Harris's VP short list

 So, 4 candidates are emerging as being on Harris's VP short list. I kinda discussed these guys before but I wanted to name them. 

Josh Shapiro (PA)

Mark Kelly (AZ)

Andy Beshear (KY)

Roy Cooper (NC)

And...i dont like any of these guys. Think of it, if Harris is the successor to Biden, these guys will be Harris's successor. And all 4 of them are sucky centrist dems as far as I'm concerned. She's clearly going the whole "I need a moderate white male to balance the ticket" route. And I kinda hate it. keep in mind, even if I criticized Harris being nominated in 2020 as a "DEI hire", i didn't do it out of racism, but out of the fact that she literally was chosen for such reasons.

This ALSO feels like the same kind of thing but in reverse.

I just want the best person for the job, and clearly want the Harris administration to be as progressive as humanly possible. I really DONT want some boring centrist white guy here. I don't like choosing people who fit that mold even if it favors my demographic. I just want the best people for the job.

To be fair, if I DID have to pick, I'd go with Shapiro as a PA guy myself, although Shapiro has been a decent governor. Boring and centrist is fine for that kind of job. He's actually been lower profile than Tom Wolf was. In a sense I kinda wish we would keep Shapiro here for stability's sake, as i dont know who we'll get if Shapiro is chosen. I do think Shapiro would give us the best shot at winning the election though.

Second choice, Mark Kelly.

I dont know enough about Roy Cooper but being from NC I can imagine he's moderate AF. 

And 4th, Andy Beshear, I looked into him. He's one of those weirdo "why can't we all get along" style enlightened centrists. I DEFINITELY don't want him. 

As far as who gives us the best chance to win, I'd also say Shapiro. 

I mean, here's the states we really need. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. The south is riskier and southern states like NC and AZ give less electoral votes than PA anyway, not to mention that the voter margins Biden and now Harris have there make them significantly harder to flip. We get Shapiro and lock down PA, and then have WI and MI also shift that way as those 3 states seem to follow similar electoral trends, and it's GG. At that point unless we start losing blue states like VA like Biden was starting to do, or we somehow lose NE2 causing us to get 269, we got it locked down.

As said, I guess we can take one for the team and give Harris our governor. I dont dislike him, I would just rather him be our governor for the next 6 years, and not leave the seat open for a republican to possibly take. And I really dont like the idea of him taking over after Harris. Because he does kinda strike me as from the centrist wing of the party. And I don't really like centrists. They're okay for governor positions, because governors dont have abilities to enact massive economic agendas like I'd like. And if we havent noticed, Trump gets his strength from populism. And the reason harris is taking off like she is is the democrats finally have energy and enthusiasm. Like boring centrists dont win elections consistently. Dems dont understand that. You sit there in office doing nothing and being like "BuT wE cAnT dO tHaT" and watch your numbers get destroyed. it was a huge reason Biden's approval tanked. Yes, age was part of it too but let's not act like age was the entire problem. The left had no enthusiasm and the right had all of it. Now it's shifting. SO SOMETHING WITH IT. RUN WITH IT. Be the most progressive president since Johnson, if not FDR. And don't hand it off to some worthless centrist who will feel as out of place as Clinton was in 2016. 

Seriously, we had Obama, the hope and change guy. Harris kind of is rocking that Obama energy right now. Then in 2016 we get our 2008 sloppy seconds that no one wanted in the first place, and the environment was in the direction of MORE PROGRESSIVE. As such, running a "new democrat" type in 2032 is gonna look awfully awkward if Harris is basically the next "Obama" type president. 

So that said, I dont like ANY of these choices. But I think Shapiro is the one who would be best of the 4. Lock down PA, maximize your chances of winning the election. 

And yeah, looking into Roy Cooper I put him ahead of Beshear on age alone. He's 67, in 2032 he'll be 75. And will we really want another old centrist white guy? It would open up the party long term to choose him. Still, I'm not sure he's the strategic choice to win the election as a whole.

Either way, I don't particularly like ANY of these guys on the ticket.