from the beginning and throughout that he would choose a WoC, that Abrams was his top choice, and his campaign even considered announcing it from the beginning:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-do-it-stacey-abrams/2019/03/21/c79ff332-4bff-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html {behind paywall, here is the free version:
http://archive.is/P6jK8 }
By Karen Tumulty
Columnist
March 21 at 5:47 PM
Don’t do it, Stacey Abrams. It’s a terrible idea.
Now that it appears all but inevitable that Joe Biden will enter the 2020 presidential race, he is reported to be considering announcing at the outset that he has already selected the former Georgia House minority leader to be his running mate.
Axios’s Mike Allen, who broke the story Thursday, quoted a source close to Biden as saying the dramatic pick of an African American woman who is a rising star in the Democratic Party would show that the former vice president "isn’t just another old white guy."
...
If she joins Biden’s ticket, of course, there is always the possibility that she could make history in an even bigger way. But the gimmick is so transparent that it also carries the real risk of devaluing her own political brand.
What’s more, Abrams would spend the next year or more acting as Biden’s human shield, constantly called upon to answer for his past positions on issues that put him at odds with African American and female voters.
Basically, Biden knew being Obama's VP was not enough to rebuild the Obama coalition. He knew he had to answer for past positions on civil rights and women's issues (Anita Hill, etc). Part of his campaign strategy for this was strongly implying throughout that a WoC would be the pick. If he goes back on this, it would not go well with all of the PoC/women voters who came out for him and expect him to be true to the diversity that the modern Dem party stands for.
