All of Your VP Predictions Are Trash

There are so many takes floating around about why people think that some fringe AF Dem is going to be Joe Biden’s VP. I will now destroy all of them.

Kamala Harris is the Frontrunner. No she isn’t. Joe Biden was a more emotional leader than John Boehner and that is saying a lot.

It would take a serious amount of bullying to get Uncle Joe to pick a VP who has personally and publicly attacked him the way that Sen. Harris did at the Miami debate.

All you ‘tards out there are saying that Kamala denied calling Biden “racist,” but Trump’s Super PAC adds will be cut in a way that makes it pretty clear that she did exactly that. Just imagine Trump at a future debate.

“I’m not calling you a racist, Joe. Your running mate already did.”

Also Sen. Harris is not popular with insiders in a business where that matters. This is due to the fact that she is basically the Ted Cruz of Democrats. She is just seriously obsessed with being president and that is not a good look.

I think there is a 0 percent chance that she is the VP pick. Zoltar and I spoke about this on our recent podcast:

Amy Klobuchar is the frontrunner.

I tend to think this is still true but the odds of her getting the job have slipped from about 99 percent on Super Tuesday to about 40 percent now. Now that the United States is basically losing as many lives to COVID-19 every day as it did to terrorists on 9/11, the public (and Biden’s) criteria for VP selection is shifting too. Ideally, Biden would be able to find a person who checked all the identity boxes and who also was the face of competent COVID-19 response. That person should be Andrew Cuomo or Gavin Newsom, but the entire Democratic Party would probably commit cult suicide if Biden went back on his promise to pick a woman.

Anyway, this to me says that Klobuchar doesn’t have a strong a hand as she used to. But IMO I think that Biden is just going to follow the 2018 roadmap to winning this election and not be scared of a 2016 repeat. That means galvanizing college graduates and women and generally just not giving a shit about whether or not Bernie Sanders’ voters follow him. In this regard, Klobuchar was extensively vetted during the Dem Primary and is basically synonymous with motivating the 2018 coalition to come out again. Warren could supply some of the same, but I think she pisses off way more people than Amy Klobuchar, including Joe Biden himself.

Gretchen Whitmer is the rising star.

Yes, I get where you’re coming from. And if you do any research on Whitmer you’ll see that she has serious game. However, at this point it’s unclear whether or not she will look like a coronavirus hero or be the portrait of government overreach with regard to dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. I can’t even imagine how hard Trump and Pence would troll her for her “big government plans” to “ban you from buying seeds at Home Depot” and “driving to see your relatives on Easter.” Whitmer is a big girl who can defend herself ably (and already has) but I am not sure whether or not this will look like a liability in a few months. However, there is also the chance that having crazy white people AR-15s protesting at your office makes you a hero too.

I have own zero shares at all on Whitmer. To me, she is the X-factor. BTW check out this floor speech she gave in Lansing and tell me that she is here to joke around.

Gov. Whitmer is gonna be pounding the ball inside the paint for a while. Get used to seeing her face at the top of the game.

Stacy Abrams is a black woman with a high profile. Yeah, but she has no meaningful experience at a high level of play. Great speaker, clearly competent, but Joe Biden picking the former Democratic Leader in the GA State Senate for Vice President would be like the Lakers picking UGA’s Team Captain to start with LeBron James. I mean, she could get to that level of play, but I am just not seeing it this cycle.

Remember, Biden was one of the most powerful and influential VPs in modern history. I am very hesitant to believe that he would give the job to someone who he doesn’t think could takeover the Presidency with a few minutes warning. That said, I 100-percent think Abrams will receive a vetting and I have been very successful churning shares of her from 8 cents to 12 cents throughout this process. I just don’t think she is fully baked yet as a national political figure. Gotta win statewide first.

Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto. I personally think that CCM is an interesting person, and if you check her voting record in the Senate she is one of the least partisans members on either side. But she has never been vetted on the national stage. To me, that’s a non-starter. The identity components (female, Hispanic) help though.

Tammy Duckworth. This is a political gambling website so we talk about stuff that people in the real media won’t say. Every report about Sen. Duckworth is that she is smart and politically talented. She’s a wounded war vet, for God’s sake. But as I once heard Pratik say, “Presidential campaigns are a visual medium.”

That is my way of saying that even though the Democratic Party has a huge boner for diversity and inclusion, I am not sure that a disabled person who needs a wheelchair and/or prosthetics is who they want sharing the stage with Joe Biden, who is getting absolutely savaged right now for having *allegedly* low-key dementia. Yes, these attacks are below the belt — but they’re working for a reason. I just don’t think the party will want to double down on disability, real or implied.

Tammy Baldwin. The only way that Bryce Dallas Howard gets a leading role in a studio film is if Jessica Chastain passes on it first. The same is true for Tammy Baldwin. She’s only getting the job if Klobuchar and Liz Warren say no.

Val Demmings. Seriously? There is nothing that a 30+ year U.S. Senator, like Joe Biden, respects less than a member of the House of Representatives. If Biden bids low on experience, he’s taking Stacy Abrams before Val Demmings.

Elizabeth Warren. Sen. Warren is the most interesting to me. I think she will get serious consideration but will ultimately fail (I have been churning shares of her from 7 to 11 cents). There are a lot of Dems who are worried that progressives will sit out the election unless they get a red meat VP pick like her.

Warren has been vetted extensively and obviously is smart AF. But it’s hard for me to think that Biden actually likes her that much. I think she is an underdog to Klobuchar in the “pick someone who can repeat the college grads + women 2018” plan; and she doesn’t check the identity boxes that Kamala Harris does for the “diversity is our strength!” plan. The plus side is that Warren can hold her own with Sen. Klobuchar in the “ready for the gig on day one” department. But ultimately, I see her more as a Treasury Secretary. She’s good but she’s not QB1.

Michelle Obama.

The former First Lady’s shares have been pumping like crazy lately but I am a skeptic. I just do not see why Michelle Obama would want to lock herself in the White House for the rest of her adult life (VP + POTUS run) and to me it would just be a terrible sales technique for the Party. Lots of people in the Fake News Media (FNM) are crowing about “Obama nostalgia” being part of Biden’s appeal but that does not mean that anyone other than the faculty at Williams College actually wants to elect Obama again. I have nostalgia for lots of things that I enjoyed but am glad are over, such as Ska Music, the KFC Double Down, and Total Request Live hosted by Carson Daly. People can love something and not want to buy it. That is literally the whole reason why VH1 was invented — to make TV shows about music and consumer products from the past that people want to smile while remembering but not spend their money on.

As you can see, all of your VP predictions are trash.

KEENDAWG.