Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he did not “feel pressure” to name a Black woman as his running mate leading up his selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
“No, I didn’t feel pressure to select a Black woman,” Biden told ABC’s Robin Roberts in his first-ever joint interview with Harris. “But what I do think … is that the government should look like the people, look like the country.”
“Fifty-one percent of the people in this country are women,” he continued. “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, and no matter what you say, you cannot, I cannot understand and fully appreciate what it means to walk in her shoes, to be an African- American woman, with a Indian American-background, child of immigrants.”
The former vice president described being particularly impressed by Harris, who, as California attorney general, had worked closely with Biden’s late son, Beau, when he was Delaware’s attorney general.
“She’s an incredible woman. On the Judiciary Committee, which I used to chair for years, I watched her just insist on getting the answers, and not relented until she got the answers,” he said in the interview, set to air Sunday night. “And so it just seemed to fit.”
Biden pledged during the Democratic primaries to name a woman his running mate. Several other Black women reportedly made his shortlist, including Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and former White House national security adviser Susan Rice. Another contender, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), announced she would remove herself from contention, saying it should go to a woman of color.