Vice President Michelle Obama? Biden Says He’d Pick The Former First Lady ‘In A Heartbeat’

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee to run against Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, said in an interview on Monday that one person would be an automatic “yes” for his pick to be on the ticket with him: former First Lady Michelle Obama.

In mid-March, during a presidential debate, Biden made a pledge to pick a woman to be his vice presidential nominee. “I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a woman to be vice president. There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow,” he said at the time.

On Monday, asked about Obama during an interview with Pittsburgh’s KDKA, Biden pounced at the idea.

“I’d take her in a heartbeat,” Biden said in the interview. “She’s brilliant.”

But Biden also acknowledged that he has a hard time believing she’d want the job as well. “I don’t think she has any desire to live near the White House again,” he said.

Biden also acknowledged that he’s nowhere near ready to announce a VP pick at this time:

“In terms of who to pick, we’re just beginning the process. We’ll shortly name the committee to review this and begin to look through the backgrounds of the various potential nominees. And that’s just getting underway.”

Biden made a commitment to picking a woman to be his vice president, he said, because a woman president should have already been elected, in his mind: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“We should have had a woman president already, in Hillary, in my view,” he said.

Oftentimes, candidates for president announce their picks at the convention for their respective parties, but not always. With the Democratic Party’s convention delayed until August, it’s far more likely that Biden will announce a selection well-before that.

Biden is rumored to be considering a number of names for his vice presidential nominee pick, including Stacey Abrams, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar, among others.