THE DEMOCRATIC VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION: NOT THIS YEAR, TAMMY

7/6/20

This morning, as I was looking for something to write on this blog after a few weeks’ absence, I considered writing something about President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech, but, apparently, the Wall Street Journal beat me to my point in its lead editorial this morning.   Being something of a stickler for originality, I continued my search.   Then an old friend sent an e-mail suggesting that, from a political perspective for a number of reasons, former Vice-President Joe Biden ought to seriously consider Senator Tammy Duckworth as his running mate but won’t do so because she is from Illinois, about as blue a state as one will be able to find in 2020.    Instantly, as a lover of the horse race aspects of politics and something of an armchair political historian, I had the grist I needed for this post.

It won’t be her home state that keeps Tammy Duckworth off the Democratic ticket in 2020. Balancing the ticket geographically and/or picking a running mate for the home state s/he might be able to carry has not been a big consideration in the vice-presidential selection process in a long time.   Consider the vice-presidential nominees over the last forty years:

GOP                Dems

2016:                           Pence               Kaine    

2012:                           Ryan                Biden

2008:                           Palin                Biden

2004:                           Cheney            Edwards

2000:                           Cheney            Lieberman

1996:                           Kemp              Gore

1992:                           Quayle             Gore

1988:                           Quayle             Bentsen

1984:                           Bush                Ferraro

1980:                           Bush                Mondale

The only candidates in this list who might, and only might, have been chosen because they were keys to carrying states that otherwise might not be carried by their party were:

Kaine                           Virginia

Ryan                            Wisconsin

Edwards                      North Carolina

Gore                            Tennessee

The rest were from state that were locks for their parties…

Pence                                   Indiana

Biden                                    Delaware

Palin                                      Alaska

Cheney                                Wyoming

Lieberman                          Connecticut

Quayle                                  Indiana

Bush. GHW                         Texas  

(admittedly, Mr. Bush may have helped in Maine and Connecticut, two       other states to which he could lay claim.)

 Ferraro                                 New York 

 Mondale                              Minnesota         

                                                               

…or impossible for their parties to carry…

Kemp                                    New York

Bentsen                               Texas.

Furthermore…

Bill Clinton may have selected Al Gore because Mr. Gore was the scion of a political dynasty from Tennessee, but one suspects there was more to it than that.   Note that Mr. Gore was among the “first team” of candidates (Mr. Gore, Sam Nunn, Mario Cuomo, et. al.) who declined to run against George H.W. Bush in 1992 because Mr. Bush was considered unbeatable, leaving the field open for comparative ingenue and political genius (I’m serious.) Bill Clinton.   Further, Mr. Gore’s selection did nothing to balance the ticket; both candidates were young White, moderately conservative, at least by Democratic standards, men from the South.   Third, Tennessee had only 11 electoral votes in 1992, which would have been helpful in a close race but hardly enough votes to be a consideration in a veep selection.

Delaware, Alaska, and Wyoming, the home states of Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, and Dick Cheney, respectively, in addition to being locks for their parties, are so small, with three or four electoral votes, that, even if they weren’t sure things, they would provide almost no incentive for geographical selection of a running mate.

So one suspects that if Joe Biden wants Ms. Duckworth for his running mate, her hailing from Illinois, about as much of a lock for the Democrats as exists in 2020, will not be a barrier to her selection.   One further suspects, though, that it will not be Ms. Duckworth’s home state but, rather, her color that will keep her off the ticket.   Especially in the wake of the George Floyd murder and the unrest that ensued, the Democratic Party’s obsession with race will result in Mr. Biden’s selecting a Black woman as a running mate.   “Woman of color,” a broad enough distinction to permit the selection of Ms. Duckworth, was enough before the events of the summer; now, however, the criterion seems to have shifted from “woman of color” to “Black woman.”

Am I willing to make any predictions here, beyond “not Tammy Duckworth”?   I discussed the veep situation on 4/24 (THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL VICE-PRESIDENTIAL PICK SINCE 1944) and made some quasi-predictions on 4/29 (THE DEMOCRATIC VEEP RACE:  HOW ABOUT A FEMALE TIM KAINE…OR A NAME OUT OF LEFT FIELD?), but things have changed since then for reasons cited in the last paragraph.   The likes of Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren are out of consideration.   There are few reasons to defy the conventional wisdom that says the following women are the most likely picks.  I’ve included some comments on each:

Senator Kamala Harris of California, but Joe Biden would do well to eschew somebody who was involved in the now largely forgotten primary scrum for reasons I outlined on 4/29,

Keisha Lance Bottoms, mayor of Atlanta, who has the additional attraction to R&B fans of being the daughter of the late Major Lance, a Chess records denizen who is one of yours truly’s minor favorites,

Val Demings, House member from Florida, but Mr. Biden would do well to note the heart of this post if Ms. Demings’ greatest attraction is her state, which one suspects is the case, and

Susan Rice, Former National Security Advisor, but Mr. Biden already bears the burden of the disastrous Bush/Obama foreign policy; why make the burden heavier?

For the life of me, yours truly can’t understand why Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been mentioned as a possible veep candidate nowhere but on this blog  (See the aforementioned 4/29/20 post.)    Yes, she is a bit light on experience and, no, Chicago is not in the greatest shape financially or otherwise.   But, if you think about it, one kind of offsets the other; that Chicago is not looking like Valhalla right now is not her fault because she’s only been around a little over a year.    And if experience and the like were a big issue here, we would be discussing none of the above likely picks, with the possible, and only barely possible, exceptions of Ms. Harris and Ms. Rice.  As is usually the case in politics, such trite notions as experience, the ability to step into the big job, and the like take a back seat to the nation’s, and especially, but not exclusively, the Democratic Party’s obsession with race, gender, and sexual orientation, seemingly the only defining characteristics of anybody in the bizarro world we currently inhabit.