The next US vice president will be a woman if Democrats win 2020 election

It's normally unwise to make predictions in elections because just when you think things are going in one direction something happens to make them go in another. But I reckon it's fairly safe ground to predict that if by some miracle a Democrat wins the 2020 presidential election, a woman will be the next vice president. No woman is going to win the Democratic nomination, we know that for sure. But the two leading male candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, must be looking at shortlists of potential running mates, the top two in each case is almost bound to be female. More than at any other time it seems right for a woman to be running with a man for the White House ticket, or I should have put it the other way around! So Biden, at present the leader in the field and likely to remain so all the way to the nomination convention in July, will probably have already decided that it has to be a woman, preferaby one that he gets on with. The obvious candidate to be his vice presidential running mate is Senator Kamala Harris from California. Way back when she was still a presidential candidate in her own right, some Democrat types started putting it around that she would be a good vice president for Joe Biden. At the time this was the last bit of gossip she wanted to hear because she needed to be seen as a future president, not a Number Two to anyone, Biden or whoever. So she dismissed the idea. Now of course it's a different matter. She is out of the race and Biden is up there at the top. Would she now consider more favourably the notion of being vice president? It's a tricky one. If she were to say yes, and Biden goes on to beat Donald Trump, she is up there in lights. Ok, only as vice president, but she could make of the job what she wants and twinning with Biden could do her political career no end of good, even ending up with her becoming president in due course. But if she agrees and Biden loses heavily in the November election, she loses heavily too. Then it's not so good for her political ambitions. Also-ran vice presidential running mates can get lost in the wash. Look at poor Sarah Palin. John McCain chose her to join his ticket in 2008 and when he lost to Barack Obama, she disappeared for ever. So Kamala Harris has to weigh up the arguments for and against joining Biden. If he asks her of course. Biden could go for Elizabeth Warren although that is most unlikely as they are two very different birds of the Democratic feather. Or Tulsi Gabbaard. That could make a good coupling. She is a Hindu Samoan American and a National Guard major in Hawaii. But she is pretty progressive in her views and might be a better fit for Bernie Sanders than for Biden. So there we have it: Kamala Harris with Biden and Tulsi Gabbard with Sanders. Tempting though it might be for Sanders to go with the fiery Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the inspiringly anti-Trump Democratic Representatvie for New York who has been working for his campaign, she is still very much the new girl after winning a seat in Congress in the 2018 intake. Too early for her. Gabbard of course, if asked, would have to go through the same agonising questions as Kamala Harris. But especially for her because Bernie will probably not win the nomination, let alone the presidency.