So
I picked the right time to start watching Veep
Kamala Harris looks all but certain to be the Democratic presidential nominee. She is acceptable to and supported by both moderate and progressive elites, and few Democratic voters have particularly negative feelings about her. The tepidness I’m speaking with here reflects the essential concern for Democrats: not policy or position - Harris will presumably carry on much of the Biden agenda, though, ironically, she may have to tack a little towards the centre to compensate for perceptions - but: who can beat Donald Trump, save democracy, and regain the upper hand on the fight for rights like abortion?
Harris polls poorly, but there’s no champion waiting in the wings with miraculously high polling. The fact that the leading name being pushed in contention is Joe Manchin, so obviously unable to win the hearts and minds of the party or the country or to solve the current age crisis, says it all. So Harris it shall be, and we’re all going to have to put up with this infuriating nonsense where people say “she’s unpopular” for four months without ever articulating why. Coupled with infuriatingly lazy, shallow readings of identity - I just watched 1News explain her solely by citing her race and gender, without any attempt to explain her background, decisions, policy positions, past run, substantive critiques of her performance then or as Vice-President…people, please.
Being awake to discrimination on the basis of race and gender does not equal having to chalk up being a black woman as a static -% to the polls across the board. Individuals face discrimination in their own ways, coloured by who they are - for instance, the sexist line against Hillary Clinton was that she was “inauthentic” when she emoted and emasculating to the electorate, whereas the sexist line against Kamala Harris is that she’s an inexperienced token. And the fact that discrimination is a real-world practice that, er, discriminates by context means that this isn’t a guaranteed condemnation of her chances. Candidates can proactively tackle the issue and react to bigoted slander with strategies of their choice, as Obama so masterfully did.
Harris did well over the past few weeks of crisis. We will have to wait and see if she can really reverse the Democratic poll decline. The discussion turns to who’ll be her running mate. I laid out key criteria in the most recently Weekly Defrost, but I won’t stick to them closely here, for two reasons. The first is that Democrats are in panic mode against an existential threat. If ever there was a time to forgo planning for the future, it’s now. (Not during the 2020 primary.) The second is that the Democrats have a rich field of rising stars. Succession planning is not as important when several valuable contenders can make their case in four or eight years’ time without ripping the party apart. I’m taking my list of potential running mates from Politico’s speculation here.
Here we go, worst to best:
Dead Last: California Governor Gavin Newsom
NO.
Do not run the stereotypical Democrat (derogatory). Especially as a running mate to a fellow Californian, tarnishing her by association with the image of California that most voters dislike. A state where rich Hollywood Democrats hide behind high walls while needles litter the streets and the homeless rule. Do attitudes based on seeing homeless people and drug addicts as a problem rather than people in need of support make sense? Nope! However, they are prevalent and they are ready to pounce if given the opportunity by picking up Newsom.
Two Californians also means one of them would have to change their home state under the 12th Amendment to still receive California’s fifty-five electoral votes, an absolute must for Harris to win the election. Which, in turn, would invite an avalanche of Republican legal challenges to trip the ticket up. (This is why Trump avoided Marco Rubio for veep.) All that Newsom brings you is a known quantity - and, sure, he’s proven he can show up in public appearances, but most people don’t like what they see. Hard pass. A classic example of a politician whose success is so obviously driven by their own ambition, not what they can do for others.
Not Dead Last, But Might As Well Be: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker
Say whatever you will about how he can fund the campaign - about how he’s a scrapper - about his business experience. He is a billionaire. Democrats should not run billionaires for President. This is an incredibly simple concept to understand and I don’t get why people don’t get it. To the point where two and a half million Democrats voted for Michael Bloomberg in 2020. ??? You can’t credibly make the case against Donald Trump as somebody who doesn’t give a damn about the average person, compared to Democrat willingness to soak the rich to afford social services, when your own vice-president is somebody who may as well be levitating up on the clouds. Not nearly worth the cost.
Mid: Maryland Governor Wes Moore
The obvious thing to say out the gate is that Democrats are exceedingly unlikely to pick somebody who is not a cishet white man to serve alongside Harris. There is already anxiety aplenty that America won’t elect a Black & Asian woman, so they’ll want to balance that out with a white man to make the ticket look diverse, rather than representative of narrow identity politics. It’s pretty blah - the leaders of the country should be the most qualified for the job - but the white guy’s gonna get affirmative actioned in.
All this to say that Moore, another black man and one with a low profile, doesn’t really merit his way onto the ticket. He’s the one I know the least about and his biography seems impressive, but I think he merely burnishes the Democratic ticket. He’s not a gamechanger. Pit that against the danger of dogwhistles against Democrats as a black-only party, and he’s likely to be left waiting for the future. And my next contender ably explains why a Governor since 2023 can't possibly be the running mate...
Miles Ahead Of Dead Last: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
I like Shapiro! He should be on a national ticket some day! And in another life, where Harris wins the 2028 Democratic primary, he could make the perfect political partner, as a fellow former prosecutor. This isn’t his year. Trump has blundered by picking J. D. Vance for Vice-President, an inexperienced and incompetent pick near the level of Sarah Palin. The Democrats must be free to argue not just, now that they have jettisoned Biden, that Trump is too old to be President, but that that leaves Vance a heartbeat away from the Presidency. They can’t do that if Harris’s running mate has, himself, only been a Governor for two years, even if his prior experience extends back further. Four years at the national level with prior experience should be the minimum requirement, and Shapiro fails the test.
Gamechanger: Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg
On the one hand, Buttigieg is the most proven of any of these picks, would be able to hold up his end of the bargain and some going on all the talk shows, and would juice turnout in the suburbs. On the other hand, not only is he gay - which I’m sceptical would have much impact simply because I think most Americans honestly wouldn’t realise - but he’s in many ways a mirror image of J. D. Vance: has also advanced far more rapidly than deserved by virtue of being young, intelligent, and supposedly speaking to the Midwest.
Buttigieg as running mate would do fatal damage to the narrative I laid out earlier against Trump as too old and Vance as too young. And while he can point to his experience running the country, Republicans will fire back on his lethargic response to the East Palestine disaster. I’d hardly be alarmed if he was the pick, but I think people really need to think this one through carefully.
A Casualty of Sexism: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
Whitmer basically only gets screwed here by virtue of her gender: especially after the haunting 2016 loss, Democrats are probably only marginally more likely to run two women than two black people. Otherwise, she’s perfect. Personable, a good story fighting for democracy, a great balance between experience and age. Above all, she’s proven that she can really get votes in the Midwest for the blue. Certainly one to keep an eye on for presidential runs in the future, but this won’t be her year.
Whitest White: Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear
Paradoxically, as we get to better and better candidates, I have less and less to say. The Democrats do need a gamechanger from their current position, but we have to hope that the Harris bounce - age + abortion - combined with events are enough to salvage the presidency, or at least Congress. Mostly, given that a vice-president can’t do a ton to help you, we’re looking for vice-presidents who do as little as possible to hurt, leaving the heavy lifting to Harris. Beshear epitomises this: the last of a dying breed of young moderate Democrats who can win in the South. He’s the Democrat way of blaring to white voters that Harris is “like us”. As a 46 year old, he’ll really help to emphasise the change.
The Boringest: North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper
Cooper is peak nothing. He’s the most experienced of all these options, but also 67. That makes him and Harris a sort of Obama-Biden ticket, reassuring the voters that they can trust the exciting new option because they have a steady hand by her side (who, after all, will in 2033 be barely older than Trump was when he won the presidency). Cooper, compared to Beshear, excites less around age, but is the absolute safest bet you can make.
Planet Earth Is Blue: Arizona Senator Mark Kelly
Kelly synthesises the two strains of thinking that run through these recommendations. On the one hand, as a sixty year old Senator for the past four years, and a white man who has had to calibrate for not just a swing state but a border state, he is ready, reliable and dependable to the voters. He’ll help in Arizona, he’ll help on immigration - one of Harris’s biggest vulnerabilities politically - and he’s awfully hard to poke holes in.
On the other hand, he’s a former Navy combat pilot and a NASA astronaut, the most red white and blue things you can have done with your life. And his wife, Gabby Giffords, is a retired politician who survived an assassination attempt. She can show up at the DNC and beyond to speak to, at a stroke, aphasia and disability, gun control, and what Trump just went through. Kelly is the only true “package deal” vice-president I see, and while you can make a case for any of the top five on this list, I think he is where they should begin and end.
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