Don’t ask for Elizabeth Warren as Vice President. Please don’t.
The vice presidency is where people go to hide, tucked outside of public view, muzzled by the messaging demands of the president. They don’t challenge the president publicly, or get to crusade for causes unapproved by the top gun. And while they might have influence behind the scenes (looking at you, Dick C.), ultimately, the president makes the final calls (which is why Dick C. didn’t get his war in Iran). So if you want Warren fighting hard against Wall Street excesses, then you want her right where she is today—in the Senate. You know she won’t be shy about calling bullshit if President Hillary Clinton takes a wrong turn.
Of course, that’s not the reason some asshole Democrats oppose the idea.
“A progressive fits the bill,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton surrogate. “The problem with Warren is that she has very little experience. She was a law professor and she’s been in the Senate for a few years. What executive experience does this person have?”
*Cough*BarackObama*Cough. Oh, and she created and ran the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and did so in the face of intense hostility from Republicans and even some Democrats.
“Warren speaks to the left of the party, but not the working class left,” said a super delegate backing Clinton. “She speaks more to the progressive elite, not white, working class males.”
Anyone still stuck on winning white working class males hasn’t looked at election results in a long time.
Mitt Romney won white men 62-35 percent. And Barack Obama likely lost the “working class” subset of that vote by even larger margins. Not to mention, that percentage of the overall vote is shrinking every cycle. White males were 36 percent in 2008, down to 34 percent in 2012. They’ll be even lower this year.
Meanwhile, Warren’s gifts are EXACTLY her messaging to working class people (of all genders). What a fucking stupid thing to say: “Warren appeals to smart liberals, therefore, she possibly can’t appeal to the rest.” Remember, she went up against a popular incumbent Republican senator and won. She got 42 percent of Massachusetts white males, and she won 61 percent of voters making less than $50,000 per year, aka the “working class.” She also won those making less than $100,000 by 56-44, if you want to expand the definition of “working class”.)
Still, believe it or not, this post isn’t about Warren. I hope we can all agree that we need her strong voice in the Senate, but then there is this:
But in interviews with more than a dozen prominent Democrats and campaign allies, most viewed a Clinton-Warren ticket as an unlikely scenario — despite the appeal of a two-woman ticket to Clinton campaign officials and also to Clinton, who sources said is intrigued by the idea.
So these sources claim that Clinton is “intrigued” by a two-woman ticket. That would be pretty cool, actually. The Democratic female gubernatorial bench is thin—two first-termers and one already running for Senate. In the Senate, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar is mentioned (and she is very ambitious), as is New York’s Kristen Gilibrand (which would require Clinton to “move” to another state to circumvent that stupid Constitutional restriction against a president and veep from the same state). Gilibrand is also very ambitious. Expect both of these senators to join the fray in 2024.
North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and Janet Reno are also mentioned, but those won’t happen. I personally think Hilda Solis would be great.
Returning to her native state, she was elected to the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees in 1985, the California State Assembly in 1992, and the California State Senate in 1994. She was the first Hispanic woman to serve in the State Senate, and was reelected there in 1998. Solis sought to pass environmental justice legislation. She was the first female recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2000.
Solis defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent as part of getting elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, where she focused mainly on labor causes and environmental work. She was reelected easily to four subsequent terms. In December 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Solis as the next U.S. Secretary of Labor. She took office after being confirmed by the United States Senate in February 2009, becoming the first Hispanic woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. There she focused on workplace safety issues and on strengthening compliance with wage and hour laws.
Gilibrand and Klobuchar would also work as far as I’m concerned. Not as dramatically awesome as Solis, but solid enough.
“Your visceral reaction to [two women] is boy, that’s asking white male voters to take a lot of change all at once,” Rendell said. But, he noted, Bill Clinton suffered the same sort of criticism for picking Al Gore as his running mate in 1992, when he doubled down on a young, Southern politician who looked like a carbon copy of himself. “It turned out to be an inspired pick and galvanized Democrats across the country,” he said.
There is this old-world thinking that the running mate must “balance” the ticket. That’s not how this stuff works in practice. In reality, the running mate is the person that can talk to the base and use language unavailable to the presidential nominee. In other words, the person that can deliver red meat. Joe Biden served that role (even as he supposedly “balanced” Obama on national security). Dick Cheney served that role. Sarah Palin served that role. Paul Ryan … not sure what role he served.
In short, the running mate should galvanize the party base. Warren would be awesome at that if we wanted to squelch her voice. We don’t. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick would be great at that. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings would be great at it. Hilda Solis would, too.
Clinton has no governance gaps to fill. She has extensive foreign policy, domestic policy, and everything policy experience. The only thing she lacks, compared to what is expected of an American president, is a penis, and we’re finally evolving past needing that. Thus, there’s no need to add one of those on the ticket. If the right person comes along that can fulfill the base-mobilizing role (like the guys I named above), then great! That works. But it shouldn’t be a requirement, and from the looks of it, it doesn’t seem to be one. Hallelujah!
p.s. this:
Running against Trump, Clinton insiders said, also diminishes the need for a candidate like HUD Secretary Julian Castro ...
Amen.
p.p.s. This:
Those same people advocating for an all-female ticket concede it’s unlikely to happen because they expect the Clinton campaign and Clinton herself to think conventionally. “You could see them deciding to go with [Virginia Sen. and former DNC chairman] Tim Kaine, a safe choice,” said one Democratic source.
Nooooooooooooo! Remember what I said about “red meat” above?
p.p.p.s. And this:
“Imagine what the women VP bench will look like,” said EMILY’s List spokeswoman Jess McIntosh, “after Hillary has made 50 percent of her cabinet women.”
That’s a happy thought!