No matter how healthy he is, or at least appears to be, the fact remains that Joe Biden, like Bernie and Trump, is old. Old people, well, don’t always remain alive in the natural scheme of things. At age 77, there is a very real possibility that Biden, if nominated and if elected, might not survive his term of office. Remember, William Henry Harrison, the oldest president for a very long time, only lasted one month before he kicked the bucket, and he was a mere kid at 68,

This being the case, Biden’s choice of running mate as vice president is very important. So what’s the plan?

That Biden would pick a woman is entirely fine. It’s hardly novel (remember Geraldine Ferraro?) and, as far as most people are concerned, the idea of a woman being president has long since been acknowledged as something that will, and must, happen. It’s not like 1960, when fears were raised about whether Jack Kennedy would owe his allegiance to the Pope. We’re past such silliness, right?

But then, in 1960, America didn’t elect a Catholic president. It elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy to be president, who happened to be Catholic. In 2008, American didn’t elect a black man to be president. It elected Barack Obama to be president, who happened to be a black man. Biden, on the other hand, didn’t commit to naming a person who happened to be a woman to be vice president, but a woman.

Granted, the commitment will play well with a segment of the Democratic base, for whom gender matters more than the person. And, as has been argued despite the fact that Tulsi Gabbard remains in the race, the Democrats had the option of choosing from a list of women for its presidential nominee, and yet ended up with a battle between two old white men.

Is this how it should be done, commit to a gender, or a race, or a religion and then go out and find someone with the right equipment to keep the promise? Or is the bench for female vice president so deep that it doesn’t matter, that Biden could make the commitment with sufficient certainty that he wouldn’t end up picking someone whose competency in foreign policy was that she could see Russia from her window?

Given the apparent breakdown of choices at this moment in time, Trump, Biden and Sanders, what is the impact of Biden’s commitment to a woman vice president at all, and what choice could he make that would be the deal breaker for his position as the most moderate of the Democrats and the antidote to Trump?