on social media.

As the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica and with solid legislative experience behind her, Senator Harris is an experienced and relatively moderate woman of colour, ticking many of the boxes that Democrats want.

But others question whether Senator Harris, who is from the safe Democrat state California would be as useful electorally to Mr Biden as the 59-year-old Senator Klobuchar who is from the Midwest battleground state of Minnesota.

 

Senator Klobuchar, a moderate, is popular in the Midwest swing states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that Mr Biden needs to win to defeat Mr Trump.

Likewise, the 48-year-old Michigan Governor Ms Whitmer has turned heads with her war of words with the president over federal aid to Michigan during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Trump, who has derisively referred to Ms Whitmer as ‘that woman from Michigan,’ needs to win Michigan in November, a task which would be much harder if the state’s Governor was on the Biden ticket.

A recent poll of registered Democrats found Senator Warren the most popular choice as Biden’s running mate, with 36 per cent support compared with 19 per cent for Senator Harris.

The choice of the liberal Senator Warren would be welcomed by many progressive Democrats including supporters of fellow liberal presidential dropout Bernie Sanders.

But the generational optics of the 70-year-old Senator Warren standing alongside the 78-year-old Mr Biden could be damaging to a party that is seeking to court younger voters and sell itself as the party of the future.

Ms Abrams has been the most vocal of the wannabe candidates, campaigning aggressively for Mr Biden to choose her.

“I would be an excellent running mate,’ she says.

“As a young black girl growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if I didn’t stand up for myself, no-one else would. My mission is to say out loud, if I’m asked the question, ‘Yes, I would be willing to serve.”

Some Democrats say Mr Biden should choose a woman of colour to help shore up the African-American vote, but Mr Biden already polls strongly with African-Americans.

It was the African-American vote that swept Mr Biden to his crushing victory in the South Carolina primary, generating the momentum that carried him through the Super Tuesday primaries to secure the numbers needed to win the party’s presidential nomination.

A recent CBS poll found that while 23 per cent of registered Democrats favored a non-white pick, almost three quarters, 73 per cent, said the race of Mr Biden’s running mate did not matter to them.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia