Vice President Kamala Harris is close to announcing who she will choose as her running mate, and The Advocate members have been taking their time to speculate on who that candidate might be. Harris reportedly spent the weekend interviewing potential running mates, and her campaign announced that she and her running mate will begin campaigning on Tuesday. So who do you think will be the running mate? Read on to find out.
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John Casey: First, I’ll let my readers in on a secret by saying publicly what we’ve been saying privately for the past few weeks… What a wild and crazy news cycle July has been, we’ve barely been able to keep up!
Well, I guess that’s nothing new to anyone, so I’m going to surprise you by using my crystal ball, tarot cards and astrological readings to predict who Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris will pick as her running mate.
Harris has been Vice President for the past four years, so she knows the job well and is the perfect judge of who should succeed her if she wins the presidency. What I can predict with 100% certainty is that it won’t be someone like J.D. Vance. How awful! If you haven’t read why he’s the worst person since Sarah Palin yet, I wrote a bit about that in a recent column.
The Democratic Party is fortunate to have a deep bench of great talent on its roster that will make Harris’ decision difficult — and in a good way. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (who has recused herself but is on the roster, as is North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are all accomplished and laudable.
With all these talented politicians and leaders, who would all be great partners for Harris, it’s impossible to really predict who will be selected.
However, I will vote for Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania for one reason only: I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and I know it’s always right to vote for a Pennsylvanian. Personal feelings aside, Shapiro is the smartest candidate. He’s closer to Harris than the other candidates. He’s very popular in Pennsylvania. He’s done a lot for the state, which will help Harris win the state and give a boost to the lesser candidates.
As an aside, the last time a presidential or vice presidential candidate ran in Pennsylvania was the 15th president, James Buchanan. It seems time for Pennsylvania to get the recognition it deserves.
Shapiro, like Harris, is a former state attorney general, so he could sue Trump and Vance, and therefore be able to argue with the incoherent Vance. As an aside, he’s handsome, much more handsome than Vance, which will infuriate Trump.
After all, he married his high school sweetheart and was blessed with four kids, so he’s definitely not a child-free cat-loving woman.
Christopher Wiggins: A friend on Facebook just called me the “political prophet” of the group, so take that with a grain of salt. If Harris were to pick Buttigieg as her running mate, it would of course be an extraordinary step forward for the country and LGBTQ+ representation, but I think it’s unlikely to be the dream candidate selection that many in the LGBTQ+ community are trying to achieve. Given that the only options right now are Trumpism and dictatorship or the opposite, regardless of who the Democratic nominee is, you can make the argument “why not?”. There are probably more people who would vote to save the United States from dictatorship than those who wouldn’t vote if a gay man was on the nomination. I completely understand the sentiment of those who say “then why not?” Buttigieg is one of the best communicators in politics. He has what it takes to be at the highest level of the U.S. government. If he isn’t nominated, I think he would be an exceptional Secretary of State. It would give him more time to garner support across America so that he can one day become president.
Just as Buttigieg is defunding Vance, who served in the military himself, I think Kelly has a lot of respect for service to the country, with his long career as a Navy fighter pilot and later as an astronaut. His wife, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head in an assassination attempt, so he has credibility on the gun debate. He’s obviously good under pressure, which is the most important thing in a vice president.
But I also think Shapiro will win, and I think some clues about his schedule and Harris’ campaign schedule point in that direction. My understanding is that Shapiro canceled some fundraisers he had scheduled for this weekend in the Hamptons. according toThe New York Times. Also, on Tuesday, there will be a big campaign rally in Pennsylvania to introduce Harris as the running mate to a large audience. Harris is a talented former attorney general who has proven she can get the votes of Pennsylvanians and is a great communicator. Have you seen his social media presence?
JC: Now, my esteemed colleague Christopher has endorsed the choice of Shapiro, which gives me hope. Now let’s see if anyone else has a different opinion.
Ryan Adamcheski: Whoever Harris picks as her VP, it will be a white man. I’m not the first to say this, and I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t see how voters would pick two women or two people of color (Shapiro, who is Jewish like Harris’ husband, was ruled out for this reason, and Buttigieg for his sexual orientation). I think Democrats will look for a white man (probably older and more moderate) to appease less progressive voters, as Obama did when he chose Biden as his VP. That leaves Cooper and Beshear, who they themselves removed from the running.
Now, think of it this way: if that prediction came true, that person would actually be a “DEI hire.” Conservatives are saying Harris was “selected for race and gender,” but a white male VP candidate would literally be selected for race and gender. This is not what DEI actually looks like, by the way. I expect Trump to complain again after the announcement that Democrats are taking “black jobs.”
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