Here’s a crazy idea: Maybe people should be selected for important jobs based on merit, not their race and gender. Lest we forget Kamala won 2% of the 2020 democrat primary vote and called Biden racist at one of the debates.
But this is the point: the Vice Presidency is no longer mostly ceremonial. The VP is now functionally an extra Cabinet officer, as well as having an important role liaising with the legislative branch on the President's behalf. So a meritorious VP (ceteris paribus) would have executive skill to function as a Cabinet officer, as well as diplomatic skill and usually prior legislative experience to negotiate with the legislative branch.
And that's even without considering the VP's important role of being a back-up President, both for replacing the existing President in an emergency and for being a candidate in a subsequent election, which therefore requires the VP to have all of the merits appropriate to the Presidency as well.
I very strongly disagree that there are no merits that make someone a more effective political figure. And you are ignoring the VP's role as a Cabinet officer with executive responsibility.
Unlike a Cabinet officer, the VP has no official portfolio, so there's no real criteria to use to judge "merit."
And there likely are things that make some people more effective political figures than others, but I wouldn't use the words "merits" to describe them. Who you consider a more effective political figure likely depends on your politics!
Eh, that's a great idea in theory, but Whitmer's electability advantage was not obvious in 2020 (she'd won a pretty close election in a Blue Wave year), and to the extent that it exists, it stems from having an actual job where she can be judged based on how she performs the duties expected of her. I suspect if she were VP right now, then her approval ratings would be low and people would be saying "Biden should have picked someone more electable, like (fill in the blank)."
This raises a very important epistemological question: is lived experience of a subject required to understand it if the subject is most associated with under-privileged groups?
If the answer is yes, as progressives believe, then race and gender and sexuality ARE a form of merit. It means that even an unaccomplished and unintelligent BIPOC trans lesbian can understand more issues than an accomplished, intelligent white straight cis male, who cannot understand BIPOC or women's or 2SLGBTQQIA+ issues at all by definition. But if the answer is no, then it fatally undermines the entire basis of contemporary progressive politics.
So we have to decide that prior question first: can white straight cis males understand the needs of BIPOC trans lesbians as effectively as BIPOC trans lesbians can understand the needs of white straight cis males?
Merit? Achievement? Accomplishment? Intelligence? Common sense? You must be racist as any of those criteria would clearly filter Kamala out of the running for any office.
If you select based on 'merit', and white men are overrepresented in your selections, relative to their proportion of the population, then either white men intrinsically have more merit, which is ludicrous, or you have demonstrated the power of privilege in the society (i.e. they end up with more merit because they disproportionately had advantages that others did not have). Some people think that's a problem, while others clearly do not.
“either white men intrinsically have more merit, which is ludicrous”
Given that it is not disputed by anyone serious that IQ is not evenly distributed in the population, why would this be ludicrous? Whites have significantly higher IQ than blacks and Hispanics. Males have significantly higher variance in IQ than women, so just as there are far more male idiots there are also far more male geniuses. Given these two facts and the US's demographics, it would be bizarre if most senior office holders weren't white men.
I stopped reading your diatribe when you said "whites have significantly higher IQ than blacks and Hispanics ..." anything you say about anything at all is thereby rendered untrustworthy. Won't waste my time by pointing out the "IQ" is not a scientific immutable, but governed by biases as to what constitutes "intelligence" etc. etc, etc,
Wasn't aware anyone 'serious' believed intelligence could be measured by one metric (or, for that matter, that intelligence is the only form of merit, but that depends on how you define it; the more broadly you define it, it both becomes a better synonym for merit AND becomes harder to quantify). I shouldn't even be responding to this but silence is a bad option too.
If you aren't aware that g is one of the best-attested concepts in the whole of social science, then I'm afraid you need to read more about the subject.
Ability to play basketball isn't remotely like leading groups of humans. And how much of it is genetics and how much is years of training and practice? Playing basketball is one of the few fields Black Americans have been allowed to excel at, so that might feed on itself. The point is that what happens to people from the moment they're born matters, but it's more comforting to think everything's intrinsic and everyone gets the results they deserve because then you don't have to ask any tough questions.
This whole piece feels like it ignores Obama-Biden '08.
Obama chose a governing partner -- or at the very least, an old white guy who could reassure voters wary of a young Black guy -- not a successor.
Yet despite the assertion in the piece that "if the VP isn’t seen as the natural successor, it may lead to a lot of questions," there were no questions about Obama's strategy at the time -- indeed, it was widely seen as the right one.
Bush-Cheney '00 feels similar -- a wisened veteran paired with a younger guy that some people had concerns about. No one expected Cheney to run after Bush's terms.
So two of the three President-VP combos of the 21st century (prior to Biden-Harris) don't follow the supposed rule that you need to pick a future presidential nominee. (While of course Biden did become a nominee, that's more incidental than anything. He became the nominee four years after he was out of office. Far as I can tell, every other person identified as having run for president post-VP did so at the first available opportunity -- either immediately following a term-limited president, or in the next election after a loss for a one-term president.)
So why is Nate so convinced that presidents must choose a VP who would be a viable successor? It seems like there are multiple logical paths to making that choice.
I agree with this and would add that Trump’s selection of Pence also fits this mold. While he is younger it was the “conventional Republican with DC experience” who could help temper the Trump craziness. I don’t think Trump thought he would be a great successor.
Trump is really old and he looks it, but we tend to think of old people as being slow and tired and his aggression and anger issues make him seem higher-energy.
I think "Obama chose a governing partner... not a successor" is a false choice and kind of misconstrues Nate's point. Obama picked Biden to be a governing partner, but once Biden was picked, he BECAME the obvious successor by virtue of the VP's role. You say it's "incidental" that Biden eventually became the nominee, but Nate is saying the opposite: Virtually EVERY VP goes on to be the nominee at some point, and what is really "incidental" or unusual in this case is that Biden was the nominee in 2020 instead of 2016. Does anyone really believe Biden would have won the '20 primary if he HADN'T been Obama's running mate?
So Nate is saying (I think) that, even if you have governing or ticket-balancing concerns in selecting a VP, you have to realize that you are also DE FACTO picking a likely future nominee of your party, and you should factor that into the choice, especially if you are in your late 70s when you make the choice.
I see where you’re coming from but I just don’t think most of this is true.
If Biden had become the “obvious” successor by virtue of being VP, he would have run in 2016. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t positioned as a successor.
Ultimately, I think you can position a VP in a few ways including “steady hand at the tiller” (useful for less experienced presidential nominees) or “future of the party” (typical for older nominees - McCain and Romney kind of fit this mold with their picks too). But there’s no magic rule that says all VPs need to fall into the second camp.
Where I do agree with you (and Nate, I think) is that when you pick someone younger, your pick is likely to have a head start on the next cycle, so you should keep that in mind. But what does it even look like to do that in practice? It’s not obvious to me that (at the time) Harris was a bad pick by that amorphous metric.
Well, Biden in 2016 was an odd situation, given that his son had just died and Hillary was ALSO seen as an heir apparent. Maybe I shouldn't have said he was the "obvious" successor, but I think it's reasonable to say, now that we know how that primary and the 2020 primary went, that he would likely have won had he run because of the tremendous leg up serving as VP gives you in a primary.
But I agree with your last point that it's not exactly obvious what anyone should do with this information. Even if you're picking a future nominee, the VP won't run for 8 or maybe even 12 years after you pick them... how on Earth are you supposed to predict the attributes that will be politically favorable in 8 or 12 years? There's this idea I've seen, in this post and elsewhere, that Kamala was some terrible choice in 2020, but as I said this in another comment, it's not at all obvious to me that anyone else would be perceived differently in that role.
Democrats have wanted a woman nominee since 2009…which is why Obama appointed Hillary to a position which generally doesn’t get dragged into politics because he was attempting to position her as his successor.
Real galaxy brain move of Obama to ensure a woman nominee by first defeating Hillary in the primary and then appointing her to position from which nobody had been elected president in 150 years! Talk about 12-dimensional chess!
The right wing echo chamber excels at driving up negatives of candidates and so appointing her SoS was supposed to shield her from that…it made sense at the time.
The current media incarnation excels at driving up unfavorables of the opposing party’s candidates and so I think the VP slot is great on one hand because it enables wide name ID which is unfortunately the foundation of running for president…but on the other hand it puts a target on your back that inevitably drives up unfavorables. I think that’s why Hillary rejected the VP slot but took the SoS position because generally SoS only get favorable coverage…except the right wing echo chamber can always figure out a way to drive up unfavorables. Obama and Trump and to a lesser degree Bush found the best balance—high name ID but underestimated in which the media drives up one’s primary opponents unfavorables!!
There is really only one objective in choosing a VP - try to win the election in front of you. It’s all campaign positioning. Biden had committed himself to choosing a woman as running mate and then, during the George Floyd protests, refined that to an African American woman, because he thought it would win him votes in the primary and general election. Once he made that calculus he has a pretty narrow range of options and - no disrespect to Karen Bass or Val Demings - Harris was obviously the most credible as a potential president. It has played out poorly from there in ways that might have been avoidable, but the logic of her selection was crystal clear... and it worked! They won the election.
There is also no guarantee she will be the next nominee! Dan Quayle wasn’t, Mike Pence won’t be, if you are not a suitably strong candidate the advantage you get from being VP only goes so far.
“There is really only one objective in choosing a VP - try to win the election in front of you. It’s all campaign positioning.”
This is only true if you're very uncertain about winning the election in front of you. Bill Clinton famously picked Al Gore, even though Gore was very similar to him and thus didn't do much to help him win the election, because he knew he would have a good working relationship with Gore in office and felt he could trust him to take over in a crisis. That was responsible long-term statesmanship, not cynical short-term politicking. It's sad and revealing that we have lost the ability even to imagine a politician behaving like that any more.
Clinton was very uncertain to win the election when he picked Gore! He picked him to reinforce the “New Democrat” character of the ticket, away from the Mondale/Dukakis generation that had dominated the Democrats for decades and performed miserably in presidential elections.
That's the point, though. He didn't pick someone from a complementary wing of the party. He didn't pick someone from a different region of the country. (The Democrats had been cynically running combined Northern-Southern tickets for years.) He didn't pick someone who complemented him demographically. He picked someone who he agreed with politically and thought would make a good VP and President. He stood on his principles and let the public elect those principles or not, rather than try to be all things to all men.
The country is currently closely divided and uncertain, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is always closely divided and uncertain. In 1984 Reagan won the tipping point state, Michigan, by 19%. His total excess votes in the 17 states that Mondale would have had to take off him was nearly 6 million votes in an election where fewer than 93 million votes were cast.
Besides which, the point is that there are multiple valid goals in selecting a VP nominee, and “aid in winning the election” (and btw there is surprisingly little evidence that the choice of VP makes the blindest bit of difference to the result either way) is only one of those goals that must be traded-off against each other.
Ok but literally every election since then has been decided by less than 10 points.
In today’s environment — the one in which we are talking about making a VP pick! — any party leader should basically assume they have a 50/50 chance to win.
I agree VPs don’t make much difference, but to the extent they do, you should first and foremost try to choose one who can tip the odds of winning.
I very, very strongly disagree that “not a landslide” = “a 50/50 chance”. Honestly, I'm stunned that anyone who follows Nate Silver could bring themselves to make such a statement lol.
You are entitled to believe that gaining an extra 0.001% chance of victory in an election is more important than ensuring the prosperous and stable governance of your country. And I am entitled to believe that that mentality is a powerful signal of the decline of civic responsibility in Western society. I think that the world would be better if politicians and voters of all persuasions were less willing to trade away their people's prosperity and stability in exchange for a minuscule extra chance of grabbing more power for themselves. But that is where we are today: a world where it is seen as obvious and sensible to place seizing power for yourself “first and foremost” rather than placing the good of one's country first and foremost.
What are your priors about your preferred party’s chance of wining an election 6 months out (ie at the time a VP pick is made)? If it’s something that isn’t close to 50/50, on what basis would you justify that?
Of course on election day Nate’s model would tell you it has deviated somewhat from 50/50 but as a starting point it’s basically the most reasonable thing you can choose.
I agree with Nate’s takeaway that “future presidential nominees probably do need to give ample consideration to the popularity and the political acumen of their running mates.” With that said, on a slightly different note, the Dem handwringing about “what would we do about Kamala if there’s an opening” is misplaced IMO. Exactly the same thing as in past open seats—have an open primary and let the process play out. If the VP is strong, they’ll likely win; if not, they won’t.
Yeah, this is only a problem for Democrats now because there are some genuine concerns about Biden's age and, in an ideal world, Democrats would like to campaign as much on Harris as Biden, to reassure voters that even if Biden cannot perform his duties, the American people will be happy with the end result.
Yeah, it would be helpful if KH were more popular and they should try to improve her standing. I don’t disagree that Biden’s age increases the salience of Kamala to a degree compared to past VPs, but I think the conventional wisdom overstates by how much. If Biden looks strong enough, attacks on KH as the real next POTUS will be harder to land; if Biden looks totally weak, KH is the least of his worries.
I wish the piece included some reflection on who might've been a better choice than Harris, because frankly I don't think there's a clear answer. Bernie is older than Biden and far easier to attack on policy. None of the other 2020 candidates had a great showing in the primary.
Whitmer is untested nationally. Gavin Newsom is too, and also carries some stigma as the Governor of California and a former mayor of San Francisco.
To me, going through the primary process counts as being tested nationally. So for example, by 2008 Biden had run for president twice and been in the Senate for 35 years. I think he was tested nationally.
Whitmer and Newsom have only ever held office in their states. I don't think it's safe to assume either would be a better VP pick than Harris without any sort of national test. Either could've fallen flat once tested.
And my overall point is that I'm not sure criticizing the Harris pick makes sense where there was no obvious choice for the role.
Maybe the vice-presidency isn't such a great position though. With the caveat that anything related to the presidency has a small sample size, only two individuals have ever served as vice-president and gone on to be elected to two terms as president: Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon. And Nixon had to lose a general election first, and also did not complete his second term. So maybe the Dick Cheney model is better, to choose a vice-president who has no interest in running for the top office. Otherwise it seems like it's a trap.
Just a note: That last link talking about praising Harris with gritted teeth doesn't correctly link anywhere, it just goes to "v". Likely a mistake in the copy-pasting.
Not all NBA content! But this preview has very explicit gambling implications and that sort of post will usually get paywalled. Trying to find the right balance here and we've erred heavily on the side of things being free for the past few weeks.
Whew. I mean, I understand that we free readers (riders) don’t have any right to demand anything, but I’m still glad to hear that. And as one of the few NBA fans left that doesn’t care about gambling, that balance works for me.
“I understand that we free readers (riders) don’t have any right to demand anything”
This is such an American capitalist viewpoint. God forbid any of us should ever have an obligation to our fellow humans that goes beyond markets and contracts.
I don’t see how that follows at all. For the comparable ‘stacks, like ACX, Noahpinion, TFP, DWAtV (Zvi) even Slow Boring I think most of the important stuff is still free.
On the contrary, I think the word "elected" was used very deliberately. Read the amendment. It could easily bar a term-limited person from "serving as" president again. But it opts for very narrow and specific limits on being elected to that one office only. It even acknowledges that serving in the office is different from being elected - demonstrating that the framers considered the distinction and still chose the word "elected." I'm not a lawyer but I suspect that even this SCOTUS would consider the plain text to be clear.
Obama won't run for VP (or seek/accept office as Speaker of the House, or President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, etc.) But I don't think term limits on the line of succession are the reason.
Two things come to mind on the VP and presidential candidates in general:
1. The “market” decides. If you poll badly and/or are unpopular, that’s on you. There is no one else to blame.
2. The rule of presidential candidates over many recent elections is that they are uninspiring and rarely engender enthusiasm. Dukakis, HW Bush, Kerry, GW Bush, Gore, Romney, Biden, H Clinton, Harris, so many others. Reagan, B Clinton and Obama are the exceptions. Those that have succeeded (at least to be nominated) benefited from being male and having their party be forced to rally around them. Clearly, women still are treated unfairly. But most candidates are not good!
This is everything, from the NYT profile:
“When Harris speaks in an interview or to an audience, it can sound as if she’s editing in real time, searching for the right calibration of talking points rather than displaying confidence in her message.”
Exactly. And everyone sees it. People who support her and care about her should try to fix it or otherwise stop complaining.
I can't believe the interview in that article. Astead Herndon is a professional journalist but he's definitely not out to get Kamal Harris. Couldn't she have prepped a bit for her interview and tried to tell a story about herself, instead of taking offense at his questions?
For the "Joe Biden is too old and we need somebody who can be an effective President if he dies" problem and for the (related but distinct) "who will do the most to help win in 2024?" problem, isn't VP Barack Obama the obvious answer?
To be sure, all else equal it would be better to elevate somebody who would be a good future leader of the party. But some people seem to think that would cause a lot of problems, in 2024 and beyond, and I can't really judge whether they are right or not.
But either way, isn't it obvious that Barack Obama >> Kamala Harris, regardless of your preference ordering between Obama and (say) Gretchen Whitmer?
The constitution only bars a term limited former President from being "elected" to the office again. Not necessarily a bar to serving in (or being elevated from) the line of succession.
They'd have to convince the Supreme Court. You seriously think someone is going to bet their presidential campaign on such a flimsy technicality in wording?
The quoted interview segments in that piece were wild. Honestly DeSantis comes off as more amiable, I mean could you imagine her going on Maher? Forget marijuana they need to put her on a psychedelic retreat, have Mariane Williamson give her a guided meditation, and lower those sky high defenses she has.
Politicians running for president are often over managed and when they either realize it isn’t working or when they lose they change course and their personality comes through…and people wonder why they just didn’t run as themselves from the beginning?? George W Bush is the most famous example of someone who could stay on message and thanks to his universal name ID because he shared a name with a president he parlayed staying on message to 4 straight major wins…he was an awful president but his campaigns were very successful.
Here’s a crazy idea: Maybe people should be selected for important jobs based on merit, not their race and gender. Lest we forget Kamala won 2% of the 2020 democrat primary vote and called Biden racist at one of the debates.
How do you suppose one determines "merit" for a mostly ceremonial job like VP?
But this is the point: the Vice Presidency is no longer mostly ceremonial. The VP is now functionally an extra Cabinet officer, as well as having an important role liaising with the legislative branch on the President's behalf. So a meritorious VP (ceteris paribus) would have executive skill to function as a Cabinet officer, as well as diplomatic skill and usually prior legislative experience to negotiate with the legislative branch.
And that's even without considering the VP's important role of being a back-up President, both for replacing the existing President in an emergency and for being a candidate in a subsequent election, which therefore requires the VP to have all of the merits appropriate to the Presidency as well.
In other words, the VP's role is mostly political, so the selection of one is obviously a political process, not something can be "based on merit."
I very strongly disagree that there are no merits that make someone a more effective political figure. And you are ignoring the VP's role as a Cabinet officer with executive responsibility.
Unlike a Cabinet officer, the VP has no official portfolio, so there's no real criteria to use to judge "merit."
And there likely are things that make some people more effective political figures than others, but I wouldn't use the words "merits" to describe them. Who you consider a more effective political figure likely depends on your politics!
Electability, which is why Joe should have chosen Gretchen Whitmer.
Eh, that's a great idea in theory, but Whitmer's electability advantage was not obvious in 2020 (she'd won a pretty close election in a Blue Wave year), and to the extent that it exists, it stems from having an actual job where she can be judged based on how she performs the duties expected of her. I suspect if she were VP right now, then her approval ratings would be low and people would be saying "Biden should have picked someone more electable, like (fill in the blank)."
This raises a very important epistemological question: is lived experience of a subject required to understand it if the subject is most associated with under-privileged groups?
If the answer is yes, as progressives believe, then race and gender and sexuality ARE a form of merit. It means that even an unaccomplished and unintelligent BIPOC trans lesbian can understand more issues than an accomplished, intelligent white straight cis male, who cannot understand BIPOC or women's or 2SLGBTQQIA+ issues at all by definition. But if the answer is no, then it fatally undermines the entire basis of contemporary progressive politics.
So we have to decide that prior question first: can white straight cis males understand the needs of BIPOC trans lesbians as effectively as BIPOC trans lesbians can understand the needs of white straight cis males?
Straw man.
Merit? Achievement? Accomplishment? Intelligence? Common sense? You must be racist as any of those criteria would clearly filter Kamala out of the running for any office.
If you select based on 'merit', and white men are overrepresented in your selections, relative to their proportion of the population, then either white men intrinsically have more merit, which is ludicrous, or you have demonstrated the power of privilege in the society (i.e. they end up with more merit because they disproportionately had advantages that others did not have). Some people think that's a problem, while others clearly do not.
“either white men intrinsically have more merit, which is ludicrous”
Given that it is not disputed by anyone serious that IQ is not evenly distributed in the population, why would this be ludicrous? Whites have significantly higher IQ than blacks and Hispanics. Males have significantly higher variance in IQ than women, so just as there are far more male idiots there are also far more male geniuses. Given these two facts and the US's demographics, it would be bizarre if most senior office holders weren't white men.
I stopped reading your diatribe when you said "whites have significantly higher IQ than blacks and Hispanics ..." anything you say about anything at all is thereby rendered untrustworthy. Won't waste my time by pointing out the "IQ" is not a scientific immutable, but governed by biases as to what constitutes "intelligence" etc. etc, etc,
Then on both counts you don't know anything about the science on the subject, I'm afraid.
Wasn't aware anyone 'serious' believed intelligence could be measured by one metric (or, for that matter, that intelligence is the only form of merit, but that depends on how you define it; the more broadly you define it, it both becomes a better synonym for merit AND becomes harder to quantify). I shouldn't even be responding to this but silence is a bad option too.
If you aren't aware that g is one of the best-attested concepts in the whole of social science, then I'm afraid you need to read more about the subject.
Now do the NBA. 🙄
Ability to play basketball isn't remotely like leading groups of humans. And how much of it is genetics and how much is years of training and practice? Playing basketball is one of the few fields Black Americans have been allowed to excel at, so that might feed on itself. The point is that what happens to people from the moment they're born matters, but it's more comforting to think everything's intrinsic and everyone gets the results they deserve because then you don't have to ask any tough questions.
This whole piece feels like it ignores Obama-Biden '08.
Obama chose a governing partner -- or at the very least, an old white guy who could reassure voters wary of a young Black guy -- not a successor.
Yet despite the assertion in the piece that "if the VP isn’t seen as the natural successor, it may lead to a lot of questions," there were no questions about Obama's strategy at the time -- indeed, it was widely seen as the right one.
Bush-Cheney '00 feels similar -- a wisened veteran paired with a younger guy that some people had concerns about. No one expected Cheney to run after Bush's terms.
So two of the three President-VP combos of the 21st century (prior to Biden-Harris) don't follow the supposed rule that you need to pick a future presidential nominee. (While of course Biden did become a nominee, that's more incidental than anything. He became the nominee four years after he was out of office. Far as I can tell, every other person identified as having run for president post-VP did so at the first available opportunity -- either immediately following a term-limited president, or in the next election after a loss for a one-term president.)
So why is Nate so convinced that presidents must choose a VP who would be a viable successor? It seems like there are multiple logical paths to making that choice.
I agree with this and would add that Trump’s selection of Pence also fits this mold. While he is younger it was the “conventional Republican with DC experience” who could help temper the Trump craziness. I don’t think Trump thought he would be a great successor.
Until now I never thought of Pence as younger than Trump, Pence really needs to get a tan and start dying his hair
I think that says more about Trump than Pence.
Trump is really old and he looks it, but we tend to think of old people as being slow and tired and his aggression and anger issues make him seem higher-energy.
I think "Obama chose a governing partner... not a successor" is a false choice and kind of misconstrues Nate's point. Obama picked Biden to be a governing partner, but once Biden was picked, he BECAME the obvious successor by virtue of the VP's role. You say it's "incidental" that Biden eventually became the nominee, but Nate is saying the opposite: Virtually EVERY VP goes on to be the nominee at some point, and what is really "incidental" or unusual in this case is that Biden was the nominee in 2020 instead of 2016. Does anyone really believe Biden would have won the '20 primary if he HADN'T been Obama's running mate?
So Nate is saying (I think) that, even if you have governing or ticket-balancing concerns in selecting a VP, you have to realize that you are also DE FACTO picking a likely future nominee of your party, and you should factor that into the choice, especially if you are in your late 70s when you make the choice.
I see where you’re coming from but I just don’t think most of this is true.
If Biden had become the “obvious” successor by virtue of being VP, he would have run in 2016. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t positioned as a successor.
Ultimately, I think you can position a VP in a few ways including “steady hand at the tiller” (useful for less experienced presidential nominees) or “future of the party” (typical for older nominees - McCain and Romney kind of fit this mold with their picks too). But there’s no magic rule that says all VPs need to fall into the second camp.
Where I do agree with you (and Nate, I think) is that when you pick someone younger, your pick is likely to have a head start on the next cycle, so you should keep that in mind. But what does it even look like to do that in practice? It’s not obvious to me that (at the time) Harris was a bad pick by that amorphous metric.
Well, Biden in 2016 was an odd situation, given that his son had just died and Hillary was ALSO seen as an heir apparent. Maybe I shouldn't have said he was the "obvious" successor, but I think it's reasonable to say, now that we know how that primary and the 2020 primary went, that he would likely have won had he run because of the tremendous leg up serving as VP gives you in a primary.
But I agree with your last point that it's not exactly obvious what anyone should do with this information. Even if you're picking a future nominee, the VP won't run for 8 or maybe even 12 years after you pick them... how on Earth are you supposed to predict the attributes that will be politically favorable in 8 or 12 years? There's this idea I've seen, in this post and elsewhere, that Kamala was some terrible choice in 2020, but as I said this in another comment, it's not at all obvious to me that anyone else would be perceived differently in that role.
Democrats have wanted a woman nominee since 2009…which is why Obama appointed Hillary to a position which generally doesn’t get dragged into politics because he was attempting to position her as his successor.
Real galaxy brain move of Obama to ensure a woman nominee by first defeating Hillary in the primary and then appointing her to position from which nobody had been elected president in 150 years! Talk about 12-dimensional chess!
The right wing echo chamber excels at driving up negatives of candidates and so appointing her SoS was supposed to shield her from that…it made sense at the time.
The current media incarnation excels at driving up unfavorables of the opposing party’s candidates and so I think the VP slot is great on one hand because it enables wide name ID which is unfortunately the foundation of running for president…but on the other hand it puts a target on your back that inevitably drives up unfavorables. I think that’s why Hillary rejected the VP slot but took the SoS position because generally SoS only get favorable coverage…except the right wing echo chamber can always figure out a way to drive up unfavorables. Obama and Trump and to a lesser degree Bush found the best balance—high name ID but underestimated in which the media drives up one’s primary opponents unfavorables!!
There is really only one objective in choosing a VP - try to win the election in front of you. It’s all campaign positioning. Biden had committed himself to choosing a woman as running mate and then, during the George Floyd protests, refined that to an African American woman, because he thought it would win him votes in the primary and general election. Once he made that calculus he has a pretty narrow range of options and - no disrespect to Karen Bass or Val Demings - Harris was obviously the most credible as a potential president. It has played out poorly from there in ways that might have been avoidable, but the logic of her selection was crystal clear... and it worked! They won the election.
There is also no guarantee she will be the next nominee! Dan Quayle wasn’t, Mike Pence won’t be, if you are not a suitably strong candidate the advantage you get from being VP only goes so far.
“There is really only one objective in choosing a VP - try to win the election in front of you. It’s all campaign positioning.”
This is only true if you're very uncertain about winning the election in front of you. Bill Clinton famously picked Al Gore, even though Gore was very similar to him and thus didn't do much to help him win the election, because he knew he would have a good working relationship with Gore in office and felt he could trust him to take over in a crisis. That was responsible long-term statesmanship, not cynical short-term politicking. It's sad and revealing that we have lost the ability even to imagine a politician behaving like that any more.
Clinton was very uncertain to win the election when he picked Gore! He picked him to reinforce the “New Democrat” character of the ticket, away from the Mondale/Dukakis generation that had dominated the Democrats for decades and performed miserably in presidential elections.
That's the point, though. He didn't pick someone from a complementary wing of the party. He didn't pick someone from a different region of the country. (The Democrats had been cynically running combined Northern-Southern tickets for years.) He didn't pick someone who complemented him demographically. He picked someone who he agreed with politically and thought would make a good VP and President. He stood on his principles and let the public elect those principles or not, rather than try to be all things to all men.
You should always be very uncertain about winning the election in front of you!
Trump won by just 107,000 votes in the three states that got him above 270. Biden won by just 44,000 votes in the three states that got him above 270.
If that’s not uncertainty I don’t know what is - the country is closely divided!
The country is currently closely divided and uncertain, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is always closely divided and uncertain. In 1984 Reagan won the tipping point state, Michigan, by 19%. His total excess votes in the 17 states that Mondale would have had to take off him was nearly 6 million votes in an election where fewer than 93 million votes were cast.
Besides which, the point is that there are multiple valid goals in selecting a VP nominee, and “aid in winning the election” (and btw there is surprisingly little evidence that the choice of VP makes the blindest bit of difference to the result either way) is only one of those goals that must be traded-off against each other.
Ok but literally every election since then has been decided by less than 10 points.
In today’s environment — the one in which we are talking about making a VP pick! — any party leader should basically assume they have a 50/50 chance to win.
I agree VPs don’t make much difference, but to the extent they do, you should first and foremost try to choose one who can tip the odds of winning.
I very, very strongly disagree that “not a landslide” = “a 50/50 chance”. Honestly, I'm stunned that anyone who follows Nate Silver could bring themselves to make such a statement lol.
You are entitled to believe that gaining an extra 0.001% chance of victory in an election is more important than ensuring the prosperous and stable governance of your country. And I am entitled to believe that that mentality is a powerful signal of the decline of civic responsibility in Western society. I think that the world would be better if politicians and voters of all persuasions were less willing to trade away their people's prosperity and stability in exchange for a minuscule extra chance of grabbing more power for themselves. But that is where we are today: a world where it is seen as obvious and sensible to place seizing power for yourself “first and foremost” rather than placing the good of one's country first and foremost.
What are your priors about your preferred party’s chance of wining an election 6 months out (ie at the time a VP pick is made)? If it’s something that isn’t close to 50/50, on what basis would you justify that?
Of course on election day Nate’s model would tell you it has deviated somewhat from 50/50 but as a starting point it’s basically the most reasonable thing you can choose.
I agree with Nate’s takeaway that “future presidential nominees probably do need to give ample consideration to the popularity and the political acumen of their running mates.” With that said, on a slightly different note, the Dem handwringing about “what would we do about Kamala if there’s an opening” is misplaced IMO. Exactly the same thing as in past open seats—have an open primary and let the process play out. If the VP is strong, they’ll likely win; if not, they won’t.
Yeah, this is only a problem for Democrats now because there are some genuine concerns about Biden's age and, in an ideal world, Democrats would like to campaign as much on Harris as Biden, to reassure voters that even if Biden cannot perform his duties, the American people will be happy with the end result.
Yeah, it would be helpful if KH were more popular and they should try to improve her standing. I don’t disagree that Biden’s age increases the salience of Kamala to a degree compared to past VPs, but I think the conventional wisdom overstates by how much. If Biden looks strong enough, attacks on KH as the real next POTUS will be harder to land; if Biden looks totally weak, KH is the least of his worries.
Yeah, your last sentence. We're only talking about it because -Biden- looks weak.
I wish the piece included some reflection on who might've been a better choice than Harris, because frankly I don't think there's a clear answer. Bernie is older than Biden and far easier to attack on policy. None of the other 2020 candidates had a great showing in the primary.
Whitmer is untested nationally. Gavin Newsom is too, and also carries some stigma as the Governor of California and a former mayor of San Francisco.
Running mates are almost always "untested nationally". If they were successful nationally, they'd be president already.
To me, going through the primary process counts as being tested nationally. So for example, by 2008 Biden had run for president twice and been in the Senate for 35 years. I think he was tested nationally.
Whitmer and Newsom have only ever held office in their states. I don't think it's safe to assume either would be a better VP pick than Harris without any sort of national test. Either could've fallen flat once tested.
And my overall point is that I'm not sure criticizing the Harris pick makes sense where there was no obvious choice for the role.
Harris fell flat once tested. Someone successful in a swing state is a better candidate than someone who was unsuccessful nationally.
Also, Newsom is terrible.
Maybe the vice-presidency isn't such a great position though. With the caveat that anything related to the presidency has a small sample size, only two individuals have ever served as vice-president and gone on to be elected to two terms as president: Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon. And Nixon had to lose a general election first, and also did not complete his second term. So maybe the Dick Cheney model is better, to choose a vice-president who has no interest in running for the top office. Otherwise it seems like it's a trap.
And Jefferson doesn't really count for these analyses as the Vice Presidency wasn't selected the same way it is now.
Henry Wallace is another VP who ran for President although he was no longer VP when he ran for President.
Just a note: That last link talking about praising Harris with gritted teeth doesn't correctly link anywhere, it just goes to "v". Likely a mistake in the copy-pasting.
Hopefully fixed now! Thanks!
Right. Bad link
Oh. You’re gonna put the NBA content behind the paywall? Damn. 😔
Not all NBA content! But this preview has very explicit gambling implications and that sort of post will usually get paywalled. Trying to find the right balance here and we've erred heavily on the side of things being free for the past few weeks.
Uh-oh, are you starting to refer to yourself as 'we'? :)
Whew. I mean, I understand that we free readers (riders) don’t have any right to demand anything, but I’m still glad to hear that. And as one of the few NBA fans left that doesn’t care about gambling, that balance works for me.
“I understand that we free readers (riders) don’t have any right to demand anything”
This is such an American capitalist viewpoint. God forbid any of us should ever have an obligation to our fellow humans that goes beyond markets and contracts.
Well, I’ll cop to being an American capitalist. (And proud of it, BTW.)
I find odd the implied notion that Nate has some obligation to provide me a free NBA preview article. But I guess that’s the capitalist in me.
Based on how other high-profile Substacks have gone, soon it will nearly all be paywalled. Better get used to it now.
I don’t see how that follows at all. For the comparable ‘stacks, like ACX, Noahpinion, TFP, DWAtV (Zvi) even Slow Boring I think most of the important stuff is still free.
My experience of Slow Boring for example is that nearly everything is paywalled except for a few opening paragraphs to whet the appetite.
On the contrary, I think the word "elected" was used very deliberately. Read the amendment. It could easily bar a term-limited person from "serving as" president again. But it opts for very narrow and specific limits on being elected to that one office only. It even acknowledges that serving in the office is different from being elected - demonstrating that the framers considered the distinction and still chose the word "elected." I'm not a lawyer but I suspect that even this SCOTUS would consider the plain text to be clear.
Obama won't run for VP (or seek/accept office as Speaker of the House, or President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, etc.) But I don't think term limits on the line of succession are the reason.
Two things come to mind on the VP and presidential candidates in general:
1. The “market” decides. If you poll badly and/or are unpopular, that’s on you. There is no one else to blame.
2. The rule of presidential candidates over many recent elections is that they are uninspiring and rarely engender enthusiasm. Dukakis, HW Bush, Kerry, GW Bush, Gore, Romney, Biden, H Clinton, Harris, so many others. Reagan, B Clinton and Obama are the exceptions. Those that have succeeded (at least to be nominated) benefited from being male and having their party be forced to rally around them. Clearly, women still are treated unfairly. But most candidates are not good!
This is everything, from the NYT profile:
“When Harris speaks in an interview or to an audience, it can sound as if she’s editing in real time, searching for the right calibration of talking points rather than displaying confidence in her message.”
Exactly. And everyone sees it. People who support her and care about her should try to fix it or otherwise stop complaining.
I can't believe the interview in that article. Astead Herndon is a professional journalist but he's definitely not out to get Kamal Harris. Couldn't she have prepped a bit for her interview and tried to tell a story about herself, instead of taking offense at his questions?
Do you think the Israel conflict will have an impact on how Americans vote?
For the "Joe Biden is too old and we need somebody who can be an effective President if he dies" problem and for the (related but distinct) "who will do the most to help win in 2024?" problem, isn't VP Barack Obama the obvious answer?
To be sure, all else equal it would be better to elevate somebody who would be a good future leader of the party. But some people seem to think that would cause a lot of problems, in 2024 and beyond, and I can't really judge whether they are right or not.
But either way, isn't it obvious that Barack Obama >> Kamala Harris, regardless of your preference ordering between Obama and (say) Gretchen Whitmer?
Obama cannot legally be president and thus cannot legally be VP.
The constitution only bars a term limited former President from being "elected" to the office again. Not necessarily a bar to serving in (or being elevated from) the line of succession.
They'd have to convince the Supreme Court. You seriously think someone is going to bet their presidential campaign on such a flimsy technicality in wording?
Corey Booker?
The quoted interview segments in that piece were wild. Honestly DeSantis comes off as more amiable, I mean could you imagine her going on Maher? Forget marijuana they need to put her on a psychedelic retreat, have Mariane Williamson give her a guided meditation, and lower those sky high defenses she has.
Politicians running for president are often over managed and when they either realize it isn’t working or when they lose they change course and their personality comes through…and people wonder why they just didn’t run as themselves from the beginning?? George W Bush is the most famous example of someone who could stay on message and thanks to his universal name ID because he shared a name with a president he parlayed staying on message to 4 straight major wins…he was an awful president but his campaigns were very successful.