One Kamala Harris must pick a white
Caucasian male from a swing state as her vice president.
Two,
Harris cannot select a female as vice president.
Three, the odds are still against
her, according to the polls, and that Donald Trump is still favored to win the
presidency.
Politicians, pundits, and polls
often are the basis for how journalists think about campaigns and elections. They form the orthodoxy or received wisdom
for a campaign cycle. But received or
conventional wisdom often is incorrect.
Years ago I published
an article which challenged two bits of conventional wisdom in politics.
One was the belief that there was a bump from the location of a national
political convention in a specific state. The second was that the selection of
a vice president from a particular state would enhance the ability or
competitiveness of that state for the party that selected that favorite son or
daughter. I examined the data back to WWII and found that in fact, conventions
provided no bump for the party in that state, or for that candidate.
Additionally, there was no evidence that selection of a vice presidential
candidate from a particular state would enhance the ability to win that state.
Despite the overwhelming empirical
evidence, these two beliefs persist. Thus the reason why the Republicans chose
Wisconsin in 2024 for the location of their convention. Perhaps maybe that is why the Democrats
picked Chicago for their convention because of its proximity to the Wisconsin
media market.
How does all this apply to 2024 and
the three bits of conventional wisdom noted above?
Since Harris became the likely
Democratic Party nominee for president the focus has turned to who her vice
presidential pick will be. Conventional wisdom is suggesting it has to be a
person from a swing state and that it has to be a white Caucasian male. The conventional wisdom is that a popular figure
from that state will enhance the Democrats’ ability to win that state. The idea
of being a white Caucasian male is to balance out the demographics of Kamla
Harris.
While the governors of Pennsylvania,
North Carolina, or Michigan might all be amply qualified to be president, as
well as Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, there's no indication that merely
placing them on the ticket enhances the competitive competitiveness of those
states.
Think about it. According to many
statistics, barely
40% of Americans can name the sitting vice-president. There is overwhelming
political
science research indicating that with one notable exception, vice
presidents have little or no impact on presidential elections, and that people
do not make their voting decisions for president based upon the vice
presidential choice. The one notable exception 2008 when Sarah Palin was John
McCain's vice presidential pick. There
is evidence
that her lack of qualifications, at least according to the American public,
potentially cost McCain one or two percentage points in the polls. But he was
going to lose anyhow. So perhaps it really didn't matter in the end.
If vice presidents do not matter,
the demographics of the vice presidential candidate equally do not matter. This
gets to the second argument that says that Harris cannot pick a female to be
her vice president.
On the one hand, if vice
presidential picks don't matter, then perhaps it doesn't matter if the selection is male or female, pick the best qualified
candidate. But on the other hand in 2024 the 2024 election will decided across
five or six swing states, with the choice being made by 150,000 to 200,000
voters. It is possible that who the vice-presidential candidate is might
matter. And here despite conventional wisdom, it might make a lot of sense for
Harris to pick a female vice presidential candidate.
The single most important voter in
American politics, are college educated suburban women. With that, it is also black
women who are equally important in terms of voters. Democrats must mobilize
both if they are expected to win the presidency. Harris appears to have Africa
African American women and women in general. Why not consider placing a female
on the ticket as vice president to even further mobilize female voters across
the country. Women already are the majority of voters in the United States and
there is gender gap favoring Democrats.
More heavily mobilizing the female vote makes an incredible amount of
sense in many ways for Democrats much in the same way that Trump (and his selection
of JD Vane as his running mate) was not about balancing out a ticket but in
trying to juice up the Trumpistas even
more.
Finally, politicians, pundits, and pollsters
are arguing that as of now, Harris is
perhaps in no better situation to win the presidency than Joe Biden was.
That may be true as of July 22, or
July 24, 2024. But remember, polls are
not predictors. They are snapshots in time and over time political fortunes change. Many of the famous prediction machines such
as Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight often get it wrong. Back in 2016 on election
day, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton about an 80% chance of winning the
election.
Polls inform conventional wisdom.
They may be accurate at a point in time. They do not always capture shifts in
trajectory or shifts in campaigns. Harris's taking over from Biden resets the
American presidential race. It gives her an opportunity to redefine the race to
capture voters who did not like Biden but equally did not like Trump and it
gives her the capacity to energize the base in ways that Biden did not.
To challenge conventional wisdom. I
would argue that Harris is much freer in whom she could select for her vice
presidential pick. It doesn't necessarily have to be from a swing state. It
doesn't necessarily have to be a white Caucasian male. Given the polarization
in America, given the dislike for Donald Trump, and given how apparently she
has already brought excitement among
many to her candidacy, conventional wisdom may be wrong in terms of her
prospects this year. Go ahead Harris—pick
a female VP if you want.
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