It looks live Klobaucchar is in the lead. I like her OK, but she is just about the 12th person who should be considered. And she will probably be picked because she is the most centrist woman out there. Biden thinks he is going to win this election by getting independents to vote for him and not Trump. What Biden needs is a massive turnout in PA, WI and WI. But I don’t think it really matters, who has ever voted for a President based upon the VP?
Bush ran with Quale who couldn’t even spell “potatoe”. You old timers probably remember that, what I did not know until today was this - “What most people don’t know (or don’t remember) is that Quayle was looking at a flash card provided by the school that had the “correct” answer on it, spelled incorrectly. So, yes, Quayle did mess up—but so did the school.”
Back in ye olden days, Vice Presidents were selected who could “balance the ticket.” FDR notoriously ran with John Nance Garner,who was no fan of the New Deal; then Henry Wallace, who was too far to the left; and finally Harry Truman, who was supposed to be a safe pick. George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney, whose foreign policy cred was supposed to balance W’s inexperience.
Biden, presumably, will choose someone who balances the ticket by being - well - not Joe Biden.
Biden/Klobuchar 2020 — The Bland Leading the Bland. I’d rather see Warren or Harris on the ticket but in truth like all three of them just fine in the Senate right where they are.
Remember the good old days when we thought a guy who misspelled potato was too stupid to be in the White House?
I’d rather have Harris as AG, personally. I’m fine with her as VP, but I think she’d be wasted in that role as long as Biden’s alive. She was my initial favorite for POTUS in the beginning.
And we can put Obama on the SCOTUS at the next opportunity.
I feel some Vice Presidents were picked by their President as impeachment insurance. The President wanted somebody so terrible in the Vice Presidency that it might swing some votes in his favor during an impeachment trial.
I feel Henry Wallace, Spiro Agnew, and Dan Quayle were all examples of this.
Wallace was a Republican-turned-Democrat who was an effective and loyal Secretary of Agriculture. It wasn’t until after he became Vice President that his foreign policy views became a liability.
Agnew was a business-friendly governor who managed to be perceived as moderate on Civil Rights (especially compared to his Democratic opponent, an outright segregationist) while still being a staunch law and order type. He was kept on the ticket in 1972 because of his popularity with conservative Republicans, who wavered in their support because of Nixon’s overtures to China. His ethics problems didn’t really surface until early 1973 (although Nixon’s team could have done a lot better job vetting him in the first place.)
Dan Quayle was a pretty boy. Sometimes I suspect Bush the Elder chose him because Quayle was an even worse extemporaneous speaker than GHWB.
There are several not-mutually-exclusive scenarios when a Presidential nominee chooses a VP. He or she may be trying to appeal to a specific state or region to which the VP nominee has strong ties. This was at least part of the reason that JFK chose LBJ, Dukakis picked Lloyd Bentsen and H. Clinton chose Tim Kaine.
Or the Presidential nominee may be trying to “fill a hole” by choosing a VP with a perceived strength where the nominee is perceived to be weak. Having Biden on the ticket addressed Obama’s perceived lack of (particularly foreign) policy experience, George HW Bush gave Reagan better ties to the Washington establishment, and Pence had governing experience and strong ties to evangelicals which were helpful for a ticket headed by an incompetent, amoral windbag.
More rarely, a nominee may choose his or her VP to reinforce the central message of the campaign. B. Clinton chose Al Gore to double down on his message of generational change with two moderate southern politicians.
Bush’s choice of Quayle is interesting. Arguably he was trying to address potential weaknesses by choosing someone younger and more aligned movement conservatives. But he made the choice himself and kept most of his closest advisors in the dark until it was announced, meaning Quayle didn’t get the level of internal vetting he might have gotten otherwise.
I agree with this except that Bush wasn’t particularly old. I believe he was in his early 60s when he was elected. However I do remember that the base was worried that Bush was a northeastern liberal Republican who was soft on abortion and taxes. He balanced that out with Quayle, but as you said, he wasn’t vetted well much like Palin 20 years later.
And speaking of Palin, on paper she had it all and for a brief moment it looked like McCain may have made a brilliant pick to win it all. She was young, pretty, a solid conservative successful Republican woman who offset McCain being old and moderate. But she just proved to be woeful inadequate to the task once she started speaking. That Katie Couric interview really did her in and she whiffed on the softballs, not at unfair gotcha media questions.
But as far as Biden, I don’t see what Warren brings to the table. You will have two candidates at the top of the ticket in their mid to late 70s. Harris seems reasonable enough but the clips of her basically calling Biden a racist for being buddies with segregationist senators isn’t going to mesh well and will give the GOP some good talking points, especially mixed with the “You ain’t black” comments that Joe stuck his foot in his mouth with yet again.
As a conservative, Klobuchar has always been the one I’ve feared the most. I think she is level headed, young, and non-threatening enough to balance out Joe. The only thing, and I hate to even mention it, is that little nervous tick she has that makes her face twitch at times. The GOP dirty tricks squad will criticize that, and for a lot of people, that doesn’t inspire confidence.
In politics, that matters as there is no HR department.
I disagree. Wallace was widely seen as an extreme left winger and as a mental flake. Leaders in the Democratic party pushed back again Roosevelt when he named him and tried to prevent him from getting the nomination.
Nixon was seen as business friendly, a moderate on civil rights, and a staunch law and order man. He didn’t need to shore up his credentials in those areas. And Agnew didn’t bring much else to the table; he had no foreign policy experience, which was a major issue in 1968, and he had no legislative background. Even his executive experience was slight; he was two years into his first term as governor when Nixon picked him.
His main role in the campaign was to act as Nixon’s attack dog. Which helped burnish Nixon’s reputation by making him look like the reasonable one but did nothing to improve Agnew’s image.
So I’m sticking with the theory that a major reason Nixon chose Agnew was because he knew members of Congress would have a hard time casting a vote that would make Agnew President.
You hit it in the first paragraph and unlearned it in the second. Nixon was always seen as a bland policy wonk and had lost eight years prior to the more charismatic Kennedy. Having Henry Cabot Lodge on the ticket didn’t help that reputation. He needed a guy like Agnew to go for blood.
So you’re saying that in 1968 Nixon planned to do a lot of bad shit but just figured that Congress wouldn’t touch him for it because of Agnew? If so, why did he have a taping system installed to record his bad stuff?
And why when Agnew resigned did he pick a consensus one like Ford?
Klobuchar is a decent choice. Biden will want Harris as AG and Warren as, I don’t know, HHS? Labor? Someplace she has expertise and can rock. Klobuchar has no outstanding policy specialties, so a worthless position like VP seems perfect.
This. I can remember Republicans saying how he’d bring in the women’s vote, because he was so handsome. Most women I knew thought he looked like Alfred E. Newman and were insulted by that logic.