VP race

NM Governor Bill Richardson, considered a top tier choice for VP even though he's flatly denied interest, has endorsed Dick Gephardt as Kerry's best choice. Just reported on the Albuquerque local news.

 

GV: Worse than Cheney, do you think? If you care at all about labor issues (and with Bush trying to make an end run around overtime pay, it's a good time to care about that stuff), there's no one better. More importantly, Gephardt probably tilts Missouri blue which is probably enough to win.

 

FB: I like Clark fine, but he doesn't add anything to the ticket. And while I'm not personally endorsing Gephardt, he's much more of an attack dog than any of the other guys you mentioned. Plus Missouri and Ohio. That said, I think it's gonna be Bayh.

 

FB: The attack dog thing is important. There are things a VP candidate can say that a presidential one can't (wouldn't be presidential). That's a big knock against Edwards actually. It's funny you think Gephardt would be an ineffective attacker and then suggest Clark. Clark's attacks (on Bush and his primary opponents) were especially flacid. They felt scripted to the point of being badly awkward. Gephardt's old and he's definitely a Washington guy, but nobody's more knowledgeable and no one has a greater passion for labor and the concerns of working people -- certainly not Edwards, contrary to the last month of the campaign. I don't much favor Bayh either. There's no VP candidate that excites me. I just hope Kerry'll pick the one that helps in the Midwest or Florida (don't forget about Graham -- that guy's an attack dog).

 

Kerry doesn't need any help on the war. And Clark wouldn't give him much he doesn't have. The voters that won't listen to Kerry likely won't listen to Clark either. Bayh gives him a moderate 'voice of reason' (he's a DLC conservative Dem) to balance the liberal thing. Gephardt gives him 'I feel your pain' to balance the aloofness. And both of those guys probably give Kerry a battleground state. (Clark probably doesn't move Arkansas by himself and Edwards almost definitely doesn't move NC.) That's an important factor with Graham too, who's immensely popular in Florida. The Kerry camp's definitely polling on this.

Richardson's a non-factor in the Midwest. The strategy with him would be to firm up NM (it was close last time) and pick up AZ (which went Bush) because of proximity and the large Latino population there. The 2000 blue states plus AZ are good for 270. It's a little dodgy since Richardson's not a lock to move AZ and the Dems have a lot of close wins from last time to protect too. The AZ strategy plays it a lot closer than, say, Ohio. If Gephardt or Bayh (who polls showed moved Indiana blue) can get MO, OH and/or IN, I'd think they're the frontrunners.

 

nyrocket: What an extraordinarily weird post. I'm not a Gephardt fan. Nobody was madder at him than me after 2002 or the war vote. But anyone attached to Labor in any real way would find extreme fault with your characterization of Gephardt's career-long support of their cause. He's never, ever wavered. To suggest otherwise is flat silly. It is equally silly to suggest that Kerry will be looking for progressive votes with his VP pick. He's already got all those he's going to get. I didn't reference Labor as a needed constituency, but since you brought it up the Teamsters went with Bush last time. Some of those votes and dollars are in play. I referenced Labor because their issues are important to me personally as a matter of fair play and, even while I've been furious with Gephardt many times in recent years, I've always appreciated his real commitment to those issues.

As for the other thing, it's not a race between VP's. And, outside one ninety minute debate, it won't be head-to-head. It's about whether or not a VP candidate can pick up a state or balance the ticket. You didn't need to repeat that you had no idea who Kerry should pick. You made that perfectly clear.

 

I don't calculate Cheney's influence at all here because, like I said, VP vs. VP is an irrelevant race. Outside that ninety minutes and the story that follows it, a comparison of the VP candidates won't be a factor. It's how the VP compares to his running mate that matters.

Kerry has the liberal and progressive votes he's going to get, by and large. The Democrats did miscalculate last time, both the candidate and the voters, and I don't have to "look where we are." I know where we are and so do all the other progressives that voted Nader or stayed home last time. And now we all know what a disaster Bush is. Gore ran a horrible campaign, but he could run that exact same horrible campaign this time and he'd get the vast majority of the Nader votes, some of the Bush ones and more than a few from people who stayed home last time. Your real question should be are there more votes to be gained from progressives who are such ideologues they can't recognize a meaningful difference between Bush and Kerry or are there more votes to be gained from independents. And the answer is obvious. Virtually any leftie who would ever vote for Kerry is already voting for Kerry. He's not moving left and he shouldn't. There are a lot more independents out there than there are Nader voters or stay-at-homers and if those guys haven't recognized the importance of beating Bush over pure ideology, they're not going to. Besides, for all the problems I have with Kerry, he's more of a liberal than Dean or Edwards, way, way more of a liberal than Clinton and nearly as much of one as Gephardt.