A Maybe Pick for Vice President by Kamala?
Potential Dem VP Pick Comes After JD Vance
by Kathryn Rubino
Above the Law
Well, Joe Biden is out of the 2024 race for president. Dems have seemingly coalesced around Kamala Harris for the top of the ticket, leaving the political speculation to focus on who will be the Democratic Vice President candidate.
There are plenty of qualified options out there, each bringing their own pluses and minuses to the equation. One tantalizing option is Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. Beshear stacks up well against the Republican VP choice, JD Vance, and he’s already fielding questions from mainstream media about that potential. It’d be interesting for lawyerly-types as it’d be a T14 law school matchup, pitting Beshar’s UVA Law versus Vance’s Yale.
But he also neutralizes Vance’s Appalachian appeal. Vance got famous exploiting his family in Hillbilly Elegy, and likes to pretend that makes him a man of the people. Yes, he thinks you can fix the opioid crisis by leaning into Big Pharma, (which very much feels like the wrong takeaway that anyone who truly cared about the devastation prescription narcotics have had on the region — and the nation), but that background is supposed to be part of what he brings to the GOP ticket.
But Kentucky’s native son knows better. His recent appearance on MSNBC gave a preview of the snark that he could expect from a VP debate between Beshear and Vance. Beshear . . .
“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here. The nerve that he has to call the people of Kentucky, of eastern Kentucky ‘lazy.’ Listen, these are the hard-working coal miners that powered the Industrial Revolution, that created the strongest middle class that the world has ever seen, that powered us through two world wars. We should be thanking them, not calling them lazy. So today was an opportunity to both support the vice president, but also to stand up for my people. Nobody calls us names, especially those that have worked hard for the betterment of this country.”
And the Harris campaign was impressed.
If Andy Beshear is picked and the ticket wins, the next Governor of Kentucky would be Jacqueline Coleman, a former college basketball player.
Jacqueline Coleman – Wikipedia
Vance appears to be, from his own rhetoric, an unprinicpled and really nasty person.
it is devoutly to be hoped the American people can recognize this and reject it. If it were not already apparent that Trump himself is unprincipled and nasty, his selection of Vance would be reason enough to vote, urgently, against him.
I hope Harris puts together an economic package very soon. We all know she is pro choice, great, let’s move on. She should be talking very seriously with Elizabeth Warren at this point.
1. Raise the minimum wage
2. A tiered estate tax, such as Clinton proposed in 2016.
Hillary Clinton wants a top estate tax rate of 65 percent — the highest since 1982 – Vox
3. Adding a public option to Obamacare.
4. Very specific details on her tax program as the Trump tax cuts expire. The Democrats were caught totally flatfooted in the summer of 2012 when the Bush tax cuts were slated to expire in early 2013. They wasted a huge opportunity when a few conservative Dems folded.
5. Much more discussion about an industrial policy that Biden started with the Chip Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. How exactly does the US plan to respond to the Chinese domination of solar panels, EV’s and now legacy chips (5 to 30nm).
6. How do we build out and keep manufacturing jobs in the US?
7. How will the Dems strengthen the union movement? Obama had a super majority in the Senate in 2009 plus the House and they never passed the card check bill. The Dems wasted months with Max Baucus searching for Republican buy in on Obamacare and neglected immigration, union boosts etc.
@Jim,
A great, if ambitious agenda. It will certainly differentiate her from Trump/Vance, who don’t do policy, only grievance.