Onumba.com —- In 38 days, President Donald John Trump will be out of the White House, and President-elect Joe Biden will move in and become the 46th president of the United States. He will bring with him a whole new cabal of political appointees to help him govern. 
Often, deciding who to pick for political appointments is a tricky task always rife with a maneuvering stampede of close pals, distant acquaintances and political acolytes clamoring for jobs.
But Biden is not new to any of this. He has been busy sifting through all of that clamor to assemble his cabinet and White House staff. In the past couple of weeks, he has been handing out jobs like bottled water. So far, the former vice-president has reached deep into the phalanx of Obama administration’s staffers to constitute his.
But Biden has also rewarded a number of Democrats who had his back, not only by endorsing him but also went all out to campaign for him.
Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris said recently about cabinet appointments, “We are not done yet.” That’s true, a few more positions are yet to be filled, but most of the plum jobs, she must admit, have all been doled out.
One thing is painfully clear if you are in Biden’s shoes: ‘You can’t please everyone.’ There are just not enough plum jobs to go around.
And that’s precisely where we find a discontented Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Widely regarded as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Bottoms was among the small gaggle of candidates considered for VP nominee before Biden chose California Senator Kamala Harris for that role. Bottoms was a fierce Biden surrogate during the elections. Having been considered to be Biden’s running mate, and of course given her vast public service qualifications as well, you would think that she, at the very least, should be offered a coveted cabinet job.
But surprisingly, things have not played out that way. If Bottoms herself had hoped to corral one of these top cabinet posts, it fell apart like a paper suit in the rain — thus far. The grounds for such hope makes a lot of sense, though. For one, there’s a compelling case that she deserves a position in the Biden cabinet, period. Combine that with the fact that she is qualified. Given her background as a big city mayor grappling daily with a panoply of urban challenges, many had speculated that she would be a good fit for the Housing and Urban Development job. But that was not to be. Rather, Biden tapped Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge to serve in that role.
Bottoms was also passed over for several other key cabinet jobs.
Then there’s the proverbial adding of insult to injury. It was recently reported that Bottoms was offered an ambassadorship position to serve, not in the UK, not in China, not in Germany, not in France, not in Canada, not in Belgium or Sweden, but in the Bahamas. Bottoms’ spokesperson denied that such offer was made, admitting however that a cabinet position was offered and that she turned it down.
“Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was honored to have been offered a role in the Cabinet, which she respectfully declined,” the spokesperson said in a statement, which did not say which position was offered.
“She was never offered an ambassadorship,” the spokesperson noted.
While Biden’s gallimaufry of appointees reflects the diversity of the nation he promised during the campaign, it appears it won’t include Bottoms, who, I think, played a spectacular role in securing Biden’s stunning win in pure red state of Georgia, a beehive of heightened partisan political cacophony and racial dustup.
There’s really no way to know for sure how Bottoms feels about all of this, but it’s hard to see how any of this will be pleasing to her. But she might be pleased that Biden is at least keeping his words concerning diversity, which I think, is important to her.
