Talking about Obama's choices for veep, there's an overwhelming sense in some quarters that he needs to pick a guy with massive military/foreign policy credentials. Wes Clark or some other four-star primadonna. I don't buy that at all. If Barack can't win the Iraq debate on his own, he can't win it. Picking a security guy just puts the debate on McCain's turf.
A veep choice should let Obama go where McCain can't and won't go. We all know John McCain is famously clueless on domestic issues. The veep choice should put Katrina, infrastructure and rural poverty - issues which McCain neither knows nor cares about - at the forefront. The veep should sweep through the boxed-out area of this map, which happen to be hit hard by poverty and crumbling infrastructure and also key swing areas.
That V runs through the Appalachians, down through the Delta, and back up through the Ozarks.
Barack, with his Illinois background and Kansas roots, should be barnstorming the Midwest and West. The VP candidate gets the V where Forgotten America lies. And after they win in November, the VP oversees every dollar of federal money spent and every paper and pencil pushed within that V.
Are you with me so far?
So who'd be good for this strategy?
Here's a kooky idea that I know a lot of you will hate: Mary Landrieu. Sure she's a blue dog. Sure she's voted exactly the wrong way on practically everything that's mattered. Sure, there's the disastrous Anderson Cooper interview. But she also puts Katrina there front and center. She's had a longstanding interest in expanded literacy programs. And she gives a damn good attack speech against boneheaded Republicans.
Not to mention, nominating a middle-aged white lady who's perhaps overly skittish about nat'l security helps rope back the middle-aged white ladies who are perhaps overly skittish about nat'l security who voted for Hillary.
But since I know this suggestion will be stupendously unpopular among ye, here's some other possibilities.
John Edwards. He's been pulling on that Forgotten America whistle for a long time. But from what I've seen of him he don't seem to be tempermentally suited to second banana.
Ray Mabus. Former governor of Mississippi, where he seems to have done a good job. Did some work with Katrina rebuilding. And for those of you still on the national security train, also served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Whoever the choice would be, this strategy attacks a point where McCain is unable by his nature to respond. It addresses some longstanding injustices - most of these areas haven't prospered under any president in recent memory. And, it must be said, it covers a whole vast swath of swing-state and potential swing-state territory.