This morning, the Prospect posted a column by our own Bob Kuttner that looked at the field of candidates and potential candidates to become President-elect Biden’s labor secretary. Like Bloomberg’s Josh Eidelson, Kuttner noted that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is lining up unions’ support for Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Walsh is a solid liberal who previously headed the Boston AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Council. Eidelson quoted leaders of the AFL-CIO’s largest unions—AFT President Randi Weingarten and AFSCME’s Lee Saunders—commenting effusively about Walsh taking over the Labor Department.

Part of the logic behind a Walsh pick is that he’s already effectively presided over a large institution (Boston city government) and that he’s a liberal who comes from the white working class—the electorally elusive white whale that many Democrats, particularly in labor, still seek to reel in.

Through no fault of his own, Walsh doesn’t personify the new face of labor, which is increasingly female and nonwhite. Neither does another candidate, Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, who’s heir to the Michigan Levin dynasty and positioned in the heart of what remains of unionized American manufacturing.

As Bob points out, a further strong candidate for the job is Bill Spriggs, an African American economist who’s the AFL-CIO’s chief economist and a professor at Howard University. (Bill is also a member of the Prospect board.) Other potential candidates who would better personify labor’s new face include Julie Su, the stellar commissioner of labor in California, and Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s former trade economist and deputy chief of staff, and currently the president of the Economic Policy Institute (from which, full disclosure, the Prospect subleases its offices).

Should neither Su nor Lee be Biden’s labor pick, there are still important administration posts that each could fill supremely well. Su would be a natural for David Weil’s old post as the head of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, what with her stellar record combating wage theft in California. Lee would be a great pick for U.S. trade representative, as she led labor’s efforts against both NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China, and has brought considerable intellectual firepower to the battle for American workers. As such, a Trade Rep Lee might do even more than a Labor Secretary Walsh to help win back those workers displaced by corporate globalization who still blame the Democrats for their plight.

If Biden is for some mysterious reason inclined to blow off the union movement, he could choose Seth Harris, who was deputy labor secretary in the Obama administration, for his top labor post. Harris’s writings arguing for a special, nonemployee status for Uber and Lyft drivers infuriated many worker rights advocates, not least organized labor.

It’s no secret that Bernie Sanders also wishes to become Biden’s labor secretary—probably more so now that any Sanders-authored legislation isn’t likely to make it through the next Congress, and any pro-worker initiatives are likely to be confined to the executive branch. Precisely because I love Bernie, however, I’m reluctant to see him lose his independence and capacity to keep building an explicit left, which he’d have to forfeit if he went into the administration. Moreover, with control of the Senate teetering on a knife’s edge, it may not be the better part of valor for Biden to appoint any sitting senators to administration posts. I love Elizabeth Warren, too, but the same logic applies to her bid to become Treasury secretary.

Conundrums of a transition happening amid our royally fucked-up politics.