Is a Veep Choice Immaterial?

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Clarissa

July 3, 2016

I don’t understand how anybody can argue, like Frank Bruni does in NY TIMES, that a choice of the running mate in a presidential election is immaterial. Has he forgotten 2008 and McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin? McCain was on the verge of winning the election and the right veep could have put him over the top. Instead, we all know what happened and how he flashed his chance to win down the toilet.

Or take the 2012 election. Obama was bombing in the debates until Biden went out of his way to charm everybody in his debate and gave Obama a chance to find his bearings and start delivering.

The prospective veep might not always help in the literal way of delivering the state they are from but there is a myriad other ways to help or hurt a candidacy.

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20 responses to “Is a Veep Choice Immaterial?”

Alex

July 3, 2016

Two things:

1) As long as both candidates make reasonably smart veep choices they cancel out and in that sense the veep winds up not mattering. In 2008 McCain gambled on a very unconventional choice and his reputation suffered. But even then, Palin is not why he lost. He lost because he was the Republican candidate, the Republicans had been in power for eight disastrous years, and the economy was melting down. Even a safe veep choice would not have been enough.

2) Biden is not what mattered in the 2012 debates. The media wanted a narrative of up and down fortunes and close debates so they shaped it as such

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 3, 2016
  
  Biden and Palin might not have mattered to you but they did to many other people.
  
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Stringer Bell

July 3, 2016

Bruni is a complete idiot.

But, in 2008 the timing of the recession and McCain’s response to it pretty much sealed the deal for Obama. And in 2012, Obama lost the first debate handily but wiped the floor with Romney in the other two. He finished very strong.

I think any VP’s fine as long as they’re not too polarizing (McCain failed even at that). Just pick someone safe that doesn’t piss off too many people. For the longest time the conventional wisdom was that you need to pick a VP from a swing state. But turns out the VP can’t even deliver that.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 3, 2016
  
  Back in 2000, the American people needed something really scary to get over the reluctance if electing a black guy. Sarah Palin was very scary. Many people went out to vote specifically because they were scared of Palin.
  
  This is a very racist country, and I don’t believe voters would swallow their racism for something smaller than sheer terror. Just like Hillary wouldn’t stand a chance if people weren’t scared of Trump.
  
  It’s ok, though, if people need to be kicked towards progress by fear, that’s fine.
  
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  1. matt
    
    July 3, 2016
    
    Of the g-20 how many countries are less racist than us? maybe 1.. canada? what other would you put as less racist..curious since you state “very racist”? we are easily most diverse of the g-20 and handle the cultural and socioeconomic angles better than most, while being the world’s super power, inspiration for economic and technological growth.
    
    Expected deeper analysis from you on this. Curious if you think any other country in g-20 (aka major countries – population and economics wise) is better at it. Grading on a curve sure, but itsimportant to acknowlege broader point.
    
    And canada is basically the US’s young half-brother that grifts off our econoimc and military superiority that provides them a safe space
    
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    1. Shakti
      
      July 3, 2016
      
      Dude, all of your statements can be true without actually contradicting anything Clarissa has said. Also, Clarissa hasn’t said a thing about Canada.
      
      However, I would mention that Obama has never carried a majority of white people. If it were up to solely white people as a group, Obama would’ve never been president.
      
      Please stop mea culpa-ing about how other countries are more racist than the US when we have a goddamn presumptive nominee of the Republican party violating fucking Godwin’s Rule at every chance and who has continuously shrieked birther nonsense for years.
      
      If that offends you, check your friends, neighbors, acquaintances and neighbors.
      
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      1. matt
        
        July 4, 2016
        
        That’s a little like shitting on democracy as the worst of all systems, except for being better than the rest.
        
        A degree of real world context and pragmatism matters.
        
        And I think you have godwin’s law exactly wrong. The fact that others always compare trump to the nazi’s mean THEY are losing the argument by bringing it up.. the candidate himself is in no way violating that law.. I know nothing of your comment history or reputation so perhaps I should have totally ignored the point, but I don’t see wher that line of thinking is coming from.
        
        Of course there are still racial elements that need harmonized in this country, but the country has become markedly less racist in every successive generation. More work to do, I will lead that parade! But because perfection ahs not been reached to shit on 320 million people and disparage them is not fair, productive, or intellectually thorough thought. Part of this is problem of ubiquitous, rancorous, partisan medai that distorts the true”norm” in america. Sort of like violence and gun violence (assault down 75% in last 2 decades, murder / gun homicide down 50%) yet polls routinely say “worst violence” / getting worse. Reality there is distorted just like on race issues. Happy fourth!
        
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        Stringer Bell
        
        July 4, 2016
        
        Calm down. Take a breath. State your point clearly. You’re all over the place with that gibberish.
        
        “..but the country has become markedly less racist in every successive generation. More work to do, I will lead that parade! ”
        
        Matty the trump voter will lead that parade, you hear?
        
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  2. cliff arroyo
    
    July 4, 2016
    
    “This is a very racist country, and I don’t believe voters would swallow their racism for something smaller than sheer terror.”
    
    Of course the US is very racist. There’s pretty much no way for a mulit-racial entity that encourages racial identification and pride to not be racist.
    
    Racial diversity + racial awareness = pandemic racism
    
    The idea of racist whites only voting for Obama because they were scared of Sarah Palin is really…. off.
    
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Shakti

July 3, 2016

McCain was on the verge of winning the election and the right veep could have put him over the top. Instead, we all know what happened and how he flashed his chance to win down the toilet.

Who are these people who would have voted for McCain save for Sarah Palin?
I’m sorry, a lot of Republicans were quite enthusiastic about Palin. Besides if you were a McCain fan, McCain’s health is/was quite robust and if you look to his family history, his mother is still alive and 104 years old.

In this election a VP pick is more about getting people to turn out and/or not hurting turn out. It’s not going to be about changing people’s minds. HRC & Trump both have quite passionate supporters and detractors.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 3, 2016
  
  I’m talking about people who wouldn’t have voted at all. Obama was not widely supported by anybody but hardcore Dems.
  
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Dreidel

July 3, 2016

According to historians who study such matters, the choice of VP has almost never made a difference in U.S. Presidential elections. People talk about the VP choices a lot, but ultimately vote for the person at the top of the ticket, or for their political party preference.

George H.W. Bush won in 1988 despite his widely ridiculed VP choice Dan Quayle, who had a much worse VP debate than Paul Ryan.

McCain lost in 2008 for all the reasons Alex stated above. Romney lost in 2012 because he never managed to overcome his “rich person who doesn’t care about you” persona. Palin and Ryan were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 3, 2016
  
  I find the reluctance to admit that Palin had a decisive impact on the 2008 race – something that even McCain himself is not denying – to be strange and disturbing. It wasn’t that long ago, what is this, a collective memory loss?
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    July 3, 2016
    
    There’s nothing at all wrong with my memory — I remember 2008 as well as I do 1958, with Elvis and hula hoops and all that. Of course McCain will accept the suggestion that his personal loss was somebody else’s fault.
    
    Palin didn’t help McCain any. But NOBODY could have won a third Republican administration after two terms of the very unpopular George W. Bush, plus the worst economic crash in decades.
    
    Since World War II, a party has held three consecutive terms exactly once, when Bush’s father followed Reagan’s two very popular terms, and Michael Dukakis ran a lousy campaign. (The Democrats are probably going to get a third term in November ONLY because the Republicans are idiotic enough to let Trump be their standard bearer. The VPs in the race will be totally irrelevant, unless Hillary is foolish enough to pull a Democratic senator from a Republican state out of the Senate.)
    
    Collective memory is like the collective unconscious — it’s a Jungian fantasy.
    
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cliff arroyo

July 4, 2016

Veep choice by a candidate is largely symbolic and meant to demonstrate the candidate’s decision making ability and their intentions toward the part of the country that’s less like them (especially within their own party). “Balancing the ticket” is an exercise in diplomacy and failure to do so probably indicates a more confrontational management style.

The actual person chosen only matters in a few, infrequent cases:

the candidate is elected and dies in office (Johnson)
the candidate is elected (in which case the VP may be the frontrunner for the party’s nomination – though maybe not anymore since two presidents in a row chose lame duck VPs that were not viable as presidential nominees)

Palin was only a scary choice to exteme liberals and those on the coasts. The choice was meant to shore up McCain’s shaky support with the Republican base and it worked, just not enough. I’m fairly sure not that many people refrained from voting for him because of her (those most horrified her would never have voted for him anyway).

What really sunk McCain were his unfortunate words about the economy not long before the bottom fell out.

Romney also had problems with the base, mostly because of his position whoring.

The most interesting thing about the Trump candidacy is how little the touchstone culture war issues of the 1980s and 1990s mean anymore.

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1. Stringer Bell
  
  July 4, 2016
  
  “Palin was only a scary choice to exteme liberals and those on the coasts. ”
  
  I think you have this exactly backwards. Palin was an acceptable choice only to extreme right-wingers, you know, the kind of people who support Trump today.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    July 5, 2016
    
    “Palin was an acceptable choice only to extreme right-wingers”
    
    You’re positing only two reactions. Scary and enthusiastic.
    
    The reaction seems to have mostly fallen in three camps
    
    scared of Palin – very liberal people and/or coastals
    
    entusiastic about Palin – some extreme rightwingers (aka the repub base and not all of it)
    
    In the middle there was a large group, probably the majority that thought she was not a great choice but overall probably no worse than Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew.
    
    McCain was never the cause of great enthusiasm among any sizeable group of voters and he probably would have lost even if his VP choice was better.
    
    I’m more or less convinced that the leaders of the party wanted to lose in 2008 because they didn’t want to be in office when the full effects of two terms of W started coming to fruition.
    
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Stringer Bell

July 4, 2016

I think any fear or anxiety one has due to the vp candidate gets immediately transfered over to the presidential candidate. I always thought of Palin as a clown, but was terrified at the thought of a president who picked someone like her having his finger on the nuclear button, so to speak.

McCain was the scary person in 2008, not palin.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 4, 2016
  
  Palin was a precursor to Trump. She was the first taste of what was to come. And as we are now seeing, it’s plenty scary.
  
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Dreidel

July 4, 2016

Since the VP candidates don’t matter anyway, I hope that Trump picks freshman Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. She’ll be at least as entertaining as Palin was.

In one of her campaign ads, Joni bragged about she grew up on an Iowa farm castrating hogs, so when she got to Washington, she’d already know how to cut the bacon.

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