Biden says he faced no pressure in picking a Black woman as VP candidate: 'Govt should look like the country'
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he didn’t face any pressure while picking a woman of color as his running mate because he thought "the government should look like the people, look like the country". The former vice president was speaking to Robin Roberts during an interview on ABC News last Friday, August 21, when he was asked about the question of selecting a Black woman as his VP candidate.
Sitting alongside his running mate Kamala Harris, Biden said he didn’t feel any pressure. While Biden had announced his plan to select a woman as his vice president long ago, the recent race riots and protests in the US in the wake of the brutal killing of a Black individual — George Floyd — at the hands of the police in Minneapolis gave rise to the cry for a Black woman to be picked as the VP candidate.
Biden conducted his hunt for several months and there were a number of women of color in the race till he picked his former presidential competitor Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention. The situation was so tilted in favor of a Black woman clinching the role that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race in favor of a VP candidate of color.
51 percent of American people are women, says Biden
"Fifty-one percent of the people in this country are women. As that old expression goes, 'women hold up half the sky', and in order to be able to succeed, you've got to be dealt in across the board," said Biden, who served as the deputy to America’s first Black president Barack Obama and has a strong following among Black voters.
The veteran leader also said in the interview: "I cannot understand and fully appreciate what it means to walk in her shoes, to be an African-American woman, with Indian-American background, a child of immigrants."
"She can't assume exactly what it's like to walk in my shoes. What we do know is we have the same value set," Biden said, adding that Harris 'fit the closest and the best', in comparison to the other women who were also in the race for the position. The ABC interview saw for the first time the top two candidates came together for talks with the media after their formal nomination.
Both Biden and Harris have seen a boost in their respective favorability rates after the convention where they delivered powerful acceptance speeches. The former veep, who had his moments of confrontation with Harris during a presidential debate last year over racial segregation, also courted controversy in May when he told Charlemagne tha God that he was not Black enough if he voted for Trump.
More recently, the man remarked that the African-American community showed less diversity than the Latinos. Both these comments earned the Democrat a wide backlash. Biden was also asked by David Muir, the interview's other co-anchor about his plans about the presidency. The septuagenarian said he was "absolutely" prepared to serve two terms in the White House, something contradictory to what he had indicated the last year-end.