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.  

            

JUNETEENTH AND JULY 4: AMERICA’S INDEPENDENCE AS A NATION – AFRICAN AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE AS A PEOPLE

The United States just celebrated its 244^th birthday. It did so amidst calls that the country establish a federal holiday that would fall on June 19 or Juneteenth. Such a holiday would

mark a major milestone in American history and commemorate the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, to take control of the state and inform the formerly enslaved population they had been freed by President

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Adoption of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution followed later in 1865.

Though every state except Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota now recognize Juneteenth in some way, it appears many Americans gained their first understanding of Juneteenth this year. Efforts have begun in Congress that would make it a federal holiday. We think that effort worthwhile, especially when juxtaposed with the fact the country celebrates its independence 15 days later. 

Raising Public Awareness

Many Americans never heard of Juneteenth until this year when protests erupted

concerning President Trump’s plan for holding on June 19^th in Tulsa his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic began. Trump bowed to pressure and moved the rally to June 20.

Trump Rally, Tulsa, OK June 20, 2020

Formerly enslaved people began commemorating June 19 as Juneteenth with activities like picnics and public readings of the proclamation. At first, it was a regional holiday, celebrated mostly in Texas. The custom spread across the South. Juneteenth celebrations grew in popularity in the 1970s, but many Americans knew little of the day or its significance until this year and the Trump controversy.

Rob, for example, didn’t study Juneteenth in school. He got sketchy information in his early teens from his grandmother but learned the details only after moving to Texas as an adult in 1981. Henry heard about it from family, but got the whole story, “probably” in a junior high history class. Woodson isn’t sure when he learned of it, but thinks his mother, something of a black history buff, taught him the story in grade school in connection with black history month.          

Why We Think This Is important

The Juneteenth story reminds us that even black people didn’t know slavery was over until more than two years after Lincoln signed

the Emancipation Proclamation, two years during which abuse and mistreatment of African Americans as chattel continued. In fact, arguably, we’re still fighting the Civil War and America should never forget this story, lest

we repeat it. Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson forcefully presents that contention in her new book, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Battles over the Confederate flag and monuments to Confederate officers just highlight the point. 

                    

Having Juneteenth as a recognized federal holiday could help remind us of the history.

Too often we forget our national horrors. Grim reminders of slavery’s dark stain on America’s story reside at the African American History and Culture Museum and at America’s Black Holocaust Museum. The webpage for that museum describes its purpose as “interpret[ing] the African American experience in the United States as an ongoing holocaust from the time of captivity in Africa to the present day.” The museum

chronicles the deaths of 12.5 million African men, women, youth, and children who died as a result of their capture, voyage, and enslavement as part of the Triangular Slave Trade. Africans, fortunate enough to survive the voyage, still endured beatings, maiming, lynching, and rape. If we are not to repeat the grave mistakes of the past, we must

Scars from beatings

understand the scars slavery left and feel the joy that accompanied its legal end. In a March 7, 2015, speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, President Obama warned that “…this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.”

                           

Symbols matter, particularly in a democracy. A healthy debate about whether the nation should recognize the importance – symbolic and real – of emancipation can only contribute to the developing, robust national discussion on racial

Collage of some of the unarmed blacks killed by police

reconciliation. Millions of Americans took to the streets and protested police killings of unarmed black men and women like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Millions of Americans are now engaged in conversations about how we resolve our racial discord. Where declaring a race free fits into the process of forming a true democracy merits being part of that discussion.

And the cost?

Federal holidays cost money. Some industries

take a hit, but holiday shopping fuels others. Foes of the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday for a time made cost the centerpiece of their opposition. Some will oppose making Juneteenth a national holiday based on economics.

The cost issue matters and Congress should evaluate it during the debate. When considering that, legislators must keep in mind what the country stands for.  Adding a

Juneteenth holiday could help heal our land. The protests show Americans of many colors believe race discrimination, particularly in policing, remains a real concern. They have called attention to things

we must address. If adding a holiday celebrating the end of a brutal chapter in our history helps with healing a problem the protesters have identified, perhaps we should pay that cost.

Hopefully, no one will see adding a Juneteenth holiday as competition for the Fourth of July. Celebrating our decision to tear ourselves from the tyranny of a king and our decision to emancipate a race are far from mutually exclusive.