Veepstakes

             So now we know who the major party presidential nominees are going to be.  We’ve known about Donald Trump for weeks, and Hillary Clinton nailed down the Democratic nomination on Tuesday night after the D.C. primary.

            That leaves us free to speculate about who will get the vice presidential nods.

            I’m not even going to try to guess who Donald Trump will pick.  The guy’s clearly a one-man show.  He relishes unpredictability and sneers at political convention.  There aren’t likely to be any criteria for whom Trump selects.  It will probably depend on what he has for dinner the night he has to decide.

            But Hillary Clinton is a conventional politician.  She’s likely to make a number of calculations in deciding who her running mate is going to be.  If I were her, this is how I would add it up.

            First, Clinton is likely to take the pick seriously and carefully consider whether the person she picks could step into the job if something happens to her.  The person must be somebody the country would view as a plausible president, and that requires somebody who has had experience with government at the highest level.  She needs a governor, a senator or a high-ranking cabinet or military officer.  Since at least the Eisenhower administration, all of our presidents and vice presidents have met this criterion except for Gerald Ford, who was the highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives when named to succeed Spiro Agnew as Richard Nixon’s vice president.

            It would probably not be wise to tap anyone who currently holds a seat in the Senate.  Democrats should be able to take back control of the Senate, but I can’t yet predict how many seats they’ll pick up.  With a Clinton win, assuming that they hold on to the seats they already control, they’ll only need 4 more (a Democratic vice president will be able to break 50-50 deadlocks).  Otherwise, they’ll need 5 new seats in addition to the ones they already have. With an open seat on the Supreme Court requiring Senate confirmation and potentially two or three more in the next few years, doing anything that is likely to endanger a Democratic Senate majority is a big gamble.

            Second, she needs to make a concession to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party.  That’s probably part of the price she’ll have to pay in order to get Mr. Sanders out on the campaign trail as the same kind of enthusiastic advocate she was in 2008 for President Obama.

            Third, she’ll need somebody who is willing to stand in her shadow.  She can’t name anyone who is likely to eclipse her on the campaign trail or insist on legislation she doesn’t want.  Clinton is going to have enough opposition from what is left of the Republican party after November, and she simply can’t be in a position where she has to muzzle members of her own administration.

            And fourth, the smart play would be to choose somebody significantly younger than she is.  Not only will this be a tip of the hat to the young people who animated the Sanders campaign, but a younger person would be a smart, strategic play for the Democratic party.  History tells us that it’s difficult for the same party to keep control of the White House beyond three presidential terms, and so I’m counting on a bruising election fight in 2020.  Regardless of whether Clinton wins reelection in 2020, a person who served as vice president under Clinton would be an obvious choice for Democratic nominee in 2024.  Such a person would have to be young enough to run that campaign in 2024 and a reelection campaign in 2028.

            I don’t think it’s necessary for Clinton to tap an African-American, a woman, or a Latino for the spot.  First, running as the first female major party candidate for the presidency, Clinton is already a “minority” candidate.  While I think most people agree that people should be judged by the “content of their characters,” two minority candidates on the ticket might be too much for current American voters who are willing to give a woman a chance, but might blanche at a ticket that doesn’t include somebody more who is more ethnically mainstream (i.e. a white man).

            Second, as a matter of practical politics, these crucial Democratic constituencies, are far more concerned about policy matters, such as immigration reform, education and the Supreme Court than the purely symbolic gesture of putting “one of their own” on the ticket for an office that one Vice President colorfully described as not worth “a warm bucket of  (rhymes with “spit”).”  They are surely not going to vote for Donald Trump and, because of the danger of a Trump presidency, they’re also not going to stay home on election day.

            The current favorites on the Predict It prediction market include Senators Elizabeth Warren (25¢), Tim Kaine (23¢), Bernie Sanders (8¢), Sherrod Brown (8¢), Cory Booker (7¢), Mark Warner (3¢), Al Franken (3¢), and former Senator Evan Bayh (2¢).

            All of these people, except for Evan Bayh, are Democratic senators, and Hillary would be ill advised to give up their seats in the Senate.  Evan Bayh, by no means a liberal, gave up his red state seat in 2011 after having accomplished little as a Senator and probably wouldn’t be well loved by the Sanders wing of the party. 

            And I can’t imagine that either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would want to waste their newfound influence carrying water for Hillary Clinton.  They can accomplish much more and have much greater visibility as Senators, particularly if they are part of a new Senate Democratic majority.  They’re both too old to be able to make a serious run for the presidency in 2024, and so there probably isn’t anything about the vice presidency that would make it enticing to leave the Senate.

            Julian Castro (12¢), current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Tom Perez, current Secretary of Labor (9¢) are sandwiched in between Tim Kane and Bernie Sanders on the Predict It list of potential vice presidential candidates.  It doesn’t hurt that they’re both Latinos and well thought-of by the liberal wing of the party, but neither has held high elective office, and it’s doubtful that either has the political skill or gravitas to serve as president if Clinton were to die, resign or be removed by impeachment.  Under those circumstances, the nation would need a steady hand, both to calm the country and to reassure our international allies that the United States could still function as a nation.

            I’d disqualify Xavier Becerra (5¢) a Congressman from California for the same reason.

            Aside from current Vice President Joe Biden (3¢) who is probably too old, the next three names are Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (3¢), former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (1¢) and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. All three generally meet my criteria.

            Of the three, I’d pick Martin O’Malley.  Though O’Malley ran an abortive campaign for president this year, he has a record that liberals should love.  While governor, O’Malley managed to get everything on the liberal checklist--gun control, an end to capital punishment, strong environmental laws, marriage equality, in-state tuition for children of illegal aliens, aid to education, decriminalization of marijuana—enacted.  He was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, served as Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, and despite his abortive run against Hillary Clinton this year, is still on good terms with the Clintons.  Having attempted a run for the nomination, O’Malley is also probably better known nationally than the other two.

            Oh, and he plays guitar in a rock band.

            Of course, the “investors” in the prediction markets apparently don’t agree with me, and to be fair, I did not predict that Joe Biden would be Obama’s pick.  But I did pick Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 before anyone else I know did.  Still, O’Malley fits the bill better than anyone else.