Biden-Warren 2020?

Joe Biden’s stated commitment to pick a woman as his Vice-Presidential running mate is not only a bright spot amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic. It is a hook thrown into the future. Elizabeth Warren, I propose, is the woman best able to take that hook and run with it.

Biden’s announcement during Sunday’s Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders became the headline take-away. And with Biden again winning big in Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona, he now is the prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic nominee. As such, his commitment to a woman V.P. becomes real, operational. Let the naming games begin.

The names of Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, all U.S. senators, head many lists. Biden reportedly leans toward someone experienced in campaign politics, which of course includes these three before they were forced to bow out of the presidential race. Other names include Stacey Abrams, whom Biden calls “the woman who should have been the governor of Georgia”; U.S. senators Catherine Cortez-Masto, Jean Shaheen, and Maggie Hassan; Governor Gretchen Whitmer; and Sally Yates, acting Attorney General fired by Trump early in his term.

Of these highly qualified women, Elizabeth Warren stands out — on the most important grounds. They are:

ONE: Crucially, Warren has the financial-economic smarts to engineer our post-pandemic recovery.

When this pandemic ends, there will be vast financial and economic damage to redress. To reconstruct the system, perhaps from the ground up, we need, not an ideology-driven politician, but an actual expert in things financial and economic. And since this pandemic with its almost complete public lockdown will no doubt produce massive bankruptcies, both business and personal, who better to have in the №2 role than an expert on bankruptcy?

Warren made bankruptcy her specialization as an academic (also here), coming to it first as a Republican who believed bankruptcy was the result of moral failure, then as a Democrat who understands how capitalism can destroy if not properly managed and regulated. (Biden and Warren have talked twice recently about bankruptcy.) Recall also Warren is the founding mother of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which, before it was defanged by the Trump administration, clawed back $12 billion in monies lost by Main Street to Wall Street. As for Wall Street, Warren is said to scare the “talent” there — a very good thing. Plus, the…