How Hillary's VP Choice Can Make Her More Than A Post-Script To The Clinton-Bush-Obama Era

-by emorej a Hong Kong

Some wild ideas get more and more logical as you think about them. Although this election cycle has conditioned many (more) of us to expect the worst from Hillary, perhaps it is still possible for her to surprise us (in a good way) with her Vice-Presidential selection.

The tea leaves are depressing, notably the conventional wisdom that Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are too populist and independent-minded to fit well on Hillary's ticket, and that the other (leaked) shortlisted candidates all have even worse flaws, as summarized in this recent Dylan Matthews article. Warren and Brown are unlikely choices, too, because they each would be replaced in the U.S. Senate by a Republican governor, and neither of them seems to want to be selected.

A sliver of good news, that one can infer from this news about “vetting” of shortlisted candidates, is that, with Hillary's inner team talking to people like Warren and Brown (about more than how to beat Bernie), her team’s bubble might have finally been penetrated by realization that:

• the Dem establishment's 40 years of issue-straddling (not to mention bait-&-switch) Presidential election tactics are pretty well played out, and

• it’s risky to base a general election campaign on the negative argument that "Trump is a racist know-nothing," especially after a primary spent devaluing this type of allegation, by levying it against Berners for Progressive resistance to Hillary's coronation.

In other recent news, Condi Rice said she has “no interest” in serving as Trump's Veep running mate. This is where the wild idea comes in:

Hillary selecting Condi Rice as her Veep would have something for everybody.

If each stakeholder considered the following consequences of a Hillary-Condi ticket, then selecting Condi could be Hillary’s most popular campaign move so far:

1. Little need be said about the identity-politics messaging of adding Black female Condi to a ticket with White female Hillary. At a tactical level, this would seem the most reliable way to bait Trump into making more gender-based taunts, thereby angering women voters and endangering down-ticket Republican candidates in swingy districts.

2. Adding to the ticket a second former Secretary of State would further strengthen Hillary’s advantage among voters who are attracted by candidates holding direct experience in the USA's militaristic foreign relations, and could reduce the risk of losing voters due to bad news about terrorism, war or (what remains of) other foreign policy.

3. Condi seems to be a moderate on most issues besides her overly militaristic foreign policy towards the Middle East, and eagerness to project toughness worldwide. Any voters that reject Hillary’s ticket, because of those two immoderate positions, probably rejected Hillary herself long ago. Hillary also might find it liberating to be, for a change, only the second-most militaristic former female Secretary of State in a campaign.

4. Support for the Hillary-Condi ticket could be secured from the Republican wing, more fully joining the Democratic wing, of big donors and donation-dependent office-holders. The Clintons’ friendship with the Bushes would be redoubled, although Hillary’s campaign might be smart enough to avoid further publicity about this ‘royal’ solidarity. Of more lasting significance, the bipartisan character of the Hillary-Condi ticket would amount to a political realignment. This would make Hillary more of a historical figure than she can become by merely continuing a 40 year-old strategy (which she and Bill have gradually taken to counter-productive extremes).

5. The Democratic establishment could move past its pretense of caring about economic inequality, and could double down on its favored identity politics (within lines acceptable to big donors), including the establishment’s beloved allegations that Bernie and his supporters resemble Trump supporters in being racists and woman-haters-- in between acting as impractical purists and Republican-electing Nader-wannabees.

6. Bernie and his supporters, by being effectively kicked out of Hillary’s general election camp, would find it much easier to go all-in on the Green Party ticket (especially if Bernie is permitted to choose a like-minded non-Green figure as his Veep running mate). This would set up the relatively clear test of voter policy preferences, which most Bernie supporters have longed for, and which many Hillary supporters claim to also welcome.

7. If no general election ticket wins a majority of electoral college votes, then I predict that Hillary-Condi would be the most likely (by far) ticket to win a plurality in the subsequent vote by the House of Representatives. If this prediction is correct, then adding Condi to the ticket would actually be the lowest-risk course of action for Hillary.

8. Some Democrats would be dismayed if events caused Condi to replace Hillary at the top of the ticket, or in office. Imagine how much cognitive dissonance would result, in the brains of W-haters, from Condi’s role as one of W’s Iraq invasion architects. But something tells me they’ll find a way to rationalize it.