Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

My sense of Warren is that she has a definite agenda of mostly economic and tax policies she badly wants to make happen and if she could acquire more power to accomplish them by accepting a new position outside the Senate, she do it. However, her ability to influence policy by accepting VP under someone else would be very questionable. I think she'd demand some ironclad assurances to even consider it.

That sounds right.

VP is a shit job

Group got 2 million from Bloomberg in 2018. https://t.co/2M7HLBOlOi

— gatsby (@Grategatsby) February 14, 2020

I really like the idea of a dual role bc the veep spot is good media narrative, treasury plays to her formidable strengths, and because fuck👏those👏norms👏

Ford and Reagan discussed a "co-presidency" in the summer of '80.

I would wager it's unlikely to happen now but I'd love to be wrong xp

I never know whether to post in this thread or the Bernie thread, but Osita Nwanevu has a piece today that engages in some Bernie VP speculation: https://newrepublic.com/article/156576/hardest-decision-bernie-sanders-will-make-year

the sanders thread should be used for memes and japes imho

would charlie baker nom a republican to replace warren if she takes a cabinet position? he's a massachusetts republican, which is pretty far removed from a national republican.

just dropping by to note that KLOMENTUM makes me think of colostrum

VP is a shit job

Ever since Carter, presidents have been experimenting with adding power to the job. One big practical difference between VP and other Cabinet-level positions is that VP is elective and can't be fired, so choosing to vest a lot of power in the VP's office creates a center of power that is harder to control. Bush gave Cheney more power than any previous VP and Cheney used that power badly and recklessly, pushing Bush into Iraq and nearly wrecking his presidency.

Said something like this already but I think a Warren endorsement with the expectation of a high ranking cabinet position would be the most valuable thing for a moderate candidate both in the primary and general, and I'd have to think klob/butti/Biden would offer her whatever she wants just to outbid the rest. If Warren wants her name on the ticket someone will offer her VP.

Bernie meanwhile gains little from her as a VP as she barely expands his base but he might have to offer it just to secure her partnership.

And if you think VP is necessarily a weak nothing job I have a pacemaker to sell you

Xps

But I also don't think she's dropping out any time soon

a reminder that the convention has to approve the veep choice, and unless Sanders has a supermajority of delegates i'm not sure they'd be eager to endorse a ticket of two over-70 New England 'radicals'

VP is worse than senator

But I also don't think she's dropping out any time soon

Oh, I think she definitely could.

No sooner than the evening of Super Tuesday.

Someone who's on her mailing list, how frantic are the fundraising email subject headings lately

lol VP is absolutely a shit job and the exception of Cheney does not contravene this fact. Cheney's expansion of the role was a) due to Dubya ceding him that power (which he did for a number of complex reasons, not the least of which was unique to Dubya's own peculiar psychology) and b) a unique combination of circumstances within the White House that enabled him to exploit it. On paper the VP has no power and no sphere of influence - any power it does accumulate is at the behest of other more powerful institutions (the Presidency, the Senate, etc.)

xps

I do not envisage President Sanders or even President Biden functioning this way. Neither would cede power.

I think of Poppy Bush and Ronald Reagan. The latter's cognitive decline was such that advisers wondered whether they couldn't invoke the 25th Amendment, but Bush wouldn't go along, nor could he because he wasn't what Cheney would become twenty years later; Reagan had never ceded him this power in '81.

VP is less powerful than Senate and yet plenty of senators have gladly shot for VP. No reason to assume she wouldn't take the role regardless of what you imagine her priorities to be.

but yeah if the Mass gov is just going to appoint some “moderate” republican fuckboi then staying in he senate would be preferable

Someone who's on her mailing list, how frantic are the fundraising email subject headings lately

A lot more chilled-out, actually. From this week:

- A message from Elizabeth
- I want to share a short story about the other night
- Can Elizabeth count on you to be one of the 180 grassroots donors we need from [STATE]?
- In just 9 days...

what’s ol Scotty Brown up to these days

And of course as soon as I hit post, this one pops up:

- Elizabeth needs your help today to give our campaign the resources to go up on the air, get our message out, and remain competitive through Super Tuesday

Senators taking the VP spot have traditionally been gambling that the President is going to die in office, and/or see it as a stepping-stone to the Presidency (despite the fact that historically that scenario has very, very rarely played out)

xps

"have traditionally been gambling that the President is going to die in office"

well this is why LBJ arranged the Kennedy hit himself

heh

LBJ's actual gamble was more unique - he thought he could run the Senate from the VP chair. Didn't pan out that way.

"Just git me elected and ah'll I'll give ya yer damn war."

Idk what the last case of a senator taking the spot because of expected death in office would be. Truman?

The speculation about whether the governor would appoint a republican to take her place, wouldn't that have been the same if she had been elected president? And if so, wouldn't we have heard a lot about it by now?

I think Truman was considered healthy?

I mean Truman as VP for FDR

No reason to assume she wouldn't take the role

Perhaps, but there are many reasons to think she wouldn't be a good match with any of the candidates now running ahead of her, either in terms of practical politics or philosophical mismatch or personality clash. I suspect we amateurs like to speculate her into a VP slot for the same sorts of reasons many voters think of her as their second or third choice, to be switched to if their first choice becomes unavailable. That feels like what a VP should be like, a second choice to fill the office if the president leaves it. Except it never operates that way in real life.

I got that, Mr X, I was joking :)

wouldn't that have been the same if she had been elected president?

Warren as POTUS w some birdbrained republican senator from Mass >>>> Warren as VP w same

what’s ol Scotty Brown up to these days

currently ambassador to New Zealand* and Samoa**, plans to become a law school dean in Dec 2020

* sorry, New Zealand
** sorry, Samoa

RIP he was our best president

btw this article is lol: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2014/11/05/scott-brown-jeanne-shaheen-new-hampshire-senate-race-eileen-mcnamara

his vp was going to be an actual pickup truck iirc

I'd love for Warren to run with Bernie if only because I think it would consolidate the electorate and dissolve this bad blood that's been kicked up but I kind of doubt it will happen also. The one way I could think it might happen would be if Bernie told her he'd only serve one term and cede the presumptive nominee/incumbent place to her in four years.

that would leak and be politically damaging

bernie can't just step down and appoint warren to be the next nom, there would still be a primary

Out of curiosity, has it ever happened that a vice president has sought a 'third term' so to speak, and lost the nomination? In either party.

George Clinton was vice president for Jefferson and Madisdon, but that's the only fun fact I can think of.

John Calhoun was VP under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

A lot more chilled-out, actually. From this week:

- A message from Elizabeth
- I want to share a short story about the other night
- Can Elizabeth count on you to be one of the 180 grassroots donors we need from (STATE)?
- In just 9 days...

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, February 14, 2020 5:33 PM (two hours ago)

i read this quickly and for a split-second thought that elizabeth warren was ending her fundraising emails by saying "but also, fuck you"