Washington D.C., Jul 28, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- As Election Day nears, one big question remains outstanding: Who will be joining Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket?
Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party’s nominee for president, committed to selecting a woman for his running mate back in March. That is about all that can be certain about who Biden plans on selecting.
Normally, the selection of a running mate is intended to court a certain segment of the electorate–see: Lyndon Baines Johnson and southern voters; Mike Pence and conservative Christians; and even Biden himself, who was selected to appeal to blue collar workers. With the 2020 election, however, the stakes for selecting a running mate are likely higher.
If Biden were to be elected president, he would be sworn in at 78 years old–the oldest first-term president in American history. During a December 2019 debate, Biden refused to comment on whether or not he would run for a second term, saying, “I’m not even elected to one term yet, and let’s see where we are. Let’s see what happens.”
Because of his age, Biden’s choice of a running mate has been framed as a near lock to run for the presidency in four years if Biden wins in 2020. And his running mate is likely to play a major role in shaping policy during a Biden presidency, especially because Biden himself played an active role in the Obama administration.
If Biden wins the presidency, his administration is expected to roll back Republican administrative efforts to limit federal funding for domestic and international abortion, as well as changes to Title X policy, and to make other changes to abortion policy at the federal level.
On the issue of abortion, CNA examined the voting histories and public policy stances of some names expected to be on Biden’s shortlist.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)
Rep. Karen Bass, a five-term member of the House of Representatives, has been one of the lesser-known names to surface as a contender during veepstakes. She is on the House Judiciary Committee and is the chair of the Congressional Black Congress.
Bass has a 100% rating from NARAL, a national organization that supports expanded abortion access. She also has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
In 2013, Bass received the International Family Planning Hero award from Planned Parenthood and the United Nations. She was praised as a “true hero for women’s health and rights” by former Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards.
“Her leadership has been crucial to ensuring that women in the United States and all over the world can decide whether and when to have children, and that they have access to a wide range of reproductive health services. Thanks to her support for international family planning, and others like her, the United States is able to improve the lives of millions of women and girls, and put women’s health and rights at the top of its global development agenda,” Richards said.
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)
Rep. Val Demings was elected to Congress in 2016. Before she was elected, she served as the first-ever female chief of police of the Orlando Police Department. She serves on the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees.
Since arriving in Congress, Demings has had 100% ratings from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL. On the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in 2020, Demings tweeted a call to “redouble our resistance against attempts” to pass pro-life legislation.
“Women’s health is not negotiable. Women’s bodies belong to no one but themselves,” said Demings.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Sen. Kamala Harris is arguably Biden’s frontrunner, and has been in the vice presidential conversation since she suspended her own presidential campaign in December.
Harris is a staunch supporter of legal protection for abortion. As California attorney general, she drew the ire of the state Catholic conference by sponsoring a bill compelling pro-life pregnancy centers advertise for “free or low-cost” abortion services. That law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018.
More recently, Harris has confronted Biden over his own record on abortion – challenging the former vice president for not being “pro-choice” enough for the modern Democratic party. And her confrontation has been effective: Harris has been among a group of politicians widely seen to have pushed Biden to the left on abortion.
During the July 31 debate last year, Harris lambasted Biden’s long support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion services. She accused Biden of “withhold(ing) resources to poor women to have access to reproductive health care, including women who were the victims of rape and incest.”
In response, Biden, who opposed Roe vs. Wade early in his career, told Harris that he believes abortion to be a constitutional right. Biden promised that, as president, “I in fact will move as president to see to that the Congress legislates [a right to abortion into] the law.”
Amb. Susan Rice
Ambassador Susan Rice served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 until June 2013, and then served as President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor for the remainder of his term. She has never actually run for office, although she did briefly ponder the idea of challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for her Senate seat.
Rice’s name has been put forward as a potential Biden VP. As she has never run for office, she has made few public statements on domestic social issues. Rice was motivated to challenge Collins after her vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal proponent of abortion, and has 100% ratings from both Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL. She wore a Planned Parenthood scarf to President Donald Trump’s inauguration as a show of protest and as a show of support for the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Warren published the “Congressional Plan to Protect Choice,” a slew of proposals of pro-abortion legislation. These proposed legislation included “federal laws to preempt state efforts that functionally limit access to reproductive health care,” which would effectively prevent states from passing pro-life policies; and legislation that would mandate abortion coverage in health plans.
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It is uncertain just when exactly Biden intends on announcing his selection of a running mate. The Democratic National Convention kicks off on August 17, so the announcement will happen sometime before then, likely after August 1.
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Pope Francis references the Apollo XI moon landing on July 20, 1969…
A little-known detail of that story is that the commanding officer of the Apollo XI Recover Ship (aircraft carrier, USS Hornet, CVS-12) at the “splashdown” site in the southern Pacific (July 24) was Capt. Carl J. Seiberlich (later Rear Admiral). Seiberlich was a very devout (and Marian) Catholic his entire life, and during the recovery mission corresponded directly with Pope Paul VI.
The Pope responded by extending his papal blessing to the entire Hornet crew, which was received on September 6 and read by the Catholic chaplain over the ship’s intercom. This was still in the Pacific and at “lights-out,” beneath a Milky Way of not less than a billion visible stars. (One has never really seen the Creator’s Milky Way unless on a moonless night at least 1,000 miles away from the nearest city lights, say, Honolulu).
The papal message (from my journal as a crew-member junior officer):
“The Secretariate of State is graciously directed by the Holy Father to acknowledge receipt of the special philatelic envelope [now in the incomparable Vatican stamp collection] from the Captain and Crew of the USS Hornet….and in expressing His sincere appreciation of the loyal filial devotion which prompted this gesture, has the honour to convey, in pledge of abundant divine graces, the paternal Apostolic Benediction of His Holiness.”
Marvelous account.
Pope Francis inspires us: “May the memory of that great step for humanity [Apollo XI] ignite the desire to progress together towards even greater goals: more dignity for the weak, more justice among peoples, more future for our common home.” As a FOOTNOTE (in support), we might still remember also the global CONTEXT for Apollo XI…
Goals can be a mixed bag. On the one hand, writer Saul Bellow commented that this technical achievement of Apollo was not much more than “the Protestant Ethic with nowhere else to go” (Life Magazine). But on the other hand, the threat then to “more justice among peoples” was the ATHEISTIC STATE SYSTEM sponsored by the Soviet Union. AND part of that threat was Soviet technical superiority in rocket delivery systems, for potential use in intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads.
How soon we forget the depths of the Cold War… Apollo XI involved both a lunar landing craft AND a catch-up in rocket technology—a morally anguishing addition to the needed nuclear-deterrent (and box canyon) of what had become Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 was only a few years back.
(The totally unexpected DISMANTLING of the Soviet Union in 1991 came largely at the hands of St. Pope John Paul II, a teacher of very prudential judgment/strategies AND of moral absolutes and, therefore, of the irreducible difference between the two.)
As if the Cold War were not enough, in the 1960s the UNITY of the United States was unraveling—a bit like Church unity today (?). Watts in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and many other cities were torched in the late 60s. Part of the overall moral devolution was the so-called Sexual Revolution—-which within the Church today undermines the pope’s moral message, and which overall has gone septic as “gender theory.”
SO, underpinning our “GREATER GOALS”, then, is steadfast moral clarity about the nature and “transcendent dignity of the human person”—-the very core of the Catholic Social Teaching (CST).
The global CONTEXT today? Advanced despair and distraction, yielding to: (1) not Communism, but resurgent SOCIALISM—-which is not to be confused with CST’s “solidarity”—-but as “Communism with the claws retracted” (Whittaker Chambers). And, (2) engulfing ISLAM: belief in a God other than ourselves (yes!), but then a denial of the self-disclosed inner nature of this (Triune) Oneness: a Father of infinite love, all the way through, and willfully shared with receptive human nature.
Pope Francis is so right to champion solidarity, a need crystalized forever by Apollo 8’s photo of “Earthrise”, when he also clarifies that the Church, in Christ and with Mary, is more than just another non-governmental organization devoted to social uplift.