Here’s Ezra Klein this morning on Indiana Senator Evan Byah as a potential running mate for Barack Obama.
Eve Fairbanks points out that on just about every metric that matters, Kathleen Sebelius is a far more impressive governor and VP pick than Tim Kaine. And two weeks ago, I’d have probably said that would be enough. But my hunch now is that it’ll be Evan Bayh, if for no other reason than Evan Bayh is the single whitest man in America, and I have a feeling that the Obama campaign wants America’s Whitest Man in some pictures these days. Sebelius was always something of a gamble, a doubling-down on the sort of politics that Obama was pursuing. But as the Obama campaign has lost its message a bit and watched the new politics get kicked in the teeth a couple times by the old politics, it’s becoming less likely that they’ll make a particularly innovative veep choice.
It’s hard to see what Evan Bayh has going for him other being a white male conservative. He’s certainly the qualified by the usual metrics of intelligence, experience, but so do all the other people he’s appears to be passing and more importantly it’s hard to believe any of those things weigh as heavily the conservatism does for the media talking heads, which made him a national figure in the first place.
Another thing that’s hard to see is why anyone makes the cut in the first place. What’s wrong with Bill Richardson? What’s wrong with Joe Biden? I could speculate, but nothing I could say about either would be something that was big enough to get them removed from consideration in the first place.
For Bill Richardson, my current preference among the finalists, they’re are rumors about sexual harassment. But the reporting I’ve heard suggests he’s being vetted. It’s really hard to know why something wouldn’t keep you out of the final round, but would keep you out of the actual pick.
Take Kathleen Sebelius for instance. The knock on her is that picking her would somehow insult Hillary Clinton. I think that’s absurd, and I doubt it’s something the Obama campaign factors too heavily. But it’s impossible to tell.
My more theory is that the Obama ticket will be one of the only major party tickets in history not to have two white males, so it would they’ll think it’ll be pushing it not to have even one white male. Picking Evan Bayh would certainly be better then Joe Lieberman.
Unless Barack Obama can convince me that he personally believes in Bayh, I’ll have to assume that Barack Obama believes that what his campaign needs is less Barack Obama and more white conservatism.
Let him pick Bayh before we start criticizing him for it (and believe me, I will in spades). All we have is rumors at the moment. For one, I don’t think Barack’s that spineless as to pick a blatant appeasement running mate…..but then again Obama is a Democrat so spinelessness is a central facet of “electability”.
I wouldn’t fault him for “electability” if that means picking up Indiana. If it means “whitest man America” electability then I start worry that it represents a generalized spinelessness that is fundamentally counter productive.
As for this whole, “let’s wait for him to something wrong before criticize him” notion I think that would seriously undermine my position as a crazed, irresponsible, venom spewing blogger.
Fair enough. Ranting is what we do. But I still don’t believe the reports that he’ll pick Bayh. See, problem is while Bayh might help flip Indiana, chances are that wouldn’t make the difference in the election. If O wins Indiana, he most likely also wins Ohio and the White House along with it.
However, if Bayh is elected as VP, he opens up a Senate seat in a red-leaning state with a Republican governor, which virtually guarantees that we lose that seat to the GOP. That’s a huge price to pay when there are other solid Veep choices out there that would not cost Dems a crucial senate seat. Given the way Obama has expressed interest in helping downticket and state races, such a move would be highly counterintuitive.