Biden's Running Mate Prediction Thread

That’s true too. But what I meant was that she was staying high enough in the polls and raising enough money to keep qualifying, while many other senators were not.

Yes, there is a lot of ignorance about this point: “Oh, those racists would never vote Democratic anyway.” Nonsense! Democrats cannot reclaim the White House unless a significant portion of racists and misogynists vote for them. Sorry; that’s just the way America is. I’ve previously linked to studies showing that Obama’s blackness put him under a huge handicap in his election: he squeaked by because of his huge charisma and because America was ready for a change from the Dubya years. Despite huge successes, he even almost lost to Romney 4 years later.

Scroll 1/3 down this page to find a nice graphic showing Georgia to be one of the least racist states. California is more racist than Georgia; in the South, only Texas is less racist. Thus, Abrams’ success in Georgia hardly guarantees success nationwide.

IMO, Duckworth and Klobuchar are the only two who should be under consideration for the V.P. job.

Well at least you’ve managed to be offensive to everyone equally.

As an aside, do you have any non-Sam Harris backup for this ‘milllions of listeners’ thing?

It struck me as unlikely - and it is based on average podcast listenership - so I did some digging. His YouTube channel has fewer than 385,000 subscribers. The average views there on the first page of show about 20,000 views per day.

He has about a million or so Twitter followers, sure. But I’m willing to bet in terms of humans it’s much much smaller. According to an NPR story fewer than 20% of Americans have Twitter and fewer than 2% engage on a daily basis.

I’m not picking on you. I’ve spent some time this year trying to get my head around Internet engagement. It sure SEEMS like it’s a lot of loud people speaking to other loud people and not really accomplishing much. Sort of like how Sanders has some many people being partisan for him but not really moving the needle much in terms of absolute votes.+

Contrawise, you mention MS-NBC viewership. A quick look at multichannel shows that in Q3, MSNBC primetime had 1.5 million average viewers per day. Contract that with Harris’ 20,000 per day and that is…a significant difference.

According to your cite, which is pretty weak, (CA is more racist than Georgia?, Impossible) about 15% of Americans are racist.

You seem to think that like 60% or more of Americans are racist.

The Democrats can (& have) win without any racists anywhere casting a vote for them.

I have to admit, as a black woman, I am more than faintly annoyed with those who dismiss Stacey Abrams (or Kamala Harris) with “we don’t need help with the African American vote” - why is it acceptable to take black, and especially black women’s support for granted but we have to pander to Bernie Bros? Let us see that the Democratic Party (and Biden) is willing to dance with who brought them.

It most certainly is not a fact that all white women voted for Trump. One hell of a lot of us voted for Clinton – including some of us who didn’t much like her in particular. He probably didn’t get the majority of white women, either.

And as you are flat out claiming that no white women, no black men, and no white men latino or otherwise will vote for a ticket with a woman on it: how the hell do you think Hillary Clinton won the popular vote?

What century are you living in, anyway? Or are you the one who’s joking? (If so: not funny.)

As a white male, I also think that it is a silly statement. Not that I am saying that the choice HAS to be a Black woman but damn, you’ve got to recognize the difference that just a few percent of Black turnout makes. Nah, you won’t repeat Obama level, not likely anyway, and HRC was as good as anyone else not named Obama has done, but a bit closer to Obama level makes all the difference. Show proper respect for the demographic that pulled your ass out of the dumpster it was in after the first two Joe. And the rest of us would be foolish to take the demographic’s enthused turnout for granted.

That said I think Biden has his choice in mind already and the fact that he specified a Black woman to SCOTUS to me means he felt the need to demonstrate he “wants to dance with who brought him” by doing that (and hopes that that promise is enough) but has a white woman in mind for his running mate.

As a white male who is engaged to a black woman, I agree wholeheartedly with your post. My original choice for POTUS was Harris, though I think she’d be wasted in the VP role (assuming that Biden serves a complete term). I’d rather see her as Attorney General, or on the SCOTUS. I think that plays more to her strengths.

I’d be fine with her as VP, but it’s not my preferred spot for her. I’m not sold on Abrams yet, though I remain open-minded on her. I’d love to see Duckworth get the nod. But I think it’s a huge positive that we’re even having the conversation. Prior to Obama, this would have been considered wishful thinking.

And you seem to think that all non-racists will vote Democratic.

Racism is a very fuzzy term and very difficult to quantify. The idea that Georgia scored better than California also surprised me! But it’s tangential, except as it regards Abrams’ political success. You don’t get many blacks competitive for state-wide office in places like Tennessee! (BTW, here’s another graphic showing ‘racism’ across the U.S. though without clear state boundaries.)

That Twitter study seems so flawed as to be meaningless, to me. For one thing, a state having a large number of Twitter users complaining about being discriminated against would, under their methodology, make that state look less racist. Maybe California scores poorly because the non-racist folks in California just tend not to have any need to talk about race. And even if you could somehow get a count of how many racist people were in each state, it also matters what position those people are in: If there are a lot of racists in positions of power, that’s a problem, regardless of how common they are in the population as a whole. Or how about breaking it down by race: What proportion of whites in each state are racist? Maybe Georgia has the same or higher proportion of racism among whites, but scores well just because whites are a relatively small proportion of the population.

First do no harm.

Picking someone purely based on race or sex is a bad idea.

Biden is old and he has a 25% chance of dying before the end of his first term and its about 50/50 that he dies before the end of his second term.

The chances that he becomes medically incapacitated is higher.

Pick someone that you wouldn’t mind as President. Pick someone who would beat Trump in swing states today.

Not picking purely based on race or sex- picking from several dozen top candidates and in order to winnow them, out, decided to choose a woman, which is a great idea, and about time.

Doubtful. The Prez has the best healthcare in the world.
Note that sanders is older and has worse health.

wrong thread

Why is it a great idea?

If it becomes too obvious that he chose someone because of their sex and/or race, it will hurt them.

He is 77 years old. What I gave you was actuarial data so his chances are probably better but only by so much. He has a much higher risk of mortality or morbidity than most presidents before him.

Yeah but he’s not going to be the nominee so it’s not really that big a deal.

In short: There is no single person in America Biden could pick as his VP that would increase his chances of victory more than Michelle Obama. Period.

Never gonna happen. You and Cillizza need to put down the crack pipe.

Under more normal circumstances, I think Stacey Abrams would be his first choice and it’s clear she wants the job. But given the state of the economy, it’s going to be Liz Warren because she has the necessary experience to manage this crisis from the position of authority of VP.

Out of curiosity: how likely do you think a Biden/Obama ticket would be, compared to Biden/Abrams and Biden/Warren, to win against Trump/Pence?

It’s not going to happen because Michelle Obama doesn’t want to be Vice President, not because it’s not a winning ticket.

(but what do I know, I honestly thought Hillary Clinton wouldn’t even run in 2016)

I didnt say it was likely.

I think giving up a senate seat is a bad idea. Sure, a Dem will likely fill it, but…