#Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris for veep is all about her identity

Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick is historic — because it means that if the ticket succeeds at the ballot box, her husband will be the first Jew to live in the veep’s residence at the Naval Observatory.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself, but let’s face it: When a person is chosen in large measure because of her identity, we should all get to play along.

Some will like Kamala Harris because she’s a woman. Others will like her because she’s African-American. More will like her because she’s both of those things. So why can’t I focus on the fact that she is married to lawyer Douglas Emhoff — a coreligionist of mine?

There would be a strong case to make for Harris’ candidacy outside of her identity. At 55, she’s one of the most successful politicians of her age in the Democratic Party.

From the time she emerged as a significant statewide figure in California, rising from serving as district attorney in San Francisco to attorney general in Sacramento and finally to the US Senate, her star power was evident.

But you can’t blame me for bringing up her race and gender (and her husband’s identity) before I mentioned any of that — because the Biden campaign has made it crystal clear she was chosen primarily for reasons of race and gender.

The fact that Biden began this process in March announcing he would be limiting his choice to those Americans with two X chromosomes, and then the added pressure for that already limited choice to be a person of color, makes Harris seem more of a token choice than she deserves.

The more she is welcomed and celebrated for her gender and her color, the more she seems like the candidate who checked off more of the Democrats’ favored identity boxes than anyone else in the running.

To be fair to Biden and the Democrats, veep picks have rarely been made by a candidate who scours the country for the best possible person.

It’s usually a play of some kind — a play for ideological unity (Ronald Reagan picking George H.W. Bush) or regional appeal (Bill Clinton picking his fellow Southerner Al Gore) or to send a moral signal (Al Gore picking Joe Lieberman).

Indeed, the first two women on national tickets were chosen by candidates facing terrible headwinds and in need of a major news boost (Walter Mondale picking Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and John McCain going for Sarah Palin in 2008).

That’s not the case this time. Biden, who has to be judged the frontrunner, isn’t swinging for the fences here.

Harris’s yearlong bid for the presidency meant she had already been vetted by her party and by the media — and, therefore, would not likely be the subject of stories (like the ones about family members with sketchy ties that dogged Ferraro) or interviews (like Palin’s horrid encounters with network anchors) that would do damage to the top of the ticket.

Biden has run a spectacularly cautious campaign since he ­announced his candidacy in April 2019. In choosing Harris, he may be getting the best of both worlds: He will get credit for doing something historic but actually isn’t taking that much of a risk.

What will be interesting to watch is whether Biden and Harris now choose to play up an aspect of her career she desperately tried to play down as she was trying to win the Democratic primary a k a the Woke Olympics in 2019 — her work as a prosecutor.

Biden’s goal between now and November is to do what he can to neutralize his rival’s strength in the three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) that gave Trump the presidency in 2016.

At a time when cities are awash in disorder and violence, surely the Bidenites are giving some thought to using Harris’s prosecutorial chops to speak directly to suburbanites in those states and reassure them that a Biden presidency will not turn the streets over to the mob.

Or is that just something no Democrat can say now?

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