Who Wants to Be Vice President and Why?
Now that the two leading candidates for President in 2024 have finished their media horse races, coverage is shifting to speculation about the office of the Vice President.
Ballotpedia lists six potential candidates for the number two slot among Democrats in the event that incumbent VP Kamala Harris is kidnapped by The Lizard People.
Since the day President Biden was inaugurated, people with too much time on their hands or a willingness to spread rumors on behalf of a foreign power, there have been rumblings about ‘replacing’ Ms Harris.
All this speculation came to a head last fall, with Politico running a story about columnists saying Biden should ditch the Vice President. They found three, with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius (thought Biden was too old) being the most famous of the bunch.
The shared rationale with New York Magazine’s Intelligencer column and the “Very Serious” Josh Barro was the incumbent’s poor performance in popularity polls.
You know who does worse than the Vice President in polling? The US Congress, now coming in with less than half the popularity of the Veep, and a majority of those bastards are going to be re-elected.
Furthermore, as MSNBC pundit Michael A. Cohen pointed out, the rationale in play simply doesn’t hold up with even the slightest nod toward the reality of Black women voters being the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency.
Replacing Harris with another candidate would alienate a key Democratic constituency, do little to sway persuadable voters, erode Biden’s brand and create chaos within the Democratic Party. Other than that — great idea.
So here’s to keeping the Lizard People at bay, and to the list of Democrats who wish their names weren’t on it:
Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Transportation Secretary
Tammy Duckworth, U.S. senator from Illinois
Gavin Newsom, governor of California
Lauren Underwood, U.S. representative from Illinois
Raphael Warnock, U.S. senator from Georgia
Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan
Over in MAGA land, there are media accounts of Dear Leader wandering about at Mar A Lago asking random people about various potential candidates.
The former president has gone on Newsmax to declare that everybody, including Democrats, is clamoring to join him on the ticket. Late night TV host Stephen Colbert has challenged that claim, daring Trump to drop one name with a D behind it.
Following are the current Republican options, according to Ballotpedia, which casts a very wide net to add people to their list. Don’t tell anybody, but it looks likes the evil globalists behind the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs may been secretly supporting a majority of these wannabes
Greg Abbott, governor of Texas
Marsha Blackburn, U.S. senator from Tennessee
Katie Britt, U.S. senator from Alabama
Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota and former 2024 presidential candidate
Ben Carson, former secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and former 2024 presidential candidate
Byron Donalds, U.S. representative from Florida
Tucker Carlson, former Fox News anchor
Tulsi Gabbard, former U.S. representative from Hawaii and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate
Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. representative from Georgia
Kari Lake, 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate
Nancy Mace, U.S. representative from South Carolina
Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota
Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state
Vivek Ramaswamy, former 2024 presidential candidate
Kim Reynolds, governor of Iowa
Tim Scott, U.S. senator from South Carolina and former 2024 presidential candidate
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas
Elise Stefanik, U.S. representative from New York
J.D. Vance, U.S. senator from Ohio
Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia
Back when the founders took time out from their slave whipping and bible studying to run this country, the vice presidency was the job of the candidate with the second highest vote count.
Can you imagine? Administrations with President Richard Nixon along with Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern as VPs? How about Commander in Chief Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton further enabling the Benghazi cover up?
Nowadays, candidates of the major political parties make their choices, and unless dirt in their closets is found (Thomas Eagleton) there is simply a rousing cheer (acclamation) for the ticket at party conventions.
Minor political parties still vote for Vice Presidential candidates, who are destined for footnote status in history books.
The Really Big News about Vice Presidential candidates has centered around upstart independent Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who is apparently using polls of daytime soap opera viewers to winnow down his list.
Formerly famous quarterback Aaron Rogers is at the top of the list, if I’m reading media accounts correctly. All the negatives about him are supposedly balanced out by the fact that he’s “battle tested.”
Cue the laugh track, via Daylin at Daily Kos:
But that, knowing-stuff-is-bad and experience-is-evil mindset is the philosophy behind many insane presidential boomlets in recent years. Most recently, it has brought us the rumored plan of presidential candidate and human bucket of conspiracies RFK Jr. to choose Jets Quarterback and fellow achilles-tendon sufferer Aaron Rogers as his Vice-President.
RFK, Jr has also approached wrestler Jesse Ventura about the number two slot.
From the New York Times:
In recent months, Mr. Kennedy and his camp have approached at least a half-dozen people, with varying degrees of formality, to gauge their interest in serving as his running mate. Aside from Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Ventura, he is said to have spoken with former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky; and Andrew Yang, the former candidate for president and New York mayor, the two people familiar with the discussions said. Puck News previously reported the outreach to Mr. Yang.
Mr. Yang did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Paul’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Gabbard could not be reached for comment.
All have turned him down, or their conversations have not advanced, except for Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Ventura, the people familiar with the discussions said.
If anything could be interpreted as a hint of where Mr. Kennedy might lean, the domain name kennedyrodgers.com was registered last week using a GoDaddy host.
So there you have it folks, a couple of deadenders have indicated interest in joining the deadend candidacy of an ego shaped by things that go bump in the night.
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Friday’s Other Stories of Note
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Growing Evidence of Russian and Chinese Influence In the Republican Impeachment Inquiry by KeithDB at Daily Kos:
For months now I believed the real scandal here boiled down to a simple question. For how long have Republicans who pushed Smirnov as the smoking gun in their impeachment inquiry known that he was a Russian agent, and that his allegations were concocted by Russian intelligence services? However today the scandal got deeper with evidence that Smirnov was paid by agents of Donald Trump.
The new evidence comes in a blockbuster article by the The Guardian. Even as Smirnov was telling his lies to the FBI Trump business associates in Dubai were paying Smirnov $600,000. This is not a seven degrees of separation sort of thing. It’s a tight circle of people around Trump, that Trump has himself described as friends or as a “great man” and who are closely linked to Paul Manafort. Trump acknowledges making millions from deals with these people.
The Guardian does not allege the $600,000 is tied to the lies Smirnov told the FBI but surely this is worth investigating. In the words of Nancy Mace, “The timing is always coincidental.”
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Mehdi Hasan On Leaving MSNBC, Starting His Own Media Company, How to Cover War and 2024 via Aiden McGlaughlin podcast transcript at Mediaite
People want the truth. I said in my announcement essay for Zeteo, look, we’re not going to run away from the R-word. When people say racist stuff, we’re gonna say, “that’s racism.” We’re not going to say racially-tinged, racially-tainted, racially divisive. When Israel is accused of committing a genocide in Gaza, we’re going to use the G-word. The International Court of Justice says it’s a plausible genocide. Let’s not run from that. When Trump is saying, “I’m going to be dictator for a day” — because dictators are only ever dictators for a day, of course — we’re going to say that’s fascism. We’re not going to run away from the F-word.
So we want to speak about the world in a truthful, honest, direct, blunt way. We’re not hiding our biases. We have our biases. But we want to speak without all those fake conventions, and a little bit of cowardice that we see from some in the media industry.
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City of San Diego proposes sales tax increase for November ballot via CBSNews 8
District 7 Councilmember Raul Campillo says the city is proposing a ballot measure for this November's ballot to raise the sales tax rate from its current level of 7.75%...
…"What we are asking voters is in November to vote to increase that by one cent per dollar so that we can have two cents come to our general fund so that we can spend it on the aging infrastructure," Campillo said.
In recent years cities such as Chula Vista, Del Mar, Imperial Beach, National City and Solana Beach have raised their sales tax rates to 8.75% while La Mesa, El Cajon, Oceanside and Vista pay 8.5% to 8.25% respectively.
