African-American activists are escalating their efforts to persuade former Vice President Joe Biden not to name Sen. Amy Klobuchar as his running mate, arguing he needs to choose someone who would excite black voters.
Klobuchar – the Minnesota senator who didn't resonate with black voters during her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – was already being criticized by activists as a choice that would not motivate black voters to support Biden in November’s general election.
"That says something to me, and I think, you know, when we talk about politics, and we talk about Joe Biden's selection for a vice presidential pick, that is why the black community has said that Amy Klobuchar is a nonstarter for them, because in many respects from 1999 to 2007, she declined to prosecute over two dozen cases involving police killings of unarmed people."
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Earlier this month, seven black strategists wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post urging Biden to select a woman of color as his running mate and warned that Klobuchar – if named – would “only alienate black voters.”
Klobuchar’s many supporters point out that if she’s named as Biden’s running, she’ll boost Democratic efforts to recapture the white working class voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania who backed Donald Trump in 2016, helping the GOP nominee to narrowly flip the three Rust Belt states that had long voted for Democrats in presidential elections.