The Harris Veepstakes

Just going on record ahead of the announcement

If I’m wrong, I’ll pull the article, and only the handful who read my stuff will be the wiser.

My money is on Tim Walz.

The logic is simple. Harris’s running mate should be a straight, White, Christian man. The reason for that was well put by Michelle Goldberg in the N.Y. Times:

I am a little concerned about how a Black and Jewish ticket would inflame the American right. The kind of person who would see Harris and Shapiro as replacement theory made manifest was surely already voting for Trump, but if Shapiro is chosen I’d still expect it to inject a new element of antisemitism into the campaign.

I would go beyond Goldberg to note that Harris’s goal in choosing a running mate should not be to bring out the centrist vote for her but to suppress the racist vote for Trump. I believe A “regular” American will create more net votes for Harris than any other demographic choice.

So that leaves Walz, Beshear, and Kelly. My guess is that naming Beshear or Kelly — either of whom would be fine — creates a major problem for the one not named, Shapiro, and people like Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore, none of whom want to wait sixteen years while Harris and her young VP hold the office. History suggests the Democrats won’t hold the White House for four terms, but who knows how long the Republicans will wander in the wilderness after Trump. And anyway, the Democrats must act as if they will win every election, which, if Harris picks a young man now, presumptively puts everyone else behind two eight balls.

Walz, in contrast, will be too old to run for president in 2032. He would be a care-taker VP, not an heir apparent. That would suit Beshear, Kelly, Shapiro et. al. equally, as it would threaten none of them.

Specifically regarding Shapiro, I think a Jewish president is the last thing American Jews need. We already get blamed for enough stuff. We don’t need to create anything that remotely looks like a good reason. But Harris is probably well-advised not to get into that. She should quietly name Walz as her running mate and let the young’uns work out the future for themselves. As the world’s best known Jew famously said, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”