Veepstakes: It's Kamala Harris, Isn't It?

Not since a dying FDR allowed his party to remove crypto-Communist Henry A. Wallace from the ticket and replace him with Harry S. Truman has a Democratic vice-presidential pick mattered as much as it does right now. Alleged Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appears to be fading so fast, that not even campaigning from his own basement under the gentlest possible conditions and using cheat-sheets during powder-puff interviews have been enough to hide his mental decline.

In a March debate against rival candidate Bernie Sanders (Soc.-USSA), former Vice President Joe Biden pledged that he would choose a woman for his running mate, and given the lack of trans candidates at the national level, one assumed Biden meant a natural-born woman with two X chromosomes. Clearly, Democrats have a ways to go before they reach the bottom of the pander barrel.

But whom?

Onetime Georgia gubernatorial hopeful and professional sore loser Stacey Abrams has been lobbying hard for the position, but my own estimation is that she’s dumber in actuality than Dan Quayle was ever slandered or libeled to be. Her nonstop “I wuz robbed!” antics have made her a laughingstock among the few people outside of Georgia unlucky enough to be familiar with her. Word is that the Biden camp has dismissed Abrams already.

Nominating Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-The Rez) would please hardcore party progressives and man-hating Third Wave feminists, but literally no one else. She’s almost as old as Biden — who has all but promised to serve a single term as a “bridge” between generations — and Warren doesn’t put any leaner states into play, either. Worse, if we’re being brutally honest, Warren suffers from largely the same personality defects that caused Hillary Clinton to lose what most people thought was the biggest gimme election since George Washington. Also, has anyone heard a single screech out of Warren since the lockdown began? Apparently, she wants the job, “allowing” a low-key surrogate lobbying effort on her behalf, but she just brings too many negatives.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar would be a good defensive play in the must-win-back Upper Midwest, but probably be a stronger pick if it weren’t for her legendary temper. She ought to still be on Biden’s shortlist, assuming he remembers where he put it.

The strongest dark horse might be Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth. She’s GenX, which used to be the “youth vote,” this GenXer is sorry to have to admit, plus a woman, plus a minority. Duckworth is also a disabled Army vet who lost all of one leg and most of the other during a combat tour of Iraq as a chopper pilot. Duckworth knows the executive third of Washington, too, having served as an Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs under Barack Obama. Putting politics, policy, and party aside, she’s formidable.

For a brief moment, it looked like Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer might get the nod, but her heavy-handed treatment of her own constituents during the lockdown might have made her too controversial a pick. Especially since Slow Joe apparently plans to run on a calming “return to normalcy” platform.

ASIDE: “Return to normalcy” apparently means “an FDR-Size Presidency,” according to a recent lip-service piece on Biden published on Monday by the Intelligencer.

There are some other longshot contenders like Michelle Obama (whom one cannot imagine deigning to serve), Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. But their names, aside from a few conspiracy-type theories about Michelle Obama, haven’t bubbled up much of anywhere outside of columns like this one.

My RedState colleague Joe Cunningham wrote earlier today that it looks like “someone out there thinks that Kamala Harris should be or is going to be Joe Biden’s choice for Vice President,” and I’m inclined to agree. Cunningham notes that Harris has “won local and state elections and was a major contender in the primary,” and perhaps most importantly, she enjoys national name recognition, “and word is that she has been working on some of her weaknesses from the primary.”

More than any presidential candidate in history, including both Bushes, Biden needs a veep who can articulate in ways that he simply can’t. But Harris has a speaking style that is pure laid-back California surfer girl. Rather than clearly articulate a vision or excite the crowds with a rousing speech, she slowly carves some bitchin’ bromides. So to my eyes and ears, a Biden-Harris ticket would be the Democrats’ version of Dumb & Dumber: One candidate who can barely speak and another who can’t be bothered to.