CLEVELAND, Ohio-As polls show Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden just four points ahead of President Donald Trump in Ohio, both Democrats and Republicans alike are patiently awaiting his pick for vice president on his presidential ticket, and sources say that Black women dominate his short list.

An announcement from the former vice president who served under Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, is expected before he accepts the Democratic nomination during the Democratic National Convention beginning the week of Aug. 17 in Milwaukee.

Biden said during a recent campaign rally in his home state of Delaware that he would make a choice by "the first week in August."

He has promised a woman, and possibly a Black woman, or a woman of color in general.

U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris and  Tammy Duckworth, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham  are reportedly the major short list contenders, though Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep Karen Bass of California has since become a key contender on Biden's short list.

Some 12 women were in the running, and even more have been considered, insiders say, Biden even establishing a committee to help him vet the prospective VP's.

Harris, Bottoms, Demings, Rice and Bass are all Black, Bass, 67, emerging as a favorite after being seen as a steady hand representing the CBC during the crafting of CARES Act legislation by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to sweep the nation.

A former California attorney general and Obama ally who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, Harris is the front-runner as to Biden's VP pick and is the best known of the Black women seeking to make history as the first Black female ever to run for vice president on a major political party ticket in America.

She made a name for herself by effectively challenging Biden during the First Democratic Debate  on race and segregationist policies he embraced as a longtime former U.S. senator.

But Demings is a firecracker too, taking on the former vice president as crossing the line when he publicly said as a guest on a millennia  radio show that Black people aren't Black if they don't vote for him, a comment seen by Black leaders as arrogant and over the top, and one he later apologized for.

And Bottoms had no problem battling the Republican governor of Georgia after they issued conflicting orders over wearing masks in public during the cornavious pandemic, Bottoms going against Gov. Brian Kemp, who said he would not order that masks be worn in public and that the determination should be optional.

Also a former ambassador to the United Nations, Rice, as Obama's national security advisor, was a no-nonsense and brilliant addition to the then president's team, pundits said, though she too could be controversial.

The former vice president officially clinched the Democratic nomination in early June and will face President Trump for the 2020 presidential election in November, Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.

He needed 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates to claim the nomination, which he surpassed

Winning the nomination was all but ensured when Biden's closest opponent dropped out of the race, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist  Democrat who was making his second bid for president after losing the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton going on to lose the general election to Trump, a real estate mogul and former television personality.

During his bid this time around for the Democratic nomination Sanders, as was Biden, was effective in narrowing the more than 28 Democratic candidates down to the two of them.

Sanders nearly won Iowa, coming in second place to Pete Buttigieg, who left the race and announced his endorsement of Biden.

Sanders went on to win New Hampshire and Nevada.

But Biden, powered by the Black vote and an endorsement from Black U.S. Rep James Clyburn, subsequently won South Carolina, and Super Tuesday, and never looked back.

How much influence Clyburn has on Biden's choice of a running mate remains to be seen, Clyburn publicly saying, without hesitation, that he prefers an African-American woman on the Democratic ticket.