PLAYING ODDSMAKERS: HANDICAPPING THE VEEP STAKES

Earlier we analyzed the Democratic vice-presidential selection process, focusing on criteria, not candidates. We said we’d comment on candidates later. Now with Joe Biden’s announcement just weeks away, we turn to the reported prospects.

Each of us grew up in Arkansas near Oaklawn Park, a thoroughbred race track in Hot Springs. We all spent afternoons there

watching the horses run and placing bets. One of us (Rob) religiously follows the Triple Crown races each year. We, therefore, know about the concept of “odds” – the likelihood an event will take place as opposed to the likelihood it won’t. So, now we lay odds on the reported field.

One Caveat

Much of the reporting about the veep stakes focuses on which prospect Biden reportedly has under consideration could help him win.

The likely answer is “nobody.” In their book, Do Running Mates Matter?, political scientists Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko conclude, “voters are very unlikely to choose a presidential ticket simply because they like or dislike the second-in-command.” A vice presidential pick voters doubt may make the electorate question the presidential candidate’s judgment (or vice versa), but the running mate “rarely” draws voters from that person’s demographic group or home state.

We suspect Biden knows this and will concentrate on two other things we emphasized – (1) compatibility with him and (2) competence. How does he get along with the person? Is she ready to be president?

Biden has said he’s picking a woman. Presidential nominees have twice tried female

running mates without success. Geraldine Ferraro went down with Walter Mondale in the 1984 Reagan landslide. Her husband’s real estate ventures proved a distraction from which the campaign never recovered. John McCain picked the woefully unprepared Sarah Palin in

2008, a mistake from which he never recovered. The Ferraro and Palin failures don’t doom the 2020 Democratic ticket. This is a different time and it’s not likely Biden will pick a Ferraro and certainly not a Palin.

Off to the Races

Keeping in mind (1) professors Devine and Kopko argue the usual political calculations don’t matter and (2) their analysis may not apply to vice presidential nominees of color because no presidential nominee has ever picked one, we project the odds as:  

·  Even Money – Kamala Harris. The

California senator checks boxes – twice elected to statewide office, ran for president putting her on the big stage, service on high profile senate committees. She can manage or overcome flaws like her prosecutorial record and a snarky communication style.

4-to-1 –Val Demings. A two-term Florida congresswoman and a star House

impeachment manager, she’s a hot prospect. A lot rides on how Biden views her experience as Orlando’s police chief. Is a law enforcement background a non-starter or is her knowledge of policing invaluable?

5-to-1 – Tammy Duckworth. Op-ed writers have pleaded the Illinois senator's case,

pointing out how her war hero record and dedication to service so starkly contrast President Donald Trump’s selfishness. For however much it counts, she’s Asian-American. Her doctoral degree, military experience, eight years in Congress, and service as Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs win her the resume race.

· 5-to-1 – Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts senator’s prospects rest on the idea she could mobilize the progressive

wing of the Democratic Party. If Devine and Kopko are right and that won’t happen, in today’s climate, the reasons for Biden, a 77- year- old white man, picking a 71-year-old white woman, go away.

· 6-to-1 – Keshia Lance Bottoms. Many would give the Atlanta mayor longer odds, but her

name remains high in the reporting. Somebody in Biden world likes her or has an ulterior motive for keeping her candidacy alive. Of the contenders, she’s worked hardest and longest on Biden’s campaign.

· 7-to-1 – Michelle Lujan Grisham. The good news -- she’s Hispanic, a constituency Biden

could do better with, and she’s a governor, historically good training for vice presidential nominees. The bad news -- hardly anyone outside her home state of New Mexico knows about her.

· 8-to-1 – Susan Rice. If Duckworth wins the paper resume race, Rice takes the ready-to- be-president contest. The former United

Nations Ambassador and national security adviser has been flawless in television interviews on Trump’s mishandling of the Russia bounty scandal. She has major and minor flaws Biden may not get past. She’s never held elective office. Nominating her would mean re-litigating the 2012 attack on U.S. interests by Islamic militants in Benghazi, Libya. There are family questions: Would black or white voters hold her interracial marriage against her (yes, Harris is in the same boat)? Would Democratic voters hold her son’s involvement with college Republicans at Stanford against her?

· 12-to-1 - Gretchen Whitmer, Karen Bass, Stacey Abrams, Tammy Baldwin. The odds on all have lengthened for different reasons.

Whitmer (Michigan governor) and Baldwin (Wisconsin senator) may have been on the list in the first place because of where  they’re from. Polls say Biden’s doing fine in those states on his own. Bass, a California congresswoman, just went on the list, apparently at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s urging. Biden’s team may have felt obligated to look her over. If Biden wants a black woman from California, Harris seems a more likely choice. Perhaps Governor Gavin Newson might appoint Bass to Harris’s senate seat. Abrams hasn’t been shy about letting everyone know she wants the job. Her prospects seem to have dimmed, perhaps because of that or because Biden’s people can’t get beyond the fact she’s never won an election for anything other than a Georgia state house seat. Maybe attorney general represents her best bet for a spot in a Biden administration.

Handicapping is a tough business, an inexact science. We understand someone not on this list might emerge.  Right now, the odds AGAINST that seem pretty good.  

            

LET THE DEBATE BEGIN: HOW MUCH ‘‘SOCIALISM’’ IN AMERICA?

Some conservatives have complained

about the measures Congress enacted aimed at helping Americans get through the coronavirus dislocation. They label the measures “socialist,” “un-American”,

and at odds with capitalism.  They say

we must get business as usual going or risk having these adjustments become permanent.

The country faces questions about the

appropriate level of government involvement in the economy and other aspects of life. Cries of “socialism” are not new when the government tries helping non-corporate middle America and the poor.

The 1936 Republican presidential nominee, Kansas Governor Alf Landon, attacked Social  Security as “socialism” (Franklin Roosevelt won the Electoral College, 523-8).

New York Governor Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, wrote that year, “The cry of socialism has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put a damper on progressive legislation. Is this cry of socialism anything new?... I have heard it raised by reactionary elements and the Republican Party … for over a quarter-century.”   

Many Americans who never thought

they’d seek or accept government assistance found themselves doing just that under the unprecedented circumstances the pandemic wrought. The pandemic exposed flaws in our healthcare and food supply systems. What happens when the

pandemic ends? Is the kind of government assistance provided in connection with the pandemic an outlier or are significant policy changes on the horizon?

Will the nation remedy these weaknesses in our health care system

with new measures addressing some of the systemic shortcomings that made the coronavirus situation worse? Or, will the “socialism” objections prevail and keep the status quo in place?

Harry Truman’s 1945 health care

proposal was defeated in large measure by the American Medical Association’s labeling of the legislation as “socialized medicine.”  Things have changed. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed over 70 percent of respondents favoring universal health care.

                     

That Old Definitional Issue

When opponents leveled charges that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs

were “socialism,” he said in his 1936 State of the Union Address that the proper role of government was “the adjustment of burdens, the help of the needy, and the protection of the people’s property.”

This year, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presented safety net programs aimed at assuring more Americans better access to health care,

child care, and other services. They proposed Medicare-for-All, a federal guarantee of health insurance mandated for everyone that would replace private health insurance. Other candidates, including presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, also proposed expanded health insurance plans, though not Medicare-for-All.

In light of the virus experience, must we adopt measures that seem like “socialism?” The pandemic exposed three particular shortcomings in the health care system. First, many Americans don’t have insurance

coverage, meaning they couldn’t get adequate treatment if infected. Second, the lack of health care puts some groups at greater risk. Louisiana, for example, became an

early coronavirus “hot spot” because so many of its low-income citizens, most of the people of color, had limited access to health care before the virus hit. They suffered from medical conditions – hypertension, diabetes, obesity - that made death more likely upon contracting the virus. Finally,

health care workers faced massive shortages of equipment and supplies.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th president, responding to charges he was a capitalism obstructionist and opponent of individualism, wrote, “Ruin faces us ... if we permit ourselves to be misled into refusing to exert the common power of the community where only collectively action can do what individualism has left undone or can remedy the wrongs done by an unrestricted and ill-regulated individualism.”

What Will Americans Accept? What do they Want?

Post pandemic life in America probably will look different than life before March

2020.  Until we get a coronavirus vaccine, limits on large gatherings and close personal contact will likely remain necessary. Many won’t like that (sports fans?), but they’ll probably accept it in exchange for re-starting the economy. But what about political changes?  How much government will Americans accept or desire?

Democrats flipped the House of Representatives in 2018, relying on health care as a way of attracting suburban women and people of color. The pandemic assures the push for improved health coverage will play a central role in the 2020 campaign and in the next session of Congress. Once the emergency ends, will Republican resistance to expanded health insurance fade? We don’t know.

                   

Many Democrats will seek a larger

federal investment in the health care system. That means lots of money for assembling and maintaining government stockpiles of medical equipment. Will anybody suggest rolling back the Trump tax cuts for financing such investment? Is doing such a thing “socialism?” 

                                        

What about unemployment insurance?  That’s mostly funded by taxes on employers. In light of the record number of unemployment claims, will

political and business leaders agree on a different way of funding that system? Would using general revenue and assessing higher taxes for that purpose make sense? Debating the issue seems reasonable now.

The Most Vulnerable

Many of these questions center on what America does about issues faced for the first time by middle-class people. How much “socialism” will they accept or want? That’s a political question on

which the spotlight will fall in the months ahead. Another issue, however, lurks beneath the surface. America has a population for whom the issues raised by the pandemic were not new. They live with them every day and have for a long time.

For this group, health insurance often doesn’t exist. Visits to doctors don’t happen except in the direst emergencies. Trips to food banks occur regularly, something middle-class people recently experienced for the first time. These most at-risk Americans need a voice in the political debate about “socialism.” Over the next few months, in this space, we intend to give it to them.