Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor To Joe Biden's Campaign, Discusses How Former VP Will Answer Calls For Change
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – As the events of the past few weeks have roiled the country, we also know they come in the midst of a presidential election.
CBS4's Jim DeFede recently spoke with Symone Sanders, a senior advisor to the Biden Campaign, about the protests across the country.
SANDERS: While yes, the country is going through a period of unrest and conversations and headlines about addressing the long standing, as Vice President Biden spoke about, a down payment on the constitutional right to equal protection under the law that that has gripped the headlines, we are still in the midst of a pandemic. A pandemic that the president grotesquely mismanaged, and his lack of urgency surrounding the issue in January and February, has cost us a lot. We're also being gripped by economic devastation. I would argue, and our campaign would argue, this is still very much so about the economy. Vice President Biden addressed the nation on Tuesday in Philadelphia, the founding of this country. Just a couple miles away from where he was in northern Philadelphia, the median income, the average income, pardon me, for folks is less than $10,000 a year. So there's a lot happening here and nothing happens in a vacuum. And our position as a campaign is that we have to speak to all of these issues and also create a plan. So Vice President Biden talks often about a Biden recovery. A Biden recovery that will disproportionately affect and speak to young people, people of color, especially African American, and Hispanic and Latino, but it will also speak to women. It will speak directly to many of the ills and the pain and the devastation that folks are feeling in this country right now.
DEFEDE: The president in his remarks earlier in the week, again, referred to himself as a law and order president. You know, almost harkening back to the campaign that Richard Nixon tried to run in 1968. Even talking, one point sent out a tweet the "silent majority." Again, shades Richard Nixon in the past. Doesn't law and order tend to work for Republican candidates? That it creates that sense that in times of chaos that you want someone who can bring order. And isn't that what the president is promising? How do you counter that?
SANDERS: Well, look, I would argue that what the what the president has provided is not leadership. And as President Trump stood at the podium the other day and talk about law and order and saying he is an ally of peaceful protesters, peaceful protesters are being tear gas and pelted with rubber bullets right outside of the White House.
DEFEDE: Do the events of the past week make it more likely or more of a necessity for the former vice president to choose not just a female running mate, but an African American female running?
SANDERS: I don't have any news to break for you today. But I will underscore that Vice President Biden has committed to picking a woman as his running mate and that process is currently on underway. As folks know, we have established a selection committee and we're going to let the process play out. But you can bet that the vice president is going to choose someone as his running mate that can mirror the relationship that President Obama had. Someone who is ready to govern on day one. And someone he can delegate presidential authority to, because the tasks before Biden administration will be humongous and he will need someone to help her help carry that load. Is that person a woman of color, could that person be a black woman? Perhaps. We'll just have to wait and see.