I like the momentum we’re seeing toward Kamala Harris, but I think it’s going to depend on who she selects as her vice president. Who do you think helps put her over the top?
Gary
I’m going to go in a different direction on this. All of the research that I’ve seen on this topic suggests that the VP pick has almost no impact on the chances of the candidate at the top of the ticket.
Authors and political-science professors Kyle C. Kopko and Christopher J. Devine analyzed elections dating back to the 19th century, and found only one that could have turned out differently based on the VP choice – 2000, when Al Gore went with Joe Lieberman, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, from a short list that included the sitting New Hampshire governor, Jeanne Shaheen.
Shaheen won re-election in her 2000 race, but New Hampshire became the only New England state to cast its presidential votes for George W. Bush.
The analysis from Kopko and Devine had it that having Shaheen on his ticket would have still given him Connecticut, and also given him a one-point win in New Hampshire, and a win in the Electoral College.
So, there you go, one election dating back to the 1880s would have gone a different way based on the veepstakes.
Consider that the recent winners in our presidential elections didn’t think all that strategically – Bush, in 2000 and 2004, went with Dick Cheney from Wyoming, a small state that is reliably Republican; Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012, went with Joe Biden from Delaware, a small state that is reliably Democratic; Donald Trump, in 2016, went with Mike Pence from Indiana, a state that is reliably Republican; and Biden, in 2020, went with Harris, who is from California, which is, come on, it’s California.
The popular conception is that Harris needs to be thinking, Midwest governor, because the Midwest has been the key battleground the past couple of cycles, and because Trump went with JD Vance, the freshman U.S. senator from Ohio, perhaps because of the primacy of the Midwest.
There are good candidates who fit that bill – Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear from Kentucky, J.B. Pritzger from Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan.
Harris really can’t go wrong if she goes with any of the above.
I’m seeing a good bit of support among Democrats online for another Midwesterner, Pete Buttigieg, the current Transportation Secretary, and former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who won the Iowa caucuses in 2020, in a bit of an upset, then finished a close second to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, before ending his campaign after finishing a disappointing distant fourth in South Carolina.
My read of Buttigieg is that I don’t know that too many people think of him necessarily as being a Midwest guy; his appeal is more as a fresh young voice who comports himself well in media appearances, particularly his regular TV hits on Fox, which are fire.
The other name that is getting good traction with the base is Mark Kelly, the astronaut-turned-U.S. senator from Arizona.
It’s only with Kelly that I’ll suggest something of the Shaheen Effect from the 2000 race being possible with his VP candidacy.
Arizona was a key pickup for Biden in 2020, and it feels like it’s leaning Republican in the 2024 cycle, but I’m thinking right now that Kelly being on the presidential ticket could move things in the right direction.
If I was gambling on the pick, this would be the gamble that I’d make.
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Chris Graham
