The Shadow That Was Dick Cheney

The big news today has been the passing of former Vice President (and administrative tone-setter) Richard "Dick" Cheney.

The best thing I can say about this was already said back in 2014:

Considering the former Vice President's recent hypocritical and vile comments about Obama's handling of the Iraqi mess Cheney left behind, about the prolonged history of Cheney's lies and distortions, about the thousands of lives broken and killed under his orders, there is only one thing to say:

Arrest the son of a bitch for war crimes and shove his goddamn criminality back into his goddamn face.

That's all that needs to be said now and forever.  No more television interviews.  No more speaking events.  No more book deals.  Send him to jail, put him on trial.  Make him answer for the torture regime, the lies about WMDs, the war-profiteering, the folly of waging two wars with massive debt and without end.

I also said a few things in 2013, when I reviewed Bush the Lesser's presidential tenure, noting how the real power in that White House flowed through and from the Veep's office:

So if Bush the Lesser was really a Passive-Positive at heart, something that Ivins points to, why was Dean so convinced that Bush was really an Active-Negative?

Because much of the Bush administration was a disaster of obsessive secrecy, reckless war-making, and abuse of powers that one regularly sees in an A-N administration.

Mind you, Passive-Positives preside over scandal-plagued tenures - Reagan's was chock-full, as was Harding's and Grant's - but for different reasons than an Active-Negative's such as Johnson or Nixon.  Pass-Pos' scandals are due more to the nature of such Presidents allowing their cronies free range to embezzle and indulge, whereas A-N's scandals stem from the President's own personal faults and obsessions...

It might help to understand that a Passive-Positive President is by nature too trusting of his allies and cronies: Harding is a perfect example.  It's often noted in a Pass-Pos administration the tenor of the office defined more by an underling or group of underlings (much like Franklin Pierce's seemed more dictated by his Southern Democrat allies, and Reagan's with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal).  With that consideration, also note that during Bush the Lesser administration we had the most politically-powerful VICE President our nation ever saw in Dick Cheney...

Cheney was different.  Cheney seemed to dominate Bush the Lesser's administration the minute he was given any authority by Bush, and that even began during the 2000 campaign.  Entrusted as a family friend of his father's, Bush put Cheney in charge of finding his Vice Presidential ticket balancer.  There seemed to have been a review process but in the end the selection was... Cheney himself, which puzzled people then but makes more sense when you look at Cheney more closely...

This was a man who was perfectly willing to tell a fellow politician on the floor of the Senate to "go fuck yourself."  Granted, this wasn't a full-on assault with a walking cane, but certain rules of decorum apply (you're supposed to save that for the parking lot).  This was a guy who told a fellow Secretary of Treasury that "deficits don't matter (regarding more massive tax cuts that even the Secretary felt were unneeded).  This is our due."

This was a man who chaired the secretive energy policy meetings.  This was a Vice President who had his office and had his friends in the Defense Department set up a competing "investigative office" to undercut CIA intelligence that didn't fit their "Iraq Has WMDs" narrative.  This was a Veep whose Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby was indicted for his role in revealing the classified identity of a CIA agent whose husband had publicly questioned the WMD story.

This was a Vice President who used his unprecedented level of authority to ignore standard procedures on a regular basis.  When confronted by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office - the ones who handle and store classified materials on a daily basis, mind you - about refusing to turn over materials starting from 2003 into 2007, Cheney did his best to eliminate that part of the National Archives altogether.  Cheney's argument?  As Vice President serving both Executive and Legislative duties (as President of the Senate), he was exempt (the "Fourth Branch" of government argument).  Basically claiming he didn't have to answer to anybody.  Not even to the President.

In short: Everything nasty, vulgar, illegal, and corrupt about the modern Republican Party evolved entirely from whatever dark template that spawned Dick.

That Cheney came to openly despise donald trump - his true heir to the Far Right regime Cheney engineered over the decades - is mostly due to how he viewed trump as too self-serving and stupid to be the Forever Dictator of a Republican-ruled America.

There are a number of obits today burying Cheney for the sins he'd committed while he sat in power, so I'll offer a number of links here so you can get a more informed understanding of how soulless that person was.

Mark Danner at Salon: Dick Cheney's Dark Legacy

David Frum at Atlantic: There Was Only One Dick Cheney All Along

George Chidi at The Guardian: Dick Cheney Remains Divisive In Death

Eoin Higgins at The Intercept: Dick Cheney Doesn't Deserve Your Heartfelt Eulogies

When you consider how the only one more hated was Henry Kissinger, Cheney is leaving a foul legacy indeed.

P.S. also sharing Stonekettle's simple observation on Bluesky:

Well, hell. Looks like I'm going to need to drink more coffee. Dick Cheney died and I'm going to need a full bladder for the funeral.

— Stonekettle (@stonekettle.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 8:44 AM

Just sayin', 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew pass through much faster...

 

Ballz to the Walz, Dems

I said this earlier about the importance of making a Vice Presidential pick for your campaign: Your pick sets the tone.

So the tone Kamala Harris set for the Democratic Party by selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is this:

BALLZ TO THE WALZ, BABY.

What? It's a perfectly cromulent phrase from my youth as a suburban white punk. It means to "go all out," to blitz, to push forward with great force, to fight and not stop until the fight is done. Learned it in middle school, said it through high school, and then didn't really say it much in college because the study load was a bit fatiguing.

I am awaiting the inevitable t-shirt from Etsy, by the by.

The Balloon Juice community is all aflutter, as are my folks from the TNC Horde. To get a sense of why, here's Russell Berman at the Atlantic (paywalled) to explain it some:

In the realm of presidential politics, progressives have become accustomed to disappointment. Joe Biden wasn’t their first (or second) choice in 2020. Nor, for that matter, was Kamala Harris. And Democratic nominees typically pick moderates for their running mates. So when Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her choice for vice president this morning, progressives experienced an unusual feeling: elation...

Progressives had latched onto Walz’s dark-horse candidacy over the past two weeks, seeing him as a more appealing option, both ideologically and politically, than Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, whom many believed to be the front-runner. Walz, a former teacher and high-school football coach, impressed liberals with his governing success in Minnesota, where he’s signed legislation enacting paid family leave, expanding the child-tax credit, protecting abortion rights, and lowering the cost of insulin. More recently—and perhaps more important—he charmed them with his folksy takedowns on cable news of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.

“He’s just plainspoken and direct, and he’s very funny,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served with Walz in the House, told me. “He’s got the common touch, and I think it’s an ingenious choice.”

In Walz, progressives believe they have found a Democrat who can connect with rural and white working-class voters in the crucial battlegrounds of the Midwest without compromising on the party’s policy platform. “He’s the anti-elite candidate. He comes across as the Everyman,” Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, told me this morning. He called Walz “a perfect counterbalance” to Harris, whom Republicans have tried to portray as, in his words, “an out-of-touch California elite...”

Harris’s announcement drew praise across a wide ideological spectrum, from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. In the final days leading up to the selection, however, the largely behind-the-scenes contest between Walz and Shapiro had become a stand-in for larger Democratic fights that the party’s embrace of Harris had otherwise suppressed. The proxy war dismayed some party allies, who urged progressives to stop their attacks on Shapiro. “It’s a false binary,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told me. She said that although she was “ecstatic” about the choice of Walz, she would have been just as happy if Harris had picked Shapiro or any of the other finalists, including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky...

Harris' selection of a popular regional governor does more than just help lock in Minnesota: Walz's brand of Democratic politics has the means to appeal across the entire Rust Belt (every state in the Great Lakes region) that can provide the same electoral appeal that Shapiro or Beshear (or Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan) could have provided.

But with Walz you get a little more: Someone with a personal narrative - he and his wife used In-Vitro to have children, for example - in clear opposition to the fearmongering hypocrisy that trump's presidential ticket is offering to voters. He's not only been a soldier - 24 years of National Guard service in the artillery, putting in the years most other political wannabes would shrug off - but also a high school social sciences teacher and football coach. Someone who would be a key figure in any small town community across America.

And while he was a high school football coach - leading his team to the state finals, no less - he took the time to become the faculty advisor of that school's first Gay/Straight Alliance student group. This is one of many reasons why progressives are elated: Walz is Pro-People, has been since even before Obama and Biden stood public for gay marriage.

Where trump's pick of Vance doubled down on trump's open hostility towards immigrants, women, blacks, gays, trans, and young people, Harris' pick of Walz doubled down on getting a candidate who's eager and grinning from ear to ear and willing to work on solving problems instead of making things worse.

Balls to the walls, guys. Let's get the vote out for Dems this year.

Bad Numbers and Bad Vibes and a Bad Choice

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money/
Watch him or he'll rob you blind...
-- John Fogerty, "Vanz Kant Danz"
(and I'm not the only one who thought of this song when JD Vance got picked for trump's Veep)

It's taken me awhile to write about donald trump's Vice Presidential selection of Senator JD Vance for his 2024 ticket, but in the few weeks that Vance has been on that ticket it's become hilariously - and horrifyingly - clear that picking Vance was a bad idea.

Given trump's previous history with his Veep - trying to bully Pence into throwing the election results in 2020 to the point of sending an insurrectionist mob at him - it was a bit sad to see other Republican figures audition themselves on Fox Not-News for the 2024 ticket, but there was nothing you could do dissuade them. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug (seriously, North Dakota?) Burgum, all of them made their daily talking head shows to argue their own submission to trump's will; but none of them pandered - attacking Ukraine, praising Russia, showcasing misogyny - like Vance did.

Thing is, when trump picked Vance - or had others pick him, depending on the story - he didn't do a good enough job of finding out if Vance would boost the ticket or not.

For all I've said about the need for Vice Presidents, as long as that office is part of the electoral process it matters that you choose wisely. A Presidential candidate choosing his/her campaign partner is signaling to voters what he/she values as skills for those who will work in their potential administration. If you're a domestic policy guru, tagging someone with foreign policy cred helps win over the voting base (definitely the punditry) that you'll balance out your agenda. If you're a Moderate from the Midwest, it helps to get a more die-hard candidate from another region (South, Pacific, Northeast) to appease the other party factions (and vice versa). And no matter what, you have to make sure the VP choice has their own charisma or credibility (just not too much to outshine the boss) to win over the mainstream media.

In short: Your Veep pick sets the tone.

What trump and his handlers found out real quick post-convention was that Vance - for all that he's known at the state and federal level of politics- is tone-deaf. And more unpopular than anyone - other than several polling services who were firing off emergency flares - realized.

Let's hear it from Nicholas Liu at Salon:

Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, is making history as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, but not in the way that the Trump campaign had hoped. According to a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance has an approval rating of -6 points, making him the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.

The average rating for a running mate after a party convention has been +19 points.

"Frankly, I don't really understand the pick, and apparently neither do the American voters," CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday's OutFront with Erin Burnett. Vance, he said, is "dragging Trump down..."

With Trump struggling to appeal to moderate women, the former president may rue choosing a man who ran for Senate on a hardline anti-abortion stance, criticized childcare subsidies as "class war against normal people" and suggested that married women would be selfish for divorcing their abusive husbands, saying in 2021 that "one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace" was "making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear...”

Even Vance's purported appeal among white working-class voters appears overstated. He won Ohio in his 2022 Senate election by 6 points; by comparison, Trump won by 8 points in 2020 and Gov. Mike DeWine carried the state in 2022 by 25 points. Among white voters without a college degree, Vance, with a 31-point lead over Democrat Tim Ryan, also lagged behind Trump and DeWine, who won by 36 and 45 points respectively...

I've talked before about how at the state level, a candidate can overcome personal faults to win election all because the partisan nature of local elections make it too easy to win no matter what. Ohio could have run a dead dog for the Senate back in 2022, and that poor mutt could have beaten Tim Ryan by double digits. Vance arguably eked by at 6 percent.

And trump picked a guy with negative popularity at the national level, something that hadn't happened since 1980 (was that Bush the Elder?). For a campaign that's supposed to be tracking every favorable poll to feed trump's vanity, how did they mess that up?

Think back to some of the, ahem, more questionable Veep picks we've seen. 

Sarah Palin? She had a positive boost - and genuinely gave McCain and the GOP a healthy poll bounce - coming out of the convention before her appearances and interviews quickly exposed her as a near-illiterate self-absorbed fool before the November election. Joe Lieberman? In terms of polling and voter turnout, Lieberman mattered little to how Gore performed: However, Lieberman's more conservative stances turned off the more progressive Dem voters which hurt the eventual turnout (the same might be said for Hillary's VP pick Kaine). Dan Quayle? The jokes about him started flying the moment he was tabbed, but even then he brought enough positives to the table that his polling wasn't as bad as Vance.

In each of their cases, there were valid reasons at the time for their picks that did help balance the ticket - geographically, demographically, ideologically - even as those picks ended up hurting or negating the overall effort. The same can't be said for Vance: He mimics trump's ideology to a horrifying tee, and he doesn't appeal to the youth demographics of Millennials or Generation X. He only fulfills a geographic necessity by being from a Midwest (Rust Belt) state, and that will get negated by whomever Kamala picks as her running mate (especially if it's a Rust Belt figure like Walz, Beshear, or Shapiro).

Vance is standing on the national stage with little in the way of genuine charisma or likeability. One of the new breed of Culture War Republicans who attack often and impress rarely, he's demonstrated a shocking ability to alienate people in a heartbeat even among his own Far Right audiences. His anti-immigrant and "DEI" stances - and eagerness to attack a biracial opponent like Kamala Harris - are hard to reconcile with the fact Vance married an Indian (Asian) American woman (where Kamala is Jamaican-Indian (Asian) with a similar background). And Vance's views on women? "Misogynistic" is the nicest word you can say about that.

As Paige Oamek at the New Republic notes in her article title, "Everyone Hates JD":

Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.

Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.

It's like watching the rushing numbers by UMass' football team get worse every drive they play against Georgia's defense.

During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.

“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.

Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator...

When I noted earlier how intraparty dynamics would give Vance a chance to survive in Ohio, now that he's a candidate on the national level that state-level partisanship won't be able to help him (this is what Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and Rick Perry and other milquetoast candidates found out long ago).

Vance is so unlikeable he's vulnerable to that most dreaded of political attacks, the Whisper Campaign. 

Someone off in the far corners of social media posted a joke rumor - completely unfounded and without direct evidence - that JD Vance wrote a scene in his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy - by the way the "memoir" turned out to be exaggeration at best and deplorable at worst - having sex with a couch. The joke spread quickly on Twitter to where the AP Newswire had to publish a report calling the story "false"... but then retracted that report because of the slight possibility that Vance could have engaged in that act anyway the editors claimed it wasn't vetted properly.

As Zachary Folk covered at the Daily Beast (paywalled):

The anonymous poster who started the viral—but false—rumor that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance had sex with a couch said he came up with the smear while shopping at a grocery store. The viral post’s author, who only identified himself as “Rick,” gave his first interview to Business Insider on Tuesday, telling the publication the joke came from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.” The viral tweet has since attracted the attention of late night hosts, Fox News talking heads, and even Vice President Harris’ campaign. Rick said he has since protected his account and changed his Twitter handle to avoid unwanted attention. He also said he did not intend to spread misinformation, but instead simply wanted mock the Republican candidate...

Since then, while the mainstream media tried to keep away from it everyone else went all-in on the "couchfucker" mockery. Why is this joke proving so harmful to Vance?

Because being this unlikeable already didn't provide Vance with enough popular support to laugh off or shrug away the insult. Just looking at Vance - his physical appearance is just on the wrong side of being creepy, his hateful demeanor that just advertises "messed-up psychology," the general vibe of being weird - makes it more believable to the general population that this is a guy who would do something tawdry with your living room sofa.

Any stand-up comedian - or wannabe who did the Open Mic nights in South Florida back in the 1990s, ahem - can tell you this: When the majority of people are laughing at you instead of with you, you're screwed.

Rumors are now swirling that trump has soured on Vance already (don't forget, trump is a Bad Boss who will kick you to the street curb once he thinks you're no longer useful) while other party leaders are discussing how to remove Vance from the ticket. Problem is, replacing a ticket partner at this stage of the election is dicey at best (and that's just the paperwork you need to refill). The last time a Vice Presidential candidate got replaced mid-campaign was Eagleton back in 1972, and all that did was confirm that McGovern's campaign was in utter chaos and led to one of the biggest Electoral College defeats in history (that fact gets diminished with how Nixon's campaign unleashed massive sabotage and trickery against the Democrats when the facts of Watergate went public). 

trump can't afford to dump Vance even at this early stage of the final leg of the 2024 election cycle. trump can't afford to keep Vance because the way things are going JD is going to make Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.

This needs to be a warning to the American voting public at large: trump has no idea how to pick competent people to work for him. The Republicans don't have any competent or quality candidates to choose from anymore. For the LOVE OF GOD, don't vote trump/Vance this 2024, or for any other Republican hack ready and willing to destroy everything America stands for.

And in the meantime, ScotchGard your ottomans!

The Good News

(Update: Thanks again to Infidel753 for including this article in Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up. I should mention this article is the twin article to a Bad News article that you might want to read to get a sense of balance on what's happening right now, thank you. Here's hoping things improve after January 20!)

After what needed saying earlier, here are the Good News: 

Despite all of trump's bluster, bullying, and open intent to disrupt the Electoral College count... and despite the Congressional Republicans' attempt to object to the results... The 2020 elections are finally done and Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States on January 20, 2021.

No matter what donald trump will attempt next to avoid what's coming for him - another coup attempt, another riot in Washington DC or elsewhere so he could declare martial law and suspend the whole government, declare war on Iran and impose emergency powers through that (even if that could work) - on January 20 he is officially out of office and can get dragged out of the White House by his diapers if need be. Anything trump could try to do to retain power - or embezzle, or straight-up steal from the federal coffers - will end the second Biden puts hand to Bible and swears the Oath of Office.

Granted, this means that between here and now trump can and will do anything like that to make sure he squeezes out the last penny he can get, but the odds already are that most of the Executive agencies are putting holds on any actions until the incoming Biden administration can sort things out.

In other news, the confirmation means Kamala Harris is the next Vice President. She will be the first woman elected on the Presidential ticket, albeit as the Veep. Harris will be the first woman President of the Senate, which has great significance which I'll get into later. She is the first bi-racial Veep, making her both the first Black American Veep (and second Black American winning the ticket since Obama) and the first Indian (Asian, not Native) American at that high an office.

The incoming Biden administration means we will be getting in 10 days a President who will take the COVID-19 Pandemic serious, and with luck control our nation's response in a more effective, swift manner than the incompetent trump.

In other political news, the seditious riot in Washington overwhelmed the news that Democrats in Georgia won both Senate race runoffs. Not only are two potentially corrupt Republican Senators out of office, but this means the Democrats hold a 50-50 split with Republicans for Senate control... which Kamala Harris makes a 51-vote "majority" as Senate President (the official title/duties of the VP).

This means that a more liberal agenda can get considered and even passed through Congress that otherwise would have been shut down by obstructionist Mitch McConnell had he retained a one-seat majority. It does depend on how the most conservative Dem left in the Senate - Manchin from West Virginia - will set the rules for the rest of his party to accept, but a lot of reforms to the existing health care system, voting rights, wages and employment help, student debt relief, energy and environmental policies, police reforms and social justice, and financial systems can get passed through the House and squeaked through that Senate.

It does depend on what happens to the filibuster and cloture rules - something that Manchin views as tools he still needs to hold influence above his fellow Senators - but the urgency in getting those bills passed during this pandemic crisis would make it likely a lot of it will get done.

Before I get any further, what happened in Georgia was historic and epic in their own ways. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black man elected to the Senate from that Deep South state (the first Black Democrat as well, although not the first Black Senator from the former Confederacy because Mississippi sent two during Reconstruction, and South Carolina has elected Republican Tim Scott in 2014 in a special election). Fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff is the first Jewish Senator elected from the Deep South since 1879.

Their victories matter a lot because they represent a significant shift in the voting demographics in Georgia. Ever since the party shifts of the Republicans going full Conservative since the 1990s, when they became dominant in the state and federal elections, this is the first crack in the Republican political control of the Southeastern U.S. region (AKA the Southern Strategy). Granted, Florida has fluctuated as a battleground state to where Dems have a chance to win, and the Republicans have lost Virginia since 2006. But Florida hasn't been considered a Deep South state since the population boom of the 1980s brought too many Northern liberals and Midwest moderates into the state. Virginia is now so much a part of the DC metro area - heavily liberal suburbs dependent on Federal largesse expanding into the northern counties - that the Conservative power base in that state can't compete. Getting a seriously Deep South state (from Louisiana through Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina) to flip Blue in major elections after 25-30 years of Red Conservative dominance is a sign the Far Right control of a heavily-populated region is about to collapse. That it's Georgia - the next-largest Electoral state behind Texas (which is divergent enough to be its own political ecosystem) and Florida - means the Republicans can plan on losing future Presidential bids for the 2020s decade and beyond.

The Georgia results is also major vindication for Stacey Abrams. Denied a win of the Governor's seat in 2018 due to ethically-questionable behavior from the Republican winner Kemp, Abrams took her national profile from that campaign and turned it into a voter-registration drive to break the GOP's voter suppression efforts and return more favorable results for her fellow Democrats. In the process, she demonstrated to the national Democratic leadership - which at times refuses to organize and recruit in states they felt were lost to them already - that YES it does matter to fight for every vote in every state, and has likely established to other state party leaders how to organize their own efforts to win in other hard Red states.

There are thousands of others in Georgia who worked hard to get the voters registered and motivated, and to her credit Abrams congratulates them as much as everyone else is congratulating her. Her celebrity stock among Democrats is sky high right now, she's proven herself a major player, and with luck she's converting her credibility among the leadership to expand the voter effort and seat challenges everywhere she can. If anyone can work to get more states to turn Blue, it's her.

Speaking of the DC Metro, one of the Democratic party agendas can well get passed within the first month of Biden's tenure: Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. While these aren't popular issues with the nation at large - and heavily despised and dreaded by Republicans - these are key issues with Democrats looking at the big picture of Senate control. Right now, too many small population states - mostly in the Midwest - are heavily conservative and unlikely to consider Democratic choices for election. These small Red states have few residents, but will have outsized representation in a Senate that constitutionally grants every state Two Senators no matter what. This means roughly 30 percent of the nation's population gets 60-70 percent control of the Senate (another element of Minority Party Rule at the federal level). the demographic and geographic advantage of such skewed representation can hinder the American majority's needs to get things done (at all, given the GOP's obstructionist ways).

The recent trumpian assault on the nation's Capitol is another reason to expect Democrats to push for DC statehood right away: That lack of state-level control prevented the local authorities from aiding in either crowd control during the rally as well as stopping them from protecting the Capitol when the Capitol police got overwhelmed. DC's National Guard doesn't answer to the city, they answered to the DoD (which meant trump and his people benefited from them standing down: Congress had to get National Guard aid from Virginia and Maryland, and even then trump's Pentagon delayed Maryland's response). You can expect the Dems to proceed on granting DC statehood - that the local citizenry need to establish their own law enforcement and protect their own rights - on those grounds alone.

But what will happen with DC - and Puerto Rico - statehood is the expansion of the American charter to more diverse populations. DC is well-known as a Black-majority metropolis (although in truth the ethnicity is more even between Blacks and White in the last ten years of gentrification). Puerto Rico would become the first true Latino-majority state (98 percent!) in the U.S. (New Mexico would be closest at 42 percent). Entering both into the ranks of statehood would be major historical achievements for any Presidential administration (and we haven't done so since 1959).

Ironically, these moves for statehood might not resolve the Senate control in the Democrats' favor: Latinos in 2020 voted in surprisingly high numbers for Republicans, even in spite of the Republicans' harsh anti-immigration stances towards their very ethnic group. That's because the Latinos do not vote on any one singular issue, and are socially conservative on enough matters that Republicans still appeal to them. This would be interesting to witness down the line, but still this coming event should be considered good news for the betterment of the United States' soul.

We're also looking at the good news of Democrats pushing for voting rights laws to fill the void created by bad Supreme Court rulings and by decades' worth of Republican suppression. One thing I'm personally hoping for is a dedicated effort to kill off the Gerrymanders - used by battleground Red states to skew results and corruptly maintain Minority Party rule - and make more states competitive in elections. The Democrats need to, otherwise they run the risk of losing control of the House again like what happened in 2010.

Other good news to consider is that the United States can get back on good terms with our allied nations in Europe and Asia after four years of chaotic and harsh trumpian meddling. We can see the United States resume normal relations with Mexico - and see about undoing the ecological damage that trump's wall obsession had caused. We'll be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreements. We should see more efforts to spread high-speed Internet into rural areas (this would be a big deal where I live). 

We should see a lot of work done to investigate the horrors committed on immigrant and refugee families under trump's draconian rule. We can pray that many of the families pulled apart - and as many children wounded by trump's policies can be recovered - can be mended as best as possible under a more humane immigration system. Depending on if trump and his lackey Stephen Miller haven't blown it all up before Biden takes office.

A lot of this is still speculative. We have to see how things turn out on January 20 and from then on.

But we're facing a better future now than the chaotic uncertainty and violence of the trump regime.

Hope still matters.

Official: It's Biden / Harris 2020

Word dropped this afternoon, all the speculation is done, all the fighting steps up a notch, and we finally have a WINNER!

It's DAN QUA- wait wrong Veep announcement.

It's KAMALA HARRIS!

As mentioned often before, the selection of the Vice President doesn't do much to improve - or worsen - a Presidential campaign as long as the pick is a sensible, solid one. It's a first test for the President: showing off his/her decision-making of who'll they also pick as Cabinet members, agency bosses, what have you. It underscores the direction and theme of the campaign as well: Picking someone with foreign policy cred is one thing, picking a Veep with economic reform ideas is another.

Biden picking Kamala Harris says four things:

1) He is looking at keeping a big tent going for the Democratic Party. Much of Harris' voting record is a solid Left history. Despite her image and reputation as a state Attorney General, her history as a U.S. Senator ranks her pretty high on the liberal scoring charts (govtrack ranks by "most conservative" so in liberal measurements Harris is at the other end). Biden is recognized as more Center than Left, so getting a solid Liberal Left candidate should appeal to many at that end of the spectrum (she's closer to Bernie Sanders than Elizabeth Warren).

2) He is showing no ill-will to the time in the debates when Kamala went after Biden for his school busing stance and other not-good positions early in his Senatorial career. Once Harris dropped out of the primaries, she eventually backed Biden for the ticket to show party fealty, and Biden as a long-time player had to respect that. There's also Biden's Passive-Positive traits of Congeniality and team-building: He has a world-view of bipartisan outreach, and repairing bridges to party leaders who opposed him fits that world-view. This is Biden's way of signaling to other factions in the Democratic Party (and any moderate factions left among Republicans) that he will have an Open Door of sorts to his Oval Office.

3) He is demonstrating to the Party and to the general voters that he keeps his word: Biden promised he would choose a woman as a Vice President and so he did.

4) He is living in his comfort zone. Not that he and Harris will see eye-to-eye on every issue, it's that Biden is one of those Senators who viewed his time in that setting as membership in an exclusive club. Senators tend to favor Senators as political allies even when they're disagreeing on issues (note how John McCain wanted fellow Senator Joe Lieberman as his Veep in 2008 even though Lieberman was a Democrat(!)). Biden had to be thinking "If Kamala was cool enough for the Senate she's cool enough for my campaign."

Voting, of course, still matters. Turnout remains key for Democrats to overcome the obstruction and suppression the Republicans are already signalling to the world. What today's decision does is move the campaign closer to cohesion and planning for the big run to November. It's a moment to stir up support and fundraising and momentum in the media (by the buzz on Twitter today, it seems to have done all three).

It also means I need to make more 2020 bumper stickers!

In the Reach of Her Arms

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my step   
The curl of my lips 
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman   
That’s me
-- Maya Angelou

Oh, by the way, while everyone's been distracted by an out-of-control pandemic made worse by Republican incompetence, the 2020 Democratic primaries kind of wrapped up a week or two ago with Joe Biden winning enough delegates to secure the bid.

So now the guessing game moves on to "Who will he pick to team up as his Vice Presidential candidate?"

You know my feelings about Veeps, having been burned by the likes of Dick Cheney, but as the office is still required and the nomination still valid, I gotta put my two cents in on this.

We already know that Biden had promised - when the field of nominees went from "a lot of well-spoken and qualified women" to "what the hell happened to Kamala and Liz?" - that if chosen he'll nominate a woman Veep, so that narrows the list a bit among likely Democrats at the state and federal level.

There's been a lot of guessing since Sanders dropped out - unofficially giving Biden the lead - of the likely candidates, with some of the names more likely than others especially as a few - Amy Klobuchar just confirmed this weekend she didn't want to be in consideration - have risen in national awareness.

Names like Liz Warren, Kamala Harris (both of whom were serious Primary contenders until they fell out), Governor Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Senator Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Senator Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), Representative Val Demings (Florida), and Should-Have-Been Governor Stacey Abrams (Georgia) have been bandied around as the best choices.

In trying to game out which candidate gets picked, you need to consider the factors that always go into a Veep selection:

Geography: Thanks to the 12th Amendment requiring the President and Vice-President to be from different states, parties have looked at geographic balance for their top ticket. In the days of olde, that usually meant by region - North to South, and then Midwest, and then Pacific coast - although it doesn't mean as much nowadays. In terms of all 50 states and territories, the only place Biden can't choose is another candidate from Delaware. By custom he really should avoid any Mid-Atlantic state like Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, maybe even North Carolina. The best possible candidates here - Harris in California, the current Governor of New Mexico Michelle Lujan Grisham - would be obvious ones. Everything else is fair game, and in terms of value... well that's the next element.

Battleground: What matters more than Geography nowadays is the closely contested major and mid-sized states in terms of Electoral College value. Thanks to the broken nature of the EC, a state won or lost by 5,000 votes means that WHOLE Electoral value of that one state - which can sneak you past the 270 EV requirement - can skew the results. A state that can turn on the campaign ability of a well-liked Veep that also has a double-digit Electoral value - say Michigan (16), Florida (29!), or Arizona (11) - would really help fill the ticket. In this regard, Whitmer, Demings, and Abrams from Georgia (16) are the most likely choices.

Party Unity: One of several things that hurt the Democrats in 2016 - aside from the Russian meddling, media hatred of Hillary, Hillary's general unlikability with independent voters - was how the Far Left - Progressives - felt ignored by Hillary's choice of Senator Tim Kaine (VA) for her Veep. While Kaine is a solid and reliable Democratic figure, he's also a pro-business Centrist much in the same mold as Clinton. If Hillary had chosen a more Progressive, reformist candidate to balance the ticket with her - certainly not Bernie himself, because that would have been awkward and distracting - she could have kept enough of the Far Left from protest-voting for the Green Party and siphoning votes in key states.

Biden's in the same predicament: a veteran party figure with too much of a pro-business profile and Centrist ways, he may have to look for a ticket candidate with Progressive bona fides. Warren is the most likely Progressive with a recognized resume of reforms, while Harris has a hard reputation on business reforms and accountability but also a law enforcement background that may not help her rep at the moment. The Progressive creds for the remaining top women in the field are not as established but as long as they stand proud on Civil Rights, pro-choice, business reforms, and pissing trump off to no end, they should suffice.

Demographics: Already considered, because there's been a seismic shift in how women are voting since 2016. It's the big open reason why Biden pledged to secure a woman on the ticket as a show of solidarity. It's also a serious matter - especially as the issues of police brutality and racism has changed the mood of even White voters - for Biden to consider a Black Woman for this. If he goes with a White Woman even one noted as strong on Civil Rights, it may sour on some voting blocs within the party...

Charisma/Name Draw: Personality counts in an election, and as long as you're not nominating a wet blanket - or Sarah Palin - you should do fine (Even Bush the Elder won once with Dan Quayle(!)). You want someone not only able to present well at campaign speeches and debates (if any take place) but also make the Democratic Party think well of the future. Biden is old and the Dems - and the nation - are overdue for a leadership shift to younger generations.

This is where younger possibilities with nationally-recognized names gain in value. Warren is currently 71 years old, and while a marquee name with a devoted fanbase she's not necessarily the future of the party. Demings is 63 years, which puts her uncomfortably in the senior age bracket: In terms of name recognition she was just this year part of the House Impeachment process regarding trump's extortion of Ukraine, which is solid cred with the party base. Harris is 55, which puts her on the edge of the Gen X demographic (which neither helps nor hurts, to be honest). Michigan's governor Whitmer is 48, and gained national awareness during the COVID response as a target of trump's - and his Far Right fanbase's - ire, which gives her a boost. Stacey Abrams - who gained national recognition as a serious candidate for Georgia's governorship and "lost" due to questionable electoral behavior by her rival Republican who just happened to be the state officer overseeing the election itself (Kemp's failure to recuse tainted the results to where even Republicans were shamed by it) - is 46.

The way things are shaking out, Kamala Harris is the most likely candidate to be Biden's Veep. She had scored early points with the Democratic base when she attacked Biden's credibility on school business and racism, so for her to accept the ticket spot would be a gesture of unity. It'll be the first time since Lloyd Bentsen from TX (1988) that the Democratic ticket had someone on the ticket from the Western half of the U.S. (Bill Clinton being from Arkansas counted more Southern than Midwest). The biggest knocks against choosing her are that 1) California is solid Democratic state, she doesn't help flip a Battleground state 2) her experience in the legal profession as prosecutor and as State Attorney General may hide some police brutality skeletons that might sting, and 3) Harris didn't exactly run a sound national campaign and needs to show improvement as a campaigner this time around (That Active-Negative character I tagged her with didn't help). Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan - being White - could be a surprise choice, but would make sense in terms of long-term party leadership as well as helping secure a region - the Great Lakes "Rust Belt" - that didn't show up in 2016 as hoped. Val Demings would be an interesting choice and would signify Biden's interest in trying to clinch Florida (these 29 Electoral College numbers are very tempting), but like Harris she has a law enforcement background (Orlando police chief) that may rub raw with Democratic voters even though Demings is openly calling for police reforms. Stacey Abrams' name would generate the most excitement as a symbol of Black voters fighting against GOP voter suppression and her placement on the ticket could help flip Georgia to Blue (and maybe help the other Southern states encourage voter turnout), however she'd be considered inexperienced at the federal level compared to the other choices.

I'd grade it as: Harris (CA) around 60 percent odds,
Demings (FL) around 20 percent odds,
Whitmer (MI) around 10 percent odds,
Abrams (GA) around 10 percent odds.

The thing about a candidate choosing a Veep: All we learn from it is how that candidate is going to govern. Biden's choice will showcase his leadership style (which as a Passive-Positive is going to lean towards someone who works well in a Congenial team setting).

Choose wisely, Joe.

Just Saying, We Don't Need a Veep Anymore. Maybe a Senate Consul Would Do.

I came across this article today, and it was on a topic that has pushed my reformist mindset from time to time.

It was about how we go about choosing and voting for Vice Presidents all wrong. From Jeff Stein at Vox.com:

...But the way America chooses its vice presidents seems to give little weight to the gravity of the role. Presidential candidates pick their number two during the heat of a campaign, and the VPs often represent some short-term electoral interest far more than readiness for the job. As was very much the case this year, questions about the VP are far more likely to center on their impact on a swing state or on solidifying a crucial voting bloc than about experience and presidential mettle.

Stein goes into some of the same arguments I have about getting rid of the Vice Presidential pick altogether. He digs into the biggest problem of having a Vice President on the ticket: the Veep is chosen more for political or partisan considerations rather than actual competency. Stein mentions the biggest culprits in our history revolving around this: Andrew Johnson who was chosen to balance Lincoln's desire in 1864 to have a Southerner on the ticket to show a Unionist front (who ended up destroying any chance of a clean Reconstruction and led to 100-plus years of Jim Crow horrors); Sarah Palin who was chosen by McCain to energize support among the Republican faithful (and to try and coax more women voters away from Obama); and Chester A. Arthur who was chosen to bridge a divided Republican party between reformers and pro-Spoils factions (to be fair, Arthur responded to the crisis that brought him to office in 1881 by becoming a competent reformer himself).

As Stein notes: "(The) argument here isn’t just that an unqualified VP could become president despite not enjoying the support of much of the country. It’s that we explicitly look to vice presidents to complement the ideological profiles of the nominees, thereby intentionally inserting confusion into our government that could, potentially, be avoided under a different system."

Stein also points out that the current method of selection - that the President nominates the Vice President with little or no approval from the voters (the conventions are pretty much rubber-stamps now) - is relatively undemocratic.

His suggested reform - to have the President nominate the Vice President similar to a Cabinet position to have the Senate assent and vote - has its own troubling issues (would be impossible to implement if the Senate is held by the opposing party) that would stop it from working.

Vox doesn't seem to have a Comments section - in this day and age, that's not surprising - so I had to hunt down Stein's Twitter account and send him my suggested reform idea his way.

If you'll recall, I point out that the Vice President has a Constitutional role other than being the Backup QB: the Veep is also appointed the "President" of the Senate and serves as its official tie-breaker (due to the even-numbered seating the rules require). Making this position also the underling to the President was a trade-off with the original idea of balancing the winner of the Presidential contest with giving the runner-up a near-equal seat in government. That changed when the Winner/Runner-Up idea conflicted with the rise of parties and the need to run party tickets, and with the creation of the 12th Amendment.

They need to go back to the idea of the Senate leader (The current Vice President) being a separate electoral office. Instead of the Senate President be the runner-up in the Real President election as the Founders originally did - and instead of the current ticket-balancer the seat is now - hold a separate national election for the Senate President seat. To avoid confusion, rename the position as something from the Roman Republic past that our Founders drew inspiration from: call it the Senate Consul seat or something like it.

This way, the parties can run an individual candidate for the White House and an individual candidate for the Senate Consul chair, and not have to muck about with ticket balancing or partisan concerns. Easy and done.

Where the current role of Presidential Succession is filled by the Veep in the 25th Amendment, we can switch in the Senate Consul holder and nothing really changes. The only difference (and problem) is that the Consul could well be from an opposing party than the President's. But we already run that risk with the Second-in-line Speaker of the House, and it can be avoided if the national-level party factions can run successful co-campaigns (that is, if the Consul election is the same cycle as the President's).

There are valid arguments against this move, I know, but I think this is more viable than the current situation we've got now.

It would have avoided the whole damaging mess of Dick Cheney (can you picture him winning a national election on his own terms? Nope). That's all I'm saying.

What do you think, sirs?

Good Lord, That's Tim Kaine's Music

Insert plethora of Tim Kaine/WWE Kane puns here.

So, Hillary has made her ticket selection, and decided on a person considered a "safe" or reliable choice in Virginia Senator Kaine. I know a good number of Democrats were pining for a more... risky pick, something a little more stunning or more stringently Progressive, maybe someone female for an all-woman ticket or someone ethnic for an "Up Yours White Guys" ticket, but in a world filled with Left-Centrist white guys you sometimes got to go draw from the well.

I've ranted about the need for Vice Presidents before, but we're still using that system so let's work with it.

The biggest thing people should take away from a Veep pick is how it signifies what the candidate is going to do as President to select all the other people to fill important roles in his/her administration. This is the first big decision, and the candidate has to nail it. A bad pick - say, McGovern tabbing Eagleton or Mondale tabbing Ferraro or McCain tabbing Palin - indicates bad people skills, poor decision-making, what have you.

This means evaluating Kaine's record (back to the Post):

Kaine comes from a swing state (note: in Electoral value, a popular pick can garner you a slight boost in the Veep's home state and maybe neighboring ones). He has executive and legislative experience. Before going to the Senate, Kaine was governor of Virginia from 2005 to 2009 and mayor of Richmond prior to that. He has a strong Catholic religious background: He was a missionary out of college. He speaks fluent Spanish. He had been vetted favorably by then-Sen. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

And, most importantly, Kaine is a steady presence. He has been in the national spotlight -- both during the 2008 vetting and during his stint as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2009 to 2011. He knows how to handle the media, the scrutiny and the attacks that come with a high-profile perch. He's even-keeled amid chaos.

One word to describe Kaine favorably? Competent. He knows how politics works, he's run successful campaigns, he's been a team player, and he can work the halls of Congress and the back rooms to broker deals as needed.

And to be fair, another one word to describe him is Boring. Kaine does not attract much media attention, he's not a brilliant or charismatic orator, he's not a guy the news channels think of to invite onto their shows, he's not going to get voted Prom King any time soon. On the bright side, that also means he's scandal-proof.

His voting record shows a consistent Liberal bent. He may not be full-on Far Left but he's no Blug Dog.

By selecting Kaine, Hillary is showing that she'll value competency and a strong yet not overwhelmingly Liberal lean to her office. Kaine is essentially another Biden: someone stable and reliable for a job that demands (edit: originally had the wrong word there) stability and reliability.

Personally, I'd have gone with Perez, or searched a little harder for a younger Progressive from the Midwest or Pacific coast. I may be damning with praise here, but there's nothing wrong with Kaine as the Democratic Veep nominee.

Now, onto the Democratic convention.

To Be So Close To History and Yet So Far...

Hillary Clinton has to announce very soon - because the Democratic convention is NEXT WEEK - who her Vice Presidential pick is going to be.

She's scheduled to be in Tampa THIS AFTERNOON at 4:30 PM. At the Florida State Fairgrounds.

She's expected to announce who her running mate is going to be at the event.

OH MAN THAT IS LIKE RIGHT DOWN THE INTERSTATE FROM ME.

Pity I got to work until 5 PM.

Thing is, you usually make the announcement in the Veep pick's back yard for the locals to hoot and cheer 'em on.

The buzz about it being someone from the area - Crist? - is big.

I doubt it's Crist, though. He's honestly not as popular among Florida Democrats as he ought to be (his tenure as an ex-Republican is gonna hurt him). He's doing far better running for the revamped Congressional district covering St. Pete, his stomping ground.

I'm wondering if it's Kathy Castor... or someone else from Florida like Senator Bill Nelson (GO GATORS).

We'll find out today.

Update: well, dammit. Because of the mass shooting in Munich - dammit NRA, stop exporting this sh-t - Hillary held off making an official announcement at the speech. She announced via email afterward... and... it's Kaine.

(tries to find appropriate WWE entrance music)

YouTube's not giving me a lot of options here...

Update Revision: Betty Cracker from Balloon Juice was at the Tampa rally. I envy her. She's got pics, real good ones close to the stage.

A Quick Post For Laughing Insanely at Trump's Pick for Vice President (w/ Update)

A more serious post will follow.

So today, in the middle of Friday (traditionally a news dump day in the United States), and after weeks of indecision that could no longer be delayed because the CONVENTION IS NEXT MONDAY, and after the evening where Trump said he would delay his announcement in honor of the tragic terror attack in Nice, France during Bastille Day...

Without much fanfare, the Trump campaign announced they were going with Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as Trump's Vice Presidential nominee.

As part of the announcement, the campaign revealed their brand new bumper sticker logo of doom, thusly:

They REALLY didn't think this one through, did they?

Because I swear, first thing I realized when I saw that logo was "why does it look like Trump's T is inserting itself into Pence's P?"

Put it another way:

"This is even better in GIF form!"

(I would love to get a downloadable GIF of it someday...)

And to think, the Republicans are the party putting the "NO PORN" policy on their platform, those naughty boys...

Sigh. That's pretty much the only thing to laugh about. More on the horror story aspect of this later.

(Update): Annnnnnnnnd, the Trump people pulled the logo from their websites within less than a day.

We're gonna miss it now it's gone.

Somebody's gonna get fired for this. Induce satisfying wave of Schadenfreude... ahhhhhhhhhh...

The Trump Veepstakes: Or, Guess Who Has To Bring $500 Million to the Interview? (w/ Update)

Considering how strapped for cash the Trump campaign now is for the general election part of the cycle, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is asking for a "franchise fee" just to even get through the door for the one-on-one chat.

After all, that's how the sports leagues do it, and we know how bad Trump wants to be a sports owner (and how terrible he is at it).

Anyhoo, the buzz is that Trump has narrowed down his Vice Presidential selection to three main choices (there may be others, naturally), although the New York Times has added a fourth name I don't hear much about: New Jersey Governor and former Primary opponent Chris Christie, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and Senator Joni Ernst.

So here now are my evaluations for each pick, and why we're all still screwed:

Chris Christie: New Jersey, Governor

Pros: Has governing experience. Retains high profile within the Republican party and some popularity among the ranks. Has his fans among the Far Right media establishment. Can debate well. Can fund-raise well, having ties to Wall Street and corporations that would otherwise not do business with Trump.
Cons: Is still undergoing a criminal investigation into Bridgegate, which will make the campaign an easy target for accusations of corruption and incompetence (even from fellow Republicans). Actual performance for the state especially the economy has been... terrible. His public profile depicts him as having been turned from a big bully into Trump's lackey, with reports of him sent out to get cheeseburgers for his boss once. Is not that popular with the general electorate (being a jerkass to teachers can do that to a reputation), and not popular enough to flip New Jersey for the Electoral College. On a minor note, he does not diversify the ticket in any way, especially for geography: tradition is that the VP has to come from another region of the country to balance things, and New Jersey is too close to New York. Granted, that's an unwritten rule and has been broken once or twice before (Clinton/Gore the most recent), but it will stick out.
Odds: He's likely the fall-back option in case the others say no.

Newt Gingrich: Georgia, former US Speaker of the House.
Pros: Has the political experience with nearly two decades in the House and at least four years as Speaker. Is considered a party Establishment figure. Far Right media treats him as a "wonk" expert on issues, which counters Trump's lack at everything. Takes care of geography, coming from the Deep South and from a state (Georgia) that could become a toss-up if Trump keeps declining in the polls. Is a noted Clinton rival from the 1990s. Has been a vocal defender for Trump during the Primaries, so he's brown-nosed well for this (and unlike other party leaders, he actually wants this).
Cons: For all his experience and position within party ranks, is still viewed as a liability and a troublemaker. Does not play well with others. Was back-stabbed and left to rot by his own House allies when he faltered at his Speakership job in 1998. Last campaign attempt - in 2012 for the Presidency - flamed out. Best-known for having gone after Bill Clinton for extramarital affairs in the Oval Office... while committing the same sin on his second wife (with the woman that would become his third wife) at the same time. And what he did to his first wife was worse. Had been caught and fined for ethics violations while serving as Speaker. Essentially a bigger hypocrite than philandering Trump. While Gingrich may prevent Georgia from flipping, there is no guarantee he can secure the rest of the Southern toss-up states like Florida and North Carolina. Does nothing to repair relations with minorities or women voters. Oh, and he writes really bad alternate-history novels.
Odds: Newt is - hilariously - the glamour pick among the finalists simply because of his constant media profile. But Newt highlights all of the sins that Trump possesses - Ego bordering on Id, adulterous behavior, scandalous habits, insulting comments towards others - with none of the strengths needed to make the ticket acceptable to general election voters. Considering Trump doesn't care about all that, Newt may have a solid shot at getting this.

Mike Pence: Indiana, Governor
Pros: Has the governing experience. Well-known among Republicans as a Social Conservative who defends "religious freedom". Comes from a Midwest region that the media always portrays as "small town Americana" and takes care of the geographic balance. Simply doesn't have the baggage that Christie or Gingrich carry.
Cons: If he is known at the national level, it's for pushing an anti-gay law that pretty much forced businesses to discriminate. The fallout from that law hurt his popularity at home and led to serious push-back from a lot of angry business owners. While his "religious freedom" stance plays well with the Far Right, it will not win over general election voters. Overall record as governor hasn't been flashy, and economic performance of the state has been minimal under his watch. Brings little to the ticket except a lack of unethical behavior.
Odds: Pence is considered the "safe" pick, if by "safe" you mean "pandering to the extremist moralists who don't respect 60 percent of Christians who ARE pro-gay". Has none of the national presence that Newt and Christie have... and yet none of the sins. I just don't see him as fitting Trump's environment all that well.

Joni Ernst: Iowa, Senator
Pros: Freshwoman Senator from the heartland (Iowa). Wildly popular with the Republican base. Social Conservative. Comparatively youthful (mid-40s) who can project as a future Presidential candidate herself. Although elected to office, still presents herself as an "Outsider" that would fit Trump's Anti-Establishment message. Served in the military during the Second Gulf War, which counters Trump's background as a draft-dodger of Vietnam. Female candidate for the Veep spot to counter Hillary's "woman card".
Cons: Comes from the Steve King Wingnut faction of Iowa. Her fights against Planned Parenthood and social services will not win over women voters, which hurts Trump more with a voting bloc already despising him. Putting her on the ticket does not guarantee Iowa will flip to Red (it voted Blue for Obama in 2008 and 2012) nor will it flip many other Dem-leaning states in that region. Does not have enough elective experience to balance out Trump's entire lack of experience.
Odds: There's a solid possibility here that Trump will like her for the optics - war vet, motorcyclist, anti-government rhetoric, eager to shill the outrage - but there's more risk with her as a still-unknown player on the national stage. If I had to grade her chances, it's right behind Newt and just ahead of Pence.

So that's how I'd scale it:
1) Newt (50 percent)
2) Ernst (30 percent)
3) Pence (15 percent)
4) Christie (5 percent)

And if the Veep pick comes out with, say, Rick "No Ethics" Scott, let's just break out the schadenfreude and shout all "Let 'Em Crash."

And why are we all still screwed? Because Trump is still at the top of the ticket, and the Republicans are campaigning on a bad tax-cut, no-immigrants, no-social-aid, bomb-em-all platform despite how vaguely they try to word it.

We should get a decision soon. The convention's two weeks away.

(Update 7/10/16): We're still about a week away and the timer's ticking down... and for what we know Ernst and Pence have dropped hints neither of them will accept. Right now the buzz is that Trump is liking one of his foreign policy advisors, retired Gen. Michael Flynn. It's not that unusual a pick - military officers have run for the Presidency after all, and there's been a handful of campaigns that made the Veep pick a military guy - but Trump is going for someone who does not counter his own lack of elective experience. The biggest reason Flynn is on Trump's short list is the retired general's insistence that jihadist radical Islam is the biggest threat to the United States, fitting Trump's world-view. The scary thing about this is Flynn seems more confrontational about this as a scary neocon "always at war" mindset. There's also no evidence Flynn would be effective enough on the stump or versed in other domestic and economic issues to impress the general electorate.

Volunteers For the Republican (Expletive) Patrol

So this crossed my screen as I read Balloon Juice today, that Newt Gingrich - ex-Speaker of the House, Hypocrite Supreme, and Fifth-Worst Person to Ever Come Out of Georgia - is actively campaigning to be Trump's Vice Presidential tag-team partner:

The Newt’s thin skin and enormous ego are indeed very reminiscent of a certain short-fingered vulgarian, and Gingrich’s inability to keep his eye on the prize (or his pecker in his pants) were largely responsible for the implosion of the GOP’s ‘new permanent majority’ twenty years ago. Putting him under the lights with Deadbeat Donald over the next five months would mean taking bets on which of the two would throw a total pants-soiling hissy-fit first… and whether it would be directed at the other half of the ticket.

While Anne Laurie is treating this as good news - because Newt's not all that popular even among fellow Republicans - I'm still wary of the entire situation. Partly because Trump's polling numbers are NOT going down as I would want, and I'd much prefer Trump going with a greater brain-fart candidate that would truly alienate everyone from here to "iHeart" Pluto.

Another part of it is that while Gingrich's "permanent majority" fell out of power by 2006, by 2010 an even worse version of the Republican Congress rose from those ashes. So nothing can be taken for granted here.

And the thing is, Newt's not the only one. Ex-Governor Rick Perry has been actively petitioning, among several other celebrity wannabes and hangers-on. The supposed split among the Republican ranks hasn't really happened as hoped for, because the overriding tribal affiliation to the Party has resumed control of every Far Right wingnut's mind.

They may not WANT Trump in their deepest part of their collective soul, but they will support him because they have to, even if it means twisting their bent logic - "Oh, he's not REALLY that racist or sexist or ignorant of facts" - into tighter knots than ever before.

And so, there are volunteers for the Shit Detail that is the Number Two Guy on the Trump ticket.

I've pondered before why anyone would take the Vice Presidency - historically speaking, it's an office that had been alienated by nearly every President who preferred their own counsel and Cabinet - outside of party loyalty. It's been a place where political careers go to die (literally in some cases: there are as many dead Veeps as there have been dead Presidents). Granted, ever since the Cold War and the need for proper succession made the Veep job more vital, it's still mostly a hanger-on job: very few modern Vice Presidents successfully become Presidents on their own terms (sorry, Al) and even then never with two full terms (sorry, Bush the Elder and Van Buren).

A lot of it had to do with the office being used to "balance" the party ticket: to placate the faction that lost the Presidency race. Because of that, the Vice President was someone philosophically opposed - sometimes personally opposed - to the Boss, who knew it and would never build a rapport.

Nowadays, the Vice Presidency job has a relatively high profile - due to 25th Amendment considerations, Veeps have to be in the loop more often and their counsel more valued. In the proper environment, a popular Vice President could move post-office into a party role as mentor, with a lot of perks and fewer headaches. So there is some value to being a Veep now.

For Newt - someone who's been driven from high office and looking for some kind of comeback (I'm surprised he never tried for the governor's seat, like most exiles from DC tend to aim for) - even being a Vice President nominee could bring him back into a major intra-party role. That could explain part of his interest.

There's another possibility: getting into the Oval Office with Trump getting kicked out of it...

The Republican Party leadership - plus a lot of outside observers, myself included - still have the nagging feeling that Trump really isn't interested or motivated to really be President. That is, he's running because he started it and can't back out as he needs to satisfy that bloated narcissistic Id of his. This is a guy who likes things handed to him on a gold platter and for things to be easy: whenever anything in his business or personal life gets too hard to cope with, he's shown the habit of dropping that problem like a hot potato and running away.

His World-view and Character is of someone who avoids the major conflict even as he drives towards it, diverts the matter into bankruptcy or divorce court, and moves on to another "easy money" project without a care. For all his tough talk and bluster, he doesn't stick to anything of lasting import or value.

As Trump gets closer to the possibility of winning the whole campaign, more observers are noting how implausible - if not impossible - many of Trump's political promises can even see the light of day. Not so much his offer of a massive tax-cut plan - a Republican Congress will eagerly pass it or something similarly bad - but the promises of mass deportation of illegals, the massive border wall with Mexico, and a trade war with China.

Trump can't change or avoid those promises - although he'd have to if he "pivots" to a moderate stance that abhors such frivolity and race hatred - so he'll likely have to offer something fulfilling those plans if he's President by January 2017. And then he - and the Republican Congress - are going to slam into some serious Brick Walls of Reality:

• The costs of a massive wall with Mexico would range from $1.6 billion and up: and despite Trump's argument he can make Mexico pay for it, the money's likely going to have to come from American taxpayers.
• The costs and manpower of a mass deportation program would range in the hundreds of billions: again, taxpayers are going to have to pay for it and have to deal with the growth of yet another government bureaucracy (something Republicans are supposed to loathe). And that would be nothing compared to the human cost of wrongful arrests of legal citizens, broken families, and civil rights violations. Not to mention the negative impact this would have on our economy: for all the ranting against illegal immigrants, if we actually do what Trump wants it would cut 2 percent off of GDP and cost us around 600 BILLION in lost revenues.
• The costs of a trade war with China - or any other nation - would hurt the U.S. economy, and trigger economic chaos across most of the globe. Trump claims he can bring the other nations to heel by imposing our will on them, but that comes across as extortion, and not a lot of countries like to play that game.

Those examples prove why - in the Real World as a lot of President-Elects find out real fucking fast - the President of the United States is a lot less powerful than the job title (LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD) makes it seem. You can talk and promise all you want, but once you sit in that chair you're going to find that throne room becomes a prison awful quick...

Ergo: if Trump gets into the Oval Office, he's going to get frustrated with the limits of power he's going to run into. He's going to slam hard not only into the political realities of foreign policy and military interventionism, but he's also going to run against the separation of powers between his office and Capitol Hill.

While it's likely Trump will inherit a Republican-controlled Congress if he wins, it's also likely he's going to inherit a Congress that's out-of-control with the backbencher Tea Party factions making the Speaker and Senate Majority Leader's lives a living hell. Getting any bills through Congress can become a conflict, and Trump's managerial style of bullying and taking what he wants is going to rub a lot of political egos - you never deal with One Congress, you're dealing with 535 Maniacs - the wrong way.

I have marked Trump as a severe Active-Negative character, and historical trends with A-N types - Adams, Buchanan, Wilson, Hoover, LBJ, Nixon, Carter - even with a favorable Congress had a lot of bad blood spilled. Trump could well cause a Constitutional crisis with Congress without even planning to, and given his nature of "bluff first, quit later" it can play out one of two ways.

Trump could quit when the going gets tough, or Trump could get seriously impeached - by his fellow Republicans, whose leadership you'll recall are NOT really fans of his - because he'll cross a line that should never be crossed. And we're talking about Trump whose long list of failures and con jobs point to a man who never paid a price for crossing any lines, and will likely commit a mortal sin before his first week in office is over.

If we're playing out this game, both possibilities equal one result: the Vice President when Trump leaves becomes President.

Now all of a sudden, being Veep is a more appealing position. Despite the likelihood of public humiliation of being Trump's Bell-Boy carrying his luggage - hi, Chris Christie! - the high odds of Trump quitting or getting "fired" for his inevitable transgressions would make it all worth one's while.

It'd be an easy way to sneak into an office that Newt - or Perry, or Palin, or any of the other volunteers - was never able to win on his/her own. If they play it right they could present themselves as "savior" to their party (and the nation) and make a run in 2020 as the incumbent. As long as Trump's disastrous yet short reign didn't cause a massive calamity like a global depression or yet another ground war of doom, they would get good odds to win...

So I'm not surprised by the number of eager cadets lining up for the demeaning job of Trump's Sidekick.

I'm actually a little horrified, because there's enough of these Republicans in party leadership positions genuinely believing they got a shot to win. They can't be that deluded, can they...?

Oh, and ego alert here: I was off by one blog count, so this is actually my 999th blog article. THE NEXT ONE is 1000. I gotta make it count...

Guessing the 2016 Veep Picks, Because I Have Nothing Better To Do Today Other Than Laundry

(Update: thanks for the link, Infidel753!)

One of the downsides of recognizing that the Presidential campaigns are winnowing themselves to the likely nominees is that the chatter quickly switches to the next phase of the damn horse-race.

Predicting who gets picked to serve as Vice President on each party's ticket. Yeah, we're getting there now:

Reporters are feeling secure enough to start pestering Clinton surrogates about her VP choices. John Podesta promised the Boston Globe that Hillary’s short list would include a woman (because of course they asked, and what else was he gonna say?) The Washington Post‘s premier horse-race tout Chris Cillizza likes Amy Klobuchar, Tom Perez, Tim Kaine, Sherrod Brown, and Julian Castro, and his explanations are reasonable enough to consider them the Conventional Wisdom picks...

For the seven readers of this blog, you know my views on the Vice Presidency itself: It's an antiquated relic of a failed electoral concept by our Founders, a process of party ticket-balancing that can often go wrong, and something that can be easily supplanted by changes to the 25th Amendment and by adding more seats to the Senate to compensate the VP's duties. Like Anne Laurie notes in her Balloon Juice article above, this Veep stuff is merely worrying over who gets to be the Backup Prom Queen/King.

Still, it's part of the process, and I might as well put my two cents in on the topic (okay, guilty admission here, it's a little fun to mess with the Conventional Wisdom by messing with the picks).

Just note the rules of the game: The Veep pick has to fulfill the Constitutional obligations - over 35 years of age, Natural Born Citizen, and full-time residency in the US itself for 14 straight years - as well as Electoral College obligation of NOT being from the same state as the President: it has to do with the complex nature of Electors, a rule to prevent candidates from the same state dominating the Executive office. It's a rule that was in place back when there were fewer states and there was a legitimate fear large-population states like Virginia could dominate the Federal government. Past that (barring scandals), it's an open market.

With Hillary Clinton, the likely scenario is that she picks someone from the roster of known Clinton allies - both Hillary AND Bill are, after all, practitioners in quid pro quo - but someone with enough of a separate reputation from their Inner Circle to avoid open accusations of cronyism - which they'll get hit with regardless. This is why names like current Housing Secretary Julian Castro come up often.

Castro in particular covers a lot of things a Presidential candidate has on a checklist: he's young meaning he can become the banner carrier for the Party for the next two-three decades (and reach the White House on his own campaign), he's from a large Electoral state that happens to be on the verge of demographically shifting Democrat (Texas), and he's still relatively unknown enough that he's not going to be drawing attention away from Hillary.

Funny enough, Julian has a twin brother Jouquin serving in the US House, and his name comes up often as well. But Jouquin is less likely to get the nom because of political calculus: every House seat is vital for the Democrats to hold, and with the slight chance this 2016 election could tip the gerrymandered House away from the Republicans, the Dems are going to want to cover their seats to improve their odds. What's happening with Jouquin is the reason to avoid considering a Congresscritter for Dem Veep.

The US Senate is a different matter: only a third of those seats are up for a vote this year, which means a sitting Senator not running in 2016 could be tabbed for the Veep slot and not get distracted. In this, names like Michael Bennet of Colorado and Patty Murray of Washington get discounted ( up for re-elections), but names like Sherrod Brown (he's up in 2018) get elevated.

Governors come in for consideration, but because of Democratic failures during midterms to get the vote out - and midterms are when a lot of Governor seats are up for vote - there's not a lot of Dem Governors to choose from.

Like Julian, there's a possibility Hillary would tab someone young-ish and reasonably popular from Obama's Cabinet - Labor Secretary Tom Perez has been gaining attention - but there's few names there Hillary can view as viable.

One argument is that given the close race Bernie Sanders has been running against her means that Hillary needs to consider a Progressive, left-leaning Veep nominee to placate the Far Left voters that will be angry when Bernie drops out. Tabbing Bernie himself is unlikely: he's too old (given Hillary's own age, a younger candidate is needed), and too geographically close to Hillary's New York (with regards to ticket-balancing, she needs to find someone from the Midwest, Pacific Coast, or Southeast, especially a key toss-up state).

Just in case, if Bernie were to pull off an upset... In his case, he can go in any direction he'd like for picking a Veep - he could even consider House members that Hillary wouldn't - and would likely go with as Progressive / Leftist a candidate just to signal his victory as a Far Left standard bearer over the Democratic Party establishment. If he does go with an Establishment-backed choice, it would signal a rapport with the moderate voters who might still worry about a too Far Left platform.

If I had a list of nominees, it'd go like this:

Sherrod Brown (well-known Progressive Senator, key state of Ohio, would be viewed as an olive branch to the Bernie supporters)
Penny Pritzker (current Sec of Commerce, from Illinois, Jewish family, would make it an all-women ticket)
Julian Castro (current Sec of Housing/Urban Development, key state of Texas, Hispanic)
Anthony Foxx (current Sec of Transportation, key state of North Carolina, African-American)
Thomas Perez (current Sec of Labor, technically from Maryland, Hispanic)

And for the Republicans?

Considering the likely nominee is Trump, this can go one of two ways:

1) Trump will actually behave himself and oversee a formal, almost professional review of likely nominees before selecting one who has a political resume that would alleviate the fears of the general voting electorate while keeping his Far Right base happy.

2) Trump will do his own thing, probably do it as a one-night televised special variation of The Apprentice where he lines up prospective Veeps and have them beg - BEG FOR MERCY I TELL YOU - for the damned job, and end up with the best suck-up he can find.

I doubt in 1). Despite the fact the RNC and party leadership will INSIST on a proper vetting, Trump is all about getting attention, and messing with everybody's heads. For him, 2) is more fun, more satisfying to his Id (more than his Ego). Trump has already stated he's holding off on starting the vetting process until the delegate count is finalized.

In that regards, consider this list of likely Republican Veep nominees to be woefully short. In Trump's case, he can go in any possible direction - within the Constitutional requirements -  he likes.

Trump should look at getting a Veep who is different to him in attitude and experience: considering his complete lack of political history and gravitas, he'll need a ton of that in his running partner.

While common sense tells us that any of his primary opponents would reject any offer, the fact that Trump turned Chris Christie into his puppy within a week of Christie dropping out of the race suggests otherwise. Common sense would also tell us that given the likely train-wreck a Trump general election can get (polling in the low 40s AT BEST), that nobody will want to take a bullet for the team and ruin his/her resume, but again ambition is a cruel and demanding boss.

If I had any say in this... well, I wouldn't have Trump as the Presidential nominee (where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you). But anywho, just to give the Republicans a fair chance:

Susana Martinez (governor of New Mexico, Hispanic, Woman, would help counter a lot of the damage Trump's done with those voting blocs)
Nikki Haley (governor of South Carolina, Woman, of Sikh ancestry but currently Christian faith)
Chris Christie (governor of New Jersey, still relatively popular among the punditry, already sold out)
Marco Rubio (from key state Florida, Hispanic, would require Rubio selling his own soul - again - which would make for great television)
Jeb Bush (from key state Florida, would be an act of public humiliation you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy... well maybe a little)
Sarah Palin (because she's sucking up to him, and brings a lot of media attention with her, and it would really piss off the RNC big time)

If Cruz were to pull off an upset getting to the nomination, the situation changes a bit. This would require a major political coup with the delegates and rules of order at the convention at this point of the campaign, meaning Cruz had to break more than one promise and start riots in all the worst ways. But he'd do it if he was convinced enough of his inevitability as the candidate, and that would mean his extreme Christianist world-view brought him to this.

That would suggest he would seek a "pure" campaign of True Believers in his camp, meaning his Veep nominee is going to be a Bible-thumping social warrior of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-rights bent. That actually narrows the list a lot, mostly down to his few allies in Congress. That would bring to his Veep list the likes of Steve King (House, Iowa), Jeff Sessions (Senate, Alabama), and/or Tim Huelskamp (House, Kansas).

If it's Hillary, I'd like to see her consider Priktzer, but she'll likely stick with Castro. If it's Trump, he'll likely do what he can to browbeat Rubio just to humiliate him, but he'll likely end up with Haley just to appease the party Establishment with someone sensible (and as an attempt to win over the women's vote that he can't imagine losing, 'cause all the ladies love the Donald...).

Okay, so let's see how wrong I am by the time June rolls around.

Oh, if I had to go with a Vice-Presidential nominee for MY Presidential run... I'd look for a moderate tax-friendly pro-peace candidate from the West Coast for geographic balance. Anybody got suggestions?