So far I’ve seen it over multiple days as:
Kelly, Shapiro and Cooper
Kelly, Shapiro and Beshear
now Kelly, Shapiro and Walz
I’m not sure what to make of that. Maybe it is going to just be between Kelly and Shapiro or maybe she is desperately looking for anyone but Kelly and Shapiro. But it always seems to be some iteration of “final three” that changes every 24-48 hours. Tomorrow it will probably be Kelly, Shapiro and Pritzker 
.
Sounds like it is Kelly or Shapiro and the third name is to get clicks for media and eyes for the Harris campaign.
Smart move actually.
Kelly is also a pretty highly decorated combat veteran with 39 combat missions flown during Desert Storm.
During his Navy career, Kelly received two Defense Superior Service Medals; one Legion of Merit; two Distinguished Flying Crosses; four Air Medals (two individual/two strike flight) with Combat “V”; two Navy Commendation Medals, (one with combat “V”); one Navy Achievement Medal; two Southwest Asia Service Medals; one Navy Expeditionary Medal; two Sea Service Deployment Ribbons; a NASA Distinguished Service Medal; and an Overseas Service Ribbon.
For reference, Vance’s service decorations are far more limited:
The military journal Task & Purpose states that, as per Marines with a similar period of service with a clean record, Vance was recognised with several medals, including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
I’m sure that if Kelly gets the nod the Rs will be digging through his medals and try to discredit them like they did with John Kerry (see: swiftboating). Seems far harder to do with Kelly’s record. I don’t think you get to fly a Space Shuttle if you are a mediocre pilot.
What, you mean that bloated, inefficient government jobs program that private industry could do much cheaper and more efficiently if only we’d stop subsidizing failure and submit space exploration to the free market a la Elon Musk?
Just another Democrat drawing a government paycheck if you ask me…
/s
As an Old Person I suggest that those of us in my cohort remember how admired astronauts were in the heady days of the space program. Given the tendency of some older voters to skew more toward Republicans, having an astronaut as VP on the ticket could swing some of them over to the Dems.
Or could be an Opal fan is determined to stick to the rule of three.
Military experience is really important to voters. Just ask presidents Kerry and McCain.
Roy Cooper just announced that he is withdrawing his name from consideration.
I recently heard
Kelly, Walz and Beshear
Fwiw
Nevermind, confused politicians.
Don’t you get that one for essentially not contracting a STD?
Didn’t Trump say that not getting an STD was his “personal Vietnam” and was equivalent to military service. Things are beginning to make sense.
Meanwhile, my fundraising ads are coming from Doug. I love Doug!
I mean he did his tour and saw combat- as in watched it. More than trump, anyway.
But compared to this
It aint nuthin.
Same with most other campaign activities.
The great majority of voters are going to make up their minds on what they know today, and there is nothing Trump and Harris can do to change that. But if the election is close, everything mattered.
Harris needs to pick someone who shows strength, because she is running against a bully, and, maybe, because a weak person is, at some unconscious-to-the-voter level, unelectable to a position where nuclear deterrence requires willingness to cause mass death.
One way to show strength is to stand up to some of your potential supporters. Trump is good at it. I suspect it actually is a plus that Shapiro would show Harris is willing to annoy a small portion of her base (although, because Kelly is a combat veteran, a Kelly nomination would show strength in another way).
But here is the thing- not much impact is not the same as no impact at all. A few votes in the right state could mean a win.
Maybe not when it comes to giving the ticket a boost or helping in a specific state.
But a crappy choice can hurt a ticket. Plain certainly was a drag for McCain and Vance is looking to do something similar to Trump.
It’s all just the echo chamber. There’s maybe a dozen people who have actual information regarding the status of the VP search, and they’re not generally spilling what they know. But the commentariat abhors an information vacuum, so they keep circulating the same rumors they heard from each other.
I watched the Shapiro speech above and had a sort of uncanny valley feeling, like he was doing an impression of Obama. I’m from the west, though— is that the way every Midwest politician speaks?
I can see that. He did have a bit that Obama cadence thing going. I don’t know if that’s how he always is, but if you closed your eyes while listening, you could picture Obama speaking. That’s not how all midwestern politicans speak, but also, Pennsylvania isn’t midwestern.
I’ve tried to do some poking around for Kelly campaign speeches and Walz campaign speeches, and the only thing I’ve really been able to find for Kelly is a election night speech where he’s thanking his supporters. It didn’t grab me as anything special. I found a recent clip of Walz speaking at a union hall in St. Paul on behalf of the Harris campaign, and I really, really loved his charisma on the mic. He has passion, confidence and great presence. (Well, from what I could tell from the 15 seconds I saw him talking anyway.)
I know Kelly is an astronaut and from a border state and has that badass look about him, and I’ve been singing his praises for weeks now, but damn, I would not be mad at all if Walz was the pick. He can stir up some passion from a crowd that I don’t know if Kelly is capable of. Plus he’s got 24 years of military service, a career in a public school classroom, he’s from rural Minnesota, he’s got a fire in his belly, and he’s really taking some nice sharp jabs at Trump and Vance these days. Walz may be the man.
Yeah I call BS on this article. MSNBC needs to STFU about the “long view”. This election is a dead heat, if the Dems lose its the end of the Republic. There is a pretty good chance that whether we are dictatorship in 2028 rides on a handful of swing state voters. Anyone in the Harris campaign suggesting they need to take the “long view” about the VP choice or anything else until the polls close on election day needs to be smacked upside the head and fired on the spot (I don’t think anyone in the campaign would, the agonizing and overthinking they are doing about this dwarves anything we are doing here, I’m sure)