Joe Biden‘s hypothetical presidency would guarantee that the United States sees its first female vice president, he said at the March 15 Democratic debate. Biden , 77, and Senator Bernie Sanders, 78, are still neck and neck in the 2020 presidential primaries, but both candidates are already looking forward to the future, when one of them could be the party nominee. While speaking about women’s rights at the Washington, DC, debate, Biden promised that a woman would run on his ticket. “I commit that I will, in fact, pick a woman to be vice president,” Biden, a former vice president himself, declared. “There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president.” Sanders would not definitively say if he’d choose a woman as his running mate, but said it would happen “in all likelihood.”
He didn’t give any hints about who he’d like as his running mate, but he has two female former candidates who recently endorsed him: Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, and California Senator Kamala Harris. He pointedly praised another former candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren‘s policies during the debate. Biden also pledged to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, saying, “I’m committed that if I am elected president and have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts, I will appoint the first black woman to the court. It’s required that they have representation now; it’s long overdue.”
Biden has teased potentially picking a female VP in the past, even weighing some potential picks during a November 2019 campaign event in Iowa: “the former assistant attorney general who got fired,” Sally Yates; “the woman who should have been the governor of Georgia,” Stacey Abrams; and “the two senators from the state of New Hampshire,” referring to Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
Joe Biden commits to choosing a woman as his running mate if he wins the Democratic nomination #DemDebate https://t.co/zDRCohlze9 pic.twitter.com/eXCjmnTarr
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 16, 2020
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