Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., blasted Kamala Harris in a social media post Monday, calling her a “DEI vice president,” using the initialism for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.
"The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president," Burchett said on X.
He also referred to Harris as "a DEI hire" in a brief interview Monday, telling CNN that during the 2020 campaign candidate Joe Biden said “he was going to hire a Black female for vice president.”
“What about white females? What about any other group?” Burchett added.
Biden said at a March 2020 Democratic debate that he’d choose a female running mate but did not mention race or ethnicity. Other top running mate contenders at the time included Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
On July 20, 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had revealed
he was considering four Black women to be his running mate, and has been receiving extensive vetting briefings about each potential candidate.
“I am not committed to naming any (of the potential candidates), but the people I’ve named, and among them there are four Black women,” Biden told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on “The ReidOut.”
He said he is getting a “two-hour vetting report” on each of his potential picks, and that he and his team have gone through “about four candidates” so far. “Then, when I get all the vetting done of all the candidates, then I’m going to narrow the list, and then we’ll see. And then I’m going to have personal discussions with each of the candidates who are left and make a decision,” Biden said.
Biden is considering a broad tier of candidates to be his running mate, after pledging earlier this year to pick a woman for the job. CNN previously reported that Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice and Rep. Karen Bass of California are among the Black women being considered.
Warren and Whitmer were on Biden's long list. However, everyone at the time understood that Biden's short list consisted of black women. Later in the day after Harris was selected, an NPR station explained
Four days after the election, then-House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said
that he had privately urged President-elect Joe Biden to pick a Black woman as his running mate before Biden chose Kamala Harris, America’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect.
“Joe and I talked about it several times when he was trying to make his decision,” Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who’s the highest-ranking African American member of Congress, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Saturday. “He had said it would be a woman. And I don’t mind saying now, I said to him in private that I thought that a lot of the results would turn on whether that woman (would) be a Black woman.”
When Jim Clyburn talks, people listen. As an NPR station explained
As the Harris criticisms ticked up in the weeks before the pick, Biden's campaign tried to diffuse them. "Ambitious women make history, change the world, and win. Our campaign is full of ambitious women going all out for Joe Biden," Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, tweeted in late July.
Ahead of Harris' selection, a group called We Have Her Back — which includes former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and leaders from Planned Parenthood and the National Women's Law Center — sent a letter to various media outlets demanding fair coverage of the vice presidential candidate.
"Women have been subject to stereotypes and tropes about qualifications, leadership, looks, relationships and experience. Those stereotypes are often amplified and weaponized for Black and Brown women," the letter said, urging the media to resist popular coverage tropes such as "likeability" and "electability" for candidates who happen to be women — analysis they said is hardly ever applied to male candidates.
"Black and Brown women" were the individuals valued by We Had Her Back and
Biden's pick came amid intense pressure from Democrats not only to pick a woman, which he promised to do in March, but also to pick a woman of color. That drumbeat began well before George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police but intensified amid sustained protests across the country.
Harris will be the fourth woman on a major party's national ticket. All three women to run for president and vice president have lost: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008 and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
Evidently, Harris had the inside track over the other black women because she had been a friend of the late Beau Biden when both were state Attorneys Genera. The selection of the California senator was hailed by progressives, liberals, and centrists across the country because she was a certain kind of woman- a black woman or a woman of color, depending upon the label.
Now Kamala Harris has been selected by Democratic power brokers as the party's presidential nominee in part because she is the sitting Vice President- a very unpopular Vice President but still with the advantage of holding that office. Curiously- though not particular surprisingly- she has been challenged by no one, despite Democratic officials and liberal/progressive pundits insisting that the Party has a "strong bench."
And why should she? In today's Democratic Party, Kamala Harris has an advantage which Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, even Gretchen Whitmer- each of whom has been mentioned as part of that formidable bench- doesn't have.
But that's not the point. Harris has had the advantage of serving under the incumbent Democratic President, Joe Biden, who endorsed her for the presidency to avoid all the nasty questions and controversy which inevitably would have arisen had he not done so. Quickly making her the presumptive presidential nominee was the obvious default position.
Not so, though, her selection in August, 2020 as Joe Biden's running mate, which is the move to which Representative Burchett was referring, and for which he is being criticized. Democratic honchos and mainstream journalists are hailing the ascension of Kamala Harris specifically and explicitly because she is a black woman (or black and Asian-American woman). If that wasn't an example of hiring someone because of principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it' will be a surprise to everyone who celebrated the selection of Kamala Harris because she is black, female, and if victorious, would make "history."
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