Why she should pick Shapiro
Silver Bulletin Subscriber Questions, Edition #11A.
Welcome to Edition #11A of Silver Bulletin Subscriber Questions. I’m going to do something slightly unusual here and break this into two parts. This half consists of a single long answer on who Kamala Harris should pick as her running mate. (You can probably guess at my choice from the headline.) It will run behind the paywall. Part #11B will publish in the next day or two unless there’s breaking news of some kind, and will run in front of the paywall. Paid subscribers can leave a question for next time in either thread.
Just trust me that this is the best way to course out this particular weekend brunch; having everything in one post was going to bury what is a pretty time-sensitive item on the veepstakes. And for the record, this is technically the “July” edition of SBSQ. Yes, friends, it’s August, as you can tell from the fact that I was outside for just 15 minutes to grab coffee and already have to change shirts. But there’s been a lot of news lately, so the Silver Bulletin publishing pipeline has gotten clogged. I haven’t yet linked to the latest episode of the Risky Business podcast, for instance, but it’s also newsy: Maria and I spoke with freshly-crowned World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Tamayo, who defeated a lot of great opponents en route to his bracelet but also was enmeshed in a controversy because his coaches/backers were caught using a laptop apparently containing outputs from poker solvers. (As you’ll hear, we’re pretty sympathetic to Tamayo, but less so to the WSOP for its poorly-enforced and ambiguous rules.)
OK, now onto the question. Carlos Zevallos asks:
Since you just wrote about asking non model questions, but allowed other political questions, I would love to get your view on the dem veepstakes: specifically, if you were a Harris advisor, who would you suggest she pick and why? And also, do you think Shapiro's advantage for possibly getting her over the top in PA outweighs the critiques some progressives are making of his pro Israel stance, to the point of say, possibly depressing pro Palestinian turnout in Detroit or Minneapolis? I know vp nominees don't matter too much, but in such a close election?
I’d tell her to pick Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.
The reasons to pick Shapiro are obvious
There’s a certain species of political writer — defining characteristics include overestimating the importance of “vibes” and underestimating the importance of the median voter theorem — that George Orwell may have had in mind with his aphorism “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” David Roberts for instance:
Why Shapiro? What’s the positive case? Well, Shapiro is the extremely popular governor of what is by far the most important swing state. He’s highly charismatic and he’s qualified. He seems to want the job. This is about as obvious as things get in politics. You need a good reason to not pick Shapiro — and as I’ll cover here, the arguments against Shapiro are pretty bad.