I know it’s early, and I know the discussion is usually around who will be the Presidential nominee, but every time I think about the 2020 race (and I’ll admit, I daydream about this a lot lately), I keep coming back to Tammy Duckworth as the running mate for…well, just about anyone.
Her positives:
Woman
Person of color/Asian
Wounded war vet
Can trace her family’s military service back to the Revolutionary War
Has served in the federal executive branch (Veterans Affairs)
Has House and Senate experience
Has served at state level government (Illinois Dept. Veterans Affairs)
Has a PhD
National exposure from previous DNC speaking gigs
Seems genuine, not especially calculating or power hungry (i.e. Corey Booker, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan)
Midwesterner
My gut tells me she isn’t necessarily presidential candidate material (I could be way wrong)-- I’d like to see someone with executive experience run at the top of the ticket in 2020-- but she just seems like the perfect fit for the running mate slot. In fact, I don’t see how you could go wrong with a {insert almost any Democratic candidate here}/Duckworth 2020" ticket.
Anyone else think this works?
Anyone think Duckworth could be “top of the ticket” material?
Are there any negatives that I don’t know of?
Is there anyone else that you think of as being amazing running-mate material-- not necessarily top of the ticket?
I voted and volunteered for Duckworth for Senate. I get the impression she’s more of a policy wonk and might not want to spend 4-8 years in a largely ceremonial role. Of course, that would depend who is on the top of the ticket. Bill Clinton gave Al Gore a decent amount of responsibility. I think Joe Biden was selected by Obama to help with Senate negotiations, unaware that the Republican tactic would be to obstruct anything and everything.
Duckworth comes from a strong blue state and Illinois doesn’t have a strong Bernie wing to yield a primary challenge from the left.
If Cory Booker is the candidate, he may seek to balance out the ticket with a white VP like Obama did. Similarly if the candidate is a woman, she may not want another woman as VP. For a white male candidate, Duckworth could well be an excellent pick.
I too voted and volunteered for Duckworth for US Senate. I admire the woman greatly, but I think she’s a little too inexperienced to run for Pres. Therefore I agree <Someone>/Duckworth in 2020.
I assume she was born a US citizen. Would there be another birther brouhaha over her since she was born in Thailand? I know the GOP was pretty adamant that since Ted Cruz was born a US citizen it didn’t matter that he was born in Canada, but they may feel differently about a Democrat, particularly a female of Asian ancestry.
Her dad is American, and can trace his roots back to the Am. Revolution. She was born in Thailand, but she meets the criteria for president/vice president.
I don’t know much about Duckworth specifically but the idea that if someone is considered too inexperienced for the presidency they should be considered for the vice presidency instead is odd.
As someone put it in another thread, the main role is to be a spare president in case something goes wrong with the first. I’m not sure that argues for inexperience being okay.
I think she’s qualified/experienced enough to be president, I don’t think she’s experienced enough to be on top the ticket, if that makes sense. I’d have no problem with her running the country should {insert name here} no longer be able to carry out the duties of president. I don’t have confidence that she’d be a powerful enough presence to lead a presidential ticket to victory.
But she brings a lot to the table to round a ticket out.
I think she’d be a phenomenal running mate for someone like a governor or big city mayor. She’d bring foreign/military/federal experience to a ticket headed up by an executive.
My dream team right now would be L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti and Duckworth. Or Martin O’Malley. I also think AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka running with Duckworth would be an interesting opposition to Trump/Pence.
Basically, I like any white male progressive with executive experience and some grittiness, with Duckworth as his running mate. But Duckworth is money, imo.
Trumka is an interesting choice. O’Malley so far lacks federal experience, and he may never live down the mass arrests back in Maryland. I don’t know Garcetti at all.
Duckworth could very well be at the top of the ticket. Depends on her interest in running and the rest of the field.
Experience does matter though. Without a proven record of success runnning a government you can’t really know what you’re getting. Democrats still don’t want to admit how much Obama’s lack of experience hurt him. Hopefully they don’t make the same mistake again. ALthough Duckworth has more experience than Obama did.
Really? Real wagesdeclined during his presidency. He “pivoted” to Asia to antagonize China where wages doubled since the crisis.
He wrecked Libya, Syria, and Yemen. He engineered a coup against the government of Ukraine. He deported two million people. He did nothing to stop the mass incarceration of Black people. He sold out the labor movement, especially in Wisconsin. He protected the Wall St.crowd from any responsibility for the Crisis. Now he is collecting on that with the
$60 million “book deals” and the $400k speeches to Wall Street.
He was and is a complete fraud. Furthermore, this was known even before he ran for the state senate in Illinois, and began collecting Wall Street money as soon as he hit DC. See Ken Silversteins 2006 Harpers article, Barack Obama Inc.
And now, the Democratic establishment is looking around for a “New Obama”. Someone with the right identity politics credentials, a Wall Street friendly attitude, but not so much of a track record which will get in the way of running a phony “progressive” campaign, especially in Super Tuesday states. YUK!
As for Duckworth, she is a tool of the infamous Rahm Emanuel.
How exactly is Duckworth a ‘tool’ of Rahm? She lives in the Chicago suburbs and i can’t remember a single joint appearance of them in the 2016 campaign.