Former Vice President Joe Biden might be about to throw his Hail Mary pass in a desperate attempt to defeat President Donald Trump.
And it could come in the form of a running mate pick that no one saw coming.
He has previously vowed to name a woman to be his running mate, and the conventional wisdom since has been on former rivals such as Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., or Stacey Abrams, who lost a bid running for governor of Georgia but has become a sensation on the left-wing speaking circuit.
Harris is considered the clear frontrunner.
But a series of under-the-radar reports suggest Biden may go in a completely different direction and choose Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a two-term member of the House and former chief of the Orlando Police Department.
“She is one of a group of close to a dozen really qualified and talented women who are on the list,” Biden told WFTV, the ABC station in Orlando, earlier this month. “She’s a very competent, very capable person.”
More importantly, they believe she could help Biden win the key state of Florida.
Politico reports that a number of Biden’s closest aides and top donors are pushing him to pick Demings, who won some media attention earlier this year when she served as one of the seven House impeachment managers against Trump.
Since the report emerged, Demings may have had a trial run at the VP pick’s traditional job: attacking the opponents.
This past week, she slammed Vice President Mike Pence ahead of his visit to Central Florida, dismissing his trip as “a smoke-and-mirrors moment.”
Pence was set to help deliver boxes of essential supplies to Florida.
“I hope something is actually in it,” Demings cracked, referring to a video – since confirmed false – that claimed Pence was delivering empty boxes during a previous stop.
But Demings’ path to the number two spot isn’t assured as some Democrats also recognize that she could be a flawed running mate.
“Val checks a lot of boxes, and the more you put it all on paper, the more she starts to score at the top of the list,” an unnamed Biden adviser told Politico. “But the knock against her might be experience.”
Demings tried to enter politics several times after retiring as police chief in 2011, eventually winning her House seat in 2016.
She has little legislative success so far. The only bill to become law that she sponsored – rather than cosponsored – was to name a post office.
Given the questions surrounding Biden, voters may want someone with more leadership experience from the VP position.
But there’s a key reason Biden’s team may put aside all of those concerns and go with Demings: Florida’s 29 votes in the Electoral College make it the biggest prize of all the “swing” states.
According to the latest map by election forecaster Larry Sabato, Florida could give Biden the election without having to win tougher targets such as North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio, or Wisconsin — all of which voted for Trump in 2016.
That’s no doubt why Biden is increasingly looking to the Sunshine State.
But Florida is an increasingly difficult and elusive target for Democrats – and it’s only getting tougher for them to win there.
While former President Barack Obama won the state twice, it’s gone blue just two other times since 1972.
Trump won Florida in 2016, and the state has two Republican senators, a Republican governor and GOP control over both the state Senate and its House of Representatives, in both cases by easy margins.
However, statewide races are often nail-biters, as voters well know. In the most recent, then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, defeated the Democratic incumbent, then-Sen. Bill Nelson by a margin of 10,033 votes.
In other words, if the election comes down to Florida – again – be prepared for a very late night on Nov. 3.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”