# Should Biden select a different VP in the next Election? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 9, 2023, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341 "2023-12-09T23:54:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/121 "2023-12-15T12:23:15Z")
VP Harris appears to be taking a more conventional role. She’s expressing an alternate view on Gaza then the President. Which may of course be the administrations way of obliquely creating distance from Netanyahu’s strong military crack down. The VP working as a stalking horse is quiet interesting. She may have a stronger working relationship within the administration than I previously understood. Harris is trusted not to screw this up. Please don’t derail _this thread_ with a Gaza debate. I only bring this up as a an example that VP Harris is quite useful. Sometimes straddling the fence on a difficult diplomatic negotiation is the best solution. The administration is sending a clear message to Israel. Link [Kamala Harris pushes White House to be more sympathetic toward Palestinians - POLITICO](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/14/kamala-harris-gaza-palestinians-00131633) > [@](#): > > One person close to the vice president’s office said she believes the United States should be “tougher” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; she has called for being “more forceful at seeking a long-term peace and two-state solution,” this person said. > > The people characterizing Harris’s role and comments from the vice president and her team were granted anonymity in order to discuss private conversations. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/122 "2023-12-15T21:23:20Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They do, it just takes longer. So not the same pace since pace = percent ÷ time. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/123 "2023-12-15T22:01:06Z")
Well … > **[This Season’s Hottest Shopping Trend: Falling Prices](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/business/economy/falling-prices.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GE0.OEYm.2heY4lcAsLMN&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)** > > As inflation slows, prices for some physical goods are falling outright, which could lift consumers’ spirits. Prices can drop without disaster. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/124 "2023-12-15T22:10:42Z")
Prices on some goods that have bubbled can drop back to pre-bubble levels without disaster. For decades food and fuel were left out of the official inflation index precisely because of their habit of “breathing” up and down, and by larger increments than the price of everything else. Unfortunately, if you’re a working-class or working-poor person, food and fuel are 50+% of your spending and rent is the other 50-%. Having those items front and center in your worldview and having them be _highly_ price-volatile legitimately makes those folks very suspicious of the more complete and more mild-sounding statistics that capture the parts of the economy they simply don’t participate in. And those folks are legion. It remains the case that general price decreases across the board on nearly everything are a harbinger of doom. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/125 "2023-12-15T22:49:07Z")
Interesting take in the article: > [@](#): > > Indeed, prices of durable goods fell much of the two decades that preceded the pandemic. Long-term trends such as globalization and automation have tended to push down manufacturing costs. Intense competition among retailers, especially with the rise of online shopping, meant those savings were mostly passed on to consumers. > > Services prices, on the other hand, rarely fall, in part because wages account for a much larger share of the cost of most services. During the decade before the pandemic, services prices gradually rose while goods prices were flat or fell, resulting in an extended period of stable, moderate inflation. > > Economists don’t expect to see outright deflation, in which prices fall for both goods and services. That’s a good thing: Overall price declines are generally viewed as economically dangerous, if they last. So for _goods_ long term decreases are possible. Services probably not? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/126 "2023-12-15T23:18:00Z")
The reality is that in a modern economy, “goods” vs “services” is a bit of a false taxonomy. Every “good” delivered embodies a lot of services rendered and every “service” rendered embodies the consumption of a lot of goods. But sticking with this semi-misleading dichotomy for a minute … If services can be provided by less touch labor, then they too can get cheaper. But as long as “services” are labor-heavy, they only get cheaper if you cut wages or increase worker productivity per dollar. In your industry an example might be doing PCP or specialist OVs via telemed versus in person. In theory, _if_ that lets you do 5 encounters per hour instead of 4 simply by reducing wasted time between encounters, you could maintain your daily revenue but decrease the cost to each customer by 20%. For the “service” of remote customer service call centers, every call they can forestall by enticing the customer to self-serve fiddle on the website instead or foist the customer off on touch-toning or speaking slowly and deliberately at an auto-response unit increases the amount of customer inquiries answered per dollar of expenditure on the effort. The cost per customer served has gone down. Those are the obvious ways we can streamline some examples of “services”. To the degree commercial transportation (trucks, trains, ships, and planes) is a service, if we could halve fuel prices or fuel consumption we could reduce the price of that service without needing to balance the books on labor. But those services are unusual bordering on unique in having a very large non-labor component to their variable direct costs. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2023, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/127 "2023-12-16T01:35:09Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But as long as “services” are labor-heavy, they only get cheaper if you cut wages or increase worker productivity per dollar. And in some cases you can’t increase worker productivity, which, if I understand it correctly, is the idea behind [“Baumol’s cost disease”](https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/5/4/15547364/baumol-cost-disease-explained) which helps explain why things like health care and education are so expensive. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2023, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/128 "2023-12-16T02:38:09Z")
'Zactly. As to either of those specific examples it gets continuously worse. For education since the total volume of knowledge and thinking-training needed to create a useful citizen / worker just keeps increasing, the total worker-effort required to be invested in any one student only goes up over time. So you need continuous efficiency improvements at the rate of curriculum growth just to stay even. For health care the same applies except each new treatment or standard of care not only increases the work that can be done, it also increases the number of people who couldn’t use the formerly non-existent treatment but who now become customers/patients for the new stuff. So more work per customer _times_ more customers. Gotta improve efficiency faster than that product to stay even. As the Red Queen said (kinda; I’ts too close to bedtime to bother to look it up exactly): “You have to run as fast as you can just to stay in one place”. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/129 "2023-12-16T21:04:49Z")
So, despite the Big Lie of GOP propaganda, crime is down- > **[Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/people-think-crime-rate-up-actually-down-rcna129585)** > > Almost 80 percent of Americans, and 92 percent of Republicans, think crime has gone up. It actually fell in 2023. An expert blames a familiar culprit for the mistaken impression. Crime in the United States has declined significantly over the last year, according to new FBI [data](https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/quarterly) that contradicts a widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise. A Gallup [poll](https://news.gallup.com/poll/544442/americans-crime-problem-serious.aspx) released this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken, the new FBI data and other [statistics](https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/#:~:text=Robberies%2C%20residential%20burglaries%2C%20nonresidential%20burglaries,%2C%20and%20larcenies%20by%204.1%25.) show. _The FBI data, which compares crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who [analyzed](https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2023-murder-plummeted-violent) the FBI numbers._ _Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023 at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded, Asher found, and every category of major crime except auto theft declined._ _Yet 92% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 58% of Democrats believe crime is rising, the Gallup survey shows._ ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2023, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/130 "2023-12-16T23:20:39Z")
But Philippe down the street has his car broken into last night! And three youths on bikes keep riding around the neighborhood on those loud machines! ---
**Author:** ![Mikkel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikkel/32/13151_2.png) [@Mikkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikkel)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2023, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/132 "2023-12-17T11:28:02Z")
> [@On another topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/994736/3): > > Biden is getting elected in a legal, fair election As he was last time. ---
**Author:** ![split\_p\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@split\_p\_j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/split_p_j)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/133 "2023-12-18T22:07:10Z")
Biden thinks that Harris will give him the black vote, and that may have been true then when older black people were still voting. A lot of those voters have now passed, and younger black voters are no longer a solid vote for the democratic party. I’m not saying they are going to vote for Trump, but I can see them sitting it out due to new black media telling them to. Specifically, they feel black issues are not addressed, while everyone else is. They think the democrats are bringing in the migrant’s and asylum seekers to displace the black vote in order to stop talks of reparation. Harris is a liability as she is seen as a part of the establishment enforcer class, and not fully black American, as in descended from slaves. They see her as enforcing white supremacy. They are choosing this election to make a stand, believing it doesn’t matter. Biden would actually be better off going with a white male to them. Biden should defiantly get a new VP to attract these voters. I’m an older black man and understand reparations are kind of pie in the sky and that if Trump is elected again things will get really bad for us. The younger people don’t get that though, and if the black vote doesn’t show up for Biden, Trump wins There is so much going on for this next election, and my own view is that Biden and Harris just don’t see it and are not running their campaign effectively. They don’t seem to understand the electorate has changed. . ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/134 "2023-12-18T22:15:28Z")
> [@split\_p\_j](#): > > They think the democrats are bringing in the migrant’s and asylum seekers to displace the black vote in order to stop talks of reparation. You wouldn’t by chance have a cite of some kind for this, would you? ---
**Author:** ![split\_p\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@split\_p\_j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/split_p_j)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/135 "2023-12-18T22:25:11Z")
[Is USA today good enough?](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/12/joe-biden-loses-support-among-black-voters-donald-trump-gains-ground/71889796007/) ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/136 "2023-12-18T22:29:56Z")
Ok, that article talks about polling and his age and stuff. I was asking more about the Black opinion that immigration was somehow a thing that would dilute the importance of Black support for Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/137 "2023-12-18T22:46:37Z")
Yeah, this part: > [@split\_p\_j](#): > > the democrats are bringing in the migrant’s and asylum seekers to displace the black vote in order to stop talks of reparation. Granted, I’m not a Black American, but I’ve never heard this from anyone. ---
**Author:** ![split\_p\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@split\_p\_j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/split_p_j)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/138 "2023-12-18T22:48:19Z")
Polls are not asking what black people think about immigration, that’s kind of a point of what I’m saying. The concern of this poll about his age is just enforces what I’m saying. The immigration issue I talk about is being proved in the poll I linked saying he is to old and out of touch. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/139 "2023-12-18T22:54:27Z")
> [@split\_p\_j](#): > > Harris is a liability as she is seen as a part of the establishment enforcer class, and not fully black American, as in descended from slaves. I’d like to see a cite for this being some sort of widespread opinion, as opposed to anecdotal hearsay. ---
**Author:** ![split\_p\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@split\_p\_j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/split_p_j)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/140 "2023-12-18T22:54:35Z")
It’s all over new black media. I’m 52 so gen X, I’m talking about people at least 20 years younger than me, this is how they are looking at things. The dems are still catering to old black boomers, my parents generation born in the 40’s and 50’s and I’m telling you the young black electorate has changed. The polls are bearing this out, but not getting into the reason why. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341/141 "2023-12-18T22:56:54Z")
> [@split\_p\_j](#): > > The immigration issue I talk about is being proved in the poll I linked saying he is to old and out of touch. The poll that has nothing to do with immigration proves that immigration is a polling issue? Am I the only one confused by this? Now, if you throw out the immigration part, and just say that he’s losing the Black vote due to his age, that cite you gave does support your assertion. (I’m also Gen X, so don’t ask me how people 20 years younger than me feel either.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-biden-select-a-different-vp-in-the-next-election/994341.md?page=8)