(Plus, I think there's a big LGBT/pro-choice grudge specifically against Pence; they of course hate ALL Republicans for those sins, but because Pence was particularly effective at hitting layups on those issues in a beet-red state, they seem to have this irrational fear that a Pence presidency would be magically more hellish than that of any other Republican out there these days)
But that's a _dangerous_ oversimplification. Pence had just enough of a sliver of conscience left to not cause a constitutional crisis in Jan 2021. He may be a spineless partisan coward, but he's not nearly as coldly cynical as McConnell, and not nearly as shameless as DeSantis or McCarthy, let alone Trump.
Trump's unique shamelessness is what made it all work. To a large extent, yes, Trump broke open a floodgate, and created a brand-new permission structure for a lot more Republicans to act shamelessly in their own ways, and of course we're still dealing with the aftermath right now. But without him, the rest of these guys are playing a dead-end game of one-upping each other. They can keep saying crazier and crazier things, but they can't replicate Trump's genuine appeal to his fans. Trump's "genius" (in that idiot-savant way of his) wasn't in being crazy, it was in knowing what his fans generally wanted to hear, and just kind of freestyling it on the spot. The unpredictability came off as genuine, because most of his wacky ideas were takes that the fever-swamps hadn't come up with before, and the rest were at least rephrased more entertainingly than the GOP establishment's warmed-over talking points.
MTG, Vance, Oz, DeSantis, et al, by contrast, are mostly just chasing whichever meme is trending this week in the right-wing media's fever-swamp boiler-rooms. MTG is like the crazy uncle who actually believes all the shit that comes across his FB feed and just repeats it verbatim to anyone who'll listen; Trump, although senile enough to believe his own shit that the right-wing media regurgitates to him, also has the saving grace of being too senile to _remember_ half that shit - to him, it's all just another applause line for his rallies, not a real policy goal. DeSantis is sane enough to be killing it in Florida right now, but he's not enough of a true believer to rally the kooks to himself over anyone else in an open primary field, which leaves him to fight with Cruz, Christie, and maybe Rubio over the core MAGA voters and normies.
Anyways, in the same way that only a nutjob like Nixon could have the domestic political headroom to negotiate an opening with China, Pence is the only MAGA-ite who can challenge Trump from inside MAGA *world* but outside the MAGA *lane*. Once MTG (or whichever other nutjob is the most extreme) has run out of money and dropped out of the race, anyone who wants a True MAGA Believer will be hard-pressed to find much of a difference between Pence and Cruz-Christie-Rubio-DeSantis -- that one probably comes down to Pence and DeSantis, since Pence was always there with Trumpism from the beginning. And the normies desperate for a sane GOP will be comparing "Pence, who upheld the Constitution on Jan 6" against "those other guys who just spent every say since Jan 6 chasing MTG's crazy right-wing memes" - it's just no contest.
So yeah, that was a long-winded way of saying why I also agree that Pence is the least-bad option. I wouldn't be *happy* with him as president, but I wouldn't be looking up EU citizenship requirements.
If Biden is a one term president, I think the nation could do worse than Pence. Don’t get me wrong I believe he would still be the wrong move for our nation and potentially freedom of expression across the world but he is more of the devil we know. To me is closer to the George W. Bush GOP than the trump GOP.
We would hear a lot more about LGBT issues, abortion access and smaller government. Not sure where he would go on immigration, as not sure if he would build the wall or simply do nothing constructive like many republicans and some democrats. The biggest thing I could see with a Pence administration is that he seems less likely to want to blow the whole system up like trump attempted to do. As much as it saddens me to say, politics as they used to be, inefficient and corrupt, now seem like the good ole days.
I’m interested to see how the primaries go on the democratic side. Biden isn’t as much of a lock as incumbent presidents always are. His age is a factor we can’t ignore. Add that to the potential for an entirely new primary system and you could see things open wide for the Dems.
I’m hoping for a Buttigeig-Booker ticket. Either one could head it up. But Harris is just too much of a hack - she can say the right things in a speech, but she’s not much of an actual leader.
Let me get your opinion on Harris as VP. I feel like she’s not done a whole lot. She’s varied from having no role, to a less than positive impact. I realize it’s only a year plus in but damn take the lead on something. I think she missed the boat on immigration reform. That could have been a big win for the administration and herself to do something there. I realize that it’s not her show to run entirely, and it’s not like Biden is running with a massive political mandate from the voters but he can’t take it all on.
I like the two of them working in tandem on international issues, one goes to Europe one month the other the other month. Keeps her in the news in a non confrontational way. The VP was at one time a lock on the next presidential nomination but I’m not sure if that’s she case anymore.
I think Harris was always a hack: good at playing state-level politics in a large and solid-blue state like California, but doesn't really understand much about how the rest of the country works. Her claim to fame was saying all the right things on Twitter, which got her labeled as a "Democratic Rising Star!" for being popular among activists, donors, and non-profits.
That's not to say she hasn't done some things I liked: I think she handled her inauguration with natural poise and grace, and she's got the fundamentals to go from a good to a great orator (though never stellar like Obama) as long as she gets some better speechwriters and works on sounding less nasal. I think her main challenge is that she went from losing the primary straight to the running-mate slot, which insulated her from any pressure to improve or time to reflect on her mistakes in the 2020 primary, let alone given the media and pundits the breathing room to examine her faults - no one's stupid enough to REALLY have at the First Black and South Asian Female Vice President like they're doing to Warren, Bernie, Booker et al. right now.
Her biggest liabilities are that she isn't a good manager, and doesn't know how to disbelieve her own public hype in order to learn lessons. If tragedy strikes and she succeeds Biden, I pray that she surprises us all, but I don't think she'd make a good president. And short of such a sympathy/incumbency bump, she doesn't have what it takes to win 2024 all on her own. Her primary campaign imploded early on due to mismanagement and unrelated strategic missteps, and she suffers the same Staffer Problem as most of the rest of the party does. What makes us think that this person can somehow inherit from Biden a larger national campaign organization which she's never had to scale up, and succeed with it? And she doesn't seem to be doing a bang-up job of practicing whatever lessons she ought to have learned from 2020 by plugging those gaps in her VP staff. Which segues into my other point - in addition to the aforementioned insulation from criticism, I think that in her "Rising Democratic Star!" phase, she did what any aspiring rank-and-file benchwarmer state politician would do, and TOTALLY ate up all the hype she was getting. It's easy when you're a hack who's doing mad Twitter numbers by saying the exact hack things all the blue-checks love to hear, to mistake that for "Wow! People really love me as a politician. I must be doing something right and have a genuine and unique voice that people can't get enough of." But eventually, you're going to run into a ceiling with that mindset. You can't improve because you don't think there's anything to improve; anyone who disagrees is just a hater.
I wrote a whole Quora essay about this back at the time (https://qr.ae/pGq7cY), but the short version is that I think Biden picked Harris because he saw something of himself in her. He admired the guts it took to hit him so hard on busing. He admired that she fell in line when the writing was on the wall that he was beating her out for the moderate lane. They're both good-old-fashioned establishment liberals.
But I don't think her as VP was good for her development, and I don't think it meaningfully contributed to Biden's win, to whatever extent running-mate picks even can anymore; and as you say, she's certainly not helping on actual policy. I just don't see any way to salvage this one, though on first glance, I don't mind the punditocracy's fanfic idea of promoting Buttigeig to State ASAP to see if he can build some shine heading into the 2024 primary as an improvement over Harris to be a presumptive favorite who actually has enough juice to win the general and isn't absurdly old like Bernie and Warren.
Ok I had a thought, instead of voting in the primary for pence as the least worst option if the GOP wins the general election, why not take the opposite track? Vote for the most right wing trump-esque candidate under the assumption that the more conservative the eventual GOP candidate is, the better chance a democrat would win? Or is that playing with fire? Just an idea
I think all tactical voting is ultimately playing with fire/too-cute-by-half. Plurality rules just plain suck like that, but it's also been mathematically proven that no voting method is perfectly immune to any kind of tactical voting.
So yeah, it's always possible to blow up any putative tactical vote to Princess-Bride-level proportions of automindfuckery. (h/t Wallace Shawn, currently starring on Young Sheldon)
As of today, I don't see anyone besides Hurd, Pence, DeSantis, and Christie being willing to run with Trump in the race. Hurd's already said he's running, but unless he can pull off some magic, he doesn't look like he'll crack 5% of the primary vote and be anything more than "that one anti-Trump guy who ran". Pence, as I outlined, has the best fundamentals to run, but seems like the least internal drive to gamble on it - but maybe he's just playing his cards close to the vest while marshaling resources. DeSantis has clearly been auditioning for the role, but I suspect he'd rather run in an open primary with Trump's blessing than directly against Trump. Christie seems fueled by the same level of naked ambition as Cruz and Rubio, but has just enough spite to push him into running against Trump - though he may ultimately prove to still lack enough _spine_ to lean into his own strengths enough to actually _beat_ Trump.
But none of them (besides Hurd, who lacks the juice/name-rec of the others) really seems to relish the thought of doing what it takes to beat Trump. They all face the same fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, the base wants Trumpism, but each lacks what attracts and binds the base to Trump the most - Trump's unique style - and thus they can only offer inauthentic partial imitations of Trump, paired with each's homebrewed takes on the Trumpist policy platform, which is something that can only marginally excite a few handfuls of voters, and definitely not enough of them to edge Trump himself out of a primary. On the other hand, the one approach that _actually might work_ to beat Trump is a gamble, on top of a tight needle to thread: call him a loser who cost the party a winnable election, stake out some sort of distinct, high-profile policy disagreement with him that illustrates your broader point that he's a loser, and do it all without becoming SO different from Trump that you lose the 90% of the party that still loves him.
If anyone beats Trump in the primary, I don't think the actual candidate really matters all that much in the general. They all have liabilities, but they all benefit the same from the core GOP advantage of the party being several points stronger in the median/swing states than its national popularity. Since 2016, elections have become so tight that they're overdetermined, so it's hard to point to any single factor that could tip the scales any stronger than of the dozens of others.
But if Trump ducks out, then I think it's way easier for them to throw their hats into the ring (especially Pence), and we'll also see the return of beloved characters from 2016 like Cruz and Rubio.
In either case (Trump in or out), if Hurd pulls off the magic trick and becomes competitive, then I'd vote for him in the primary if there's not a meaningful Democratic contest - because ultimately, Republicans like Hurd are the best chance for returning their party to sanity and saving the country from our polarization crisis. Hell, I'd even consider voting for Hurd in the general, if a Hurd win helps him purge the GOP of the evil of Trumpism (especially given how we've seen that the McCain and Romney losses contributed to discrediting moderates among the base).
Short of Hurd being viable, I'd vote for Christie and then Pence on similar principles. Christie is less evil than Pence, which matters, so if it's JUST between them, it goes to Christie. Pence is less evil than the rest of the crew's "Wizard-of-Oz"-like array of moral infirmities: I don't think DeSantis has a soul, Rubio lacks a brain, and Cruz doesn't have a heart.
Christie? Honestly I feel like you’re ignoring all of his downside. The majority of the GOP has a complete lack of respect for him, and not just the hard right. Even more moderate folks seem him as corrupt and inept. All he really has going for him was that he was a red governor in a blue state. That kind of working across the aisle governing isn’t exactly a gop goal right now.
What about, and hear me out, Liz Cheney / Adam kinsinger ticket? Run on choosing party over country? Cheney is definitely still conservative but fighting against anarchy. Kinzinger has more of the working with the other side vibe too. Maybe a pence/Cheney? Bringing American back together? I’m itching for some excitement and positivity on the side of the aisle
I think Christie has the stage presence - or maybe, he may have HAD it at one point, and I'm just not noticing that he's Lost It/Got The (Permanent) "Yips", YMMV - to pull off a comeback. As we've seen with Tucker Carlson (pantsed on his own national TV show by Jon Stewart) and Trump himself (mocked by Obama at the Nerd Prom, tho he totally deserved it and is just a thin-skinned fuckhead who overreacted by trying to become an authoritarian), don't underestimate those who are REALLY petty, mostly inept at everything BUT being power-hungry jerks, and are trying to get over having been nationally embarrassed.
Kinsinger could do more damage staying in the House to run his committee assignments and potentially knock off McCarthy as presumptive Speaker if Cheney ever pulled off the impossible and won the 2024 primary and general. Cheney would do better with a running mate like Hurd (more name-rec/star-power than he has, enough to realistically contend in the primary), or even a rehydrated Rubio or Christie who could sell her to those among the MAGA faithful who were always Never-Trump-Curious but just couldn't bring themselves to change horses in the middle of what looked like a winning race without a familiar face to tell them it was OK.
IE the people like most of our relatives - YOU know EXACTLY who all I'm talking about lol - who will probably hop back to pre-Trump Normie Republicanism if they see enough core Never-Trumpers flocking to Cheney's banner to put her in real contention.
But I think that while everyone kind of just *figures* that Christie and Rubio were just being the spineless losers they are during the Trump years, and therefore wouldn't be shocked for them to join up with Cheney, for Pence to do the same thing would just stretch belief. Most of the MAGA base would call bullshit and scream that Pence was "never loyal to MAGA in the first place"... which, yes, they're already saying about him for his actions on Jan 6, and yes, is also equally true of Christie and Rubio, but again, those two weren't so absurdly close to the throne like Pence was, so it hits harder with him IMO.
If Biden is a one term president, I think the nation could do worse than Pence. Don’t get me wrong I believe he would still be the wrong move for our nation and potentially freedom of expression across the world but he is more of the devil we know. To me is closer to the George W. Bush GOP than the trump GOP.
We would hear a lot more about LGBT issues, abortion access and smaller government. Not sure where he would go on immigration, as not sure if he would build the wall or simply do nothing constructive like many republicans and some democrats. The biggest thing I could see with a Pence administration is that he seems less likely to want to blow the whole system up like trump attempted to do. As much as it saddens me to say, politics as they used to be, inefficient and corrupt, now seem like the good ole days.
I’m interested to see how the primaries go on the democratic side. Biden isn’t as much of a lock as incumbent presidents always are. His age is a factor we can’t ignore. Add that to the potential for an entirely new primary system and you could see things open wide for the Dems.
I’m hoping for a Buttigeig-Booker ticket. Either one could head it up. But Harris is just too much of a hack - she can say the right things in a speech, but she’s not much of an actual leader.
Let me get your opinion on Harris as VP. I feel like she’s not done a whole lot. She’s varied from having no role, to a less than positive impact. I realize it’s only a year plus in but damn take the lead on something. I think she missed the boat on immigration reform. That could have been a big win for the administration and herself to do something there. I realize that it’s not her show to run entirely, and it’s not like Biden is running with a massive political mandate from the voters but he can’t take it all on.
I like the two of them working in tandem on international issues, one goes to Europe one month the other the other month. Keeps her in the news in a non confrontational way. The VP was at one time a lock on the next presidential nomination but I’m not sure if that’s she case anymore.
I think Harris was always a hack: good at playing state-level politics in a large and solid-blue state like California, but doesn't really understand much about how the rest of the country works. Her claim to fame was saying all the right things on Twitter, which got her labeled as a "Democratic Rising Star!" for being popular among activists, donors, and non-profits.
That's not to say she hasn't done some things I liked: I think she handled her inauguration with natural poise and grace, and she's got the fundamentals to go from a good to a great orator (though never stellar like Obama) as long as she gets some better speechwriters and works on sounding less nasal. I think her main challenge is that she went from losing the primary straight to the running-mate slot, which insulated her from any pressure to improve or time to reflect on her mistakes in the 2020 primary, let alone given the media and pundits the breathing room to examine her faults - no one's stupid enough to REALLY have at the First Black and South Asian Female Vice President like they're doing to Warren, Bernie, Booker et al. right now.
Her biggest liabilities are that she isn't a good manager, and doesn't know how to disbelieve her own public hype in order to learn lessons. If tragedy strikes and she succeeds Biden, I pray that she surprises us all, but I don't think she'd make a good president. And short of such a sympathy/incumbency bump, she doesn't have what it takes to win 2024 all on her own. Her primary campaign imploded early on due to mismanagement and unrelated strategic missteps, and she suffers the same Staffer Problem as most of the rest of the party does. What makes us think that this person can somehow inherit from Biden a larger national campaign organization which she's never had to scale up, and succeed with it? And she doesn't seem to be doing a bang-up job of practicing whatever lessons she ought to have learned from 2020 by plugging those gaps in her VP staff. Which segues into my other point - in addition to the aforementioned insulation from criticism, I think that in her "Rising Democratic Star!" phase, she did what any aspiring rank-and-file benchwarmer state politician would do, and TOTALLY ate up all the hype she was getting. It's easy when you're a hack who's doing mad Twitter numbers by saying the exact hack things all the blue-checks love to hear, to mistake that for "Wow! People really love me as a politician. I must be doing something right and have a genuine and unique voice that people can't get enough of." But eventually, you're going to run into a ceiling with that mindset. You can't improve because you don't think there's anything to improve; anyone who disagrees is just a hater.
I wrote a whole Quora essay about this back at the time (https://qr.ae/pGq7cY), but the short version is that I think Biden picked Harris because he saw something of himself in her. He admired the guts it took to hit him so hard on busing. He admired that she fell in line when the writing was on the wall that he was beating her out for the moderate lane. They're both good-old-fashioned establishment liberals.
But I don't think her as VP was good for her development, and I don't think it meaningfully contributed to Biden's win, to whatever extent running-mate picks even can anymore; and as you say, she's certainly not helping on actual policy. I just don't see any way to salvage this one, though on first glance, I don't mind the punditocracy's fanfic idea of promoting Buttigeig to State ASAP to see if he can build some shine heading into the 2024 primary as an improvement over Harris to be a presumptive favorite who actually has enough juice to win the general and isn't absurdly old like Bernie and Warren.
In other words, I'm all in on Buttigeig-Booker.
Ok I had a thought, instead of voting in the primary for pence as the least worst option if the GOP wins the general election, why not take the opposite track? Vote for the most right wing trump-esque candidate under the assumption that the more conservative the eventual GOP candidate is, the better chance a democrat would win? Or is that playing with fire? Just an idea
I think all tactical voting is ultimately playing with fire/too-cute-by-half. Plurality rules just plain suck like that, but it's also been mathematically proven that no voting method is perfectly immune to any kind of tactical voting.
So yeah, it's always possible to blow up any putative tactical vote to Princess-Bride-level proportions of automindfuckery. (h/t Wallace Shawn, currently starring on Young Sheldon)
As of today, I don't see anyone besides Hurd, Pence, DeSantis, and Christie being willing to run with Trump in the race. Hurd's already said he's running, but unless he can pull off some magic, he doesn't look like he'll crack 5% of the primary vote and be anything more than "that one anti-Trump guy who ran". Pence, as I outlined, has the best fundamentals to run, but seems like the least internal drive to gamble on it - but maybe he's just playing his cards close to the vest while marshaling resources. DeSantis has clearly been auditioning for the role, but I suspect he'd rather run in an open primary with Trump's blessing than directly against Trump. Christie seems fueled by the same level of naked ambition as Cruz and Rubio, but has just enough spite to push him into running against Trump - though he may ultimately prove to still lack enough _spine_ to lean into his own strengths enough to actually _beat_ Trump.
But none of them (besides Hurd, who lacks the juice/name-rec of the others) really seems to relish the thought of doing what it takes to beat Trump. They all face the same fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, the base wants Trumpism, but each lacks what attracts and binds the base to Trump the most - Trump's unique style - and thus they can only offer inauthentic partial imitations of Trump, paired with each's homebrewed takes on the Trumpist policy platform, which is something that can only marginally excite a few handfuls of voters, and definitely not enough of them to edge Trump himself out of a primary. On the other hand, the one approach that _actually might work_ to beat Trump is a gamble, on top of a tight needle to thread: call him a loser who cost the party a winnable election, stake out some sort of distinct, high-profile policy disagreement with him that illustrates your broader point that he's a loser, and do it all without becoming SO different from Trump that you lose the 90% of the party that still loves him.
If anyone beats Trump in the primary, I don't think the actual candidate really matters all that much in the general. They all have liabilities, but they all benefit the same from the core GOP advantage of the party being several points stronger in the median/swing states than its national popularity. Since 2016, elections have become so tight that they're overdetermined, so it's hard to point to any single factor that could tip the scales any stronger than of the dozens of others.
But if Trump ducks out, then I think it's way easier for them to throw their hats into the ring (especially Pence), and we'll also see the return of beloved characters from 2016 like Cruz and Rubio.
In either case (Trump in or out), if Hurd pulls off the magic trick and becomes competitive, then I'd vote for him in the primary if there's not a meaningful Democratic contest - because ultimately, Republicans like Hurd are the best chance for returning their party to sanity and saving the country from our polarization crisis. Hell, I'd even consider voting for Hurd in the general, if a Hurd win helps him purge the GOP of the evil of Trumpism (especially given how we've seen that the McCain and Romney losses contributed to discrediting moderates among the base).
Short of Hurd being viable, I'd vote for Christie and then Pence on similar principles. Christie is less evil than Pence, which matters, so if it's JUST between them, it goes to Christie. Pence is less evil than the rest of the crew's "Wizard-of-Oz"-like array of moral infirmities: I don't think DeSantis has a soul, Rubio lacks a brain, and Cruz doesn't have a heart.
Christie? Honestly I feel like you’re ignoring all of his downside. The majority of the GOP has a complete lack of respect for him, and not just the hard right. Even more moderate folks seem him as corrupt and inept. All he really has going for him was that he was a red governor in a blue state. That kind of working across the aisle governing isn’t exactly a gop goal right now.
What about, and hear me out, Liz Cheney / Adam kinsinger ticket? Run on choosing party over country? Cheney is definitely still conservative but fighting against anarchy. Kinzinger has more of the working with the other side vibe too. Maybe a pence/Cheney? Bringing American back together? I’m itching for some excitement and positivity on the side of the aisle
I think Christie has the stage presence - or maybe, he may have HAD it at one point, and I'm just not noticing that he's Lost It/Got The (Permanent) "Yips", YMMV - to pull off a comeback. As we've seen with Tucker Carlson (pantsed on his own national TV show by Jon Stewart) and Trump himself (mocked by Obama at the Nerd Prom, tho he totally deserved it and is just a thin-skinned fuckhead who overreacted by trying to become an authoritarian), don't underestimate those who are REALLY petty, mostly inept at everything BUT being power-hungry jerks, and are trying to get over having been nationally embarrassed.
Kinsinger could do more damage staying in the House to run his committee assignments and potentially knock off McCarthy as presumptive Speaker if Cheney ever pulled off the impossible and won the 2024 primary and general. Cheney would do better with a running mate like Hurd (more name-rec/star-power than he has, enough to realistically contend in the primary), or even a rehydrated Rubio or Christie who could sell her to those among the MAGA faithful who were always Never-Trump-Curious but just couldn't bring themselves to change horses in the middle of what looked like a winning race without a familiar face to tell them it was OK.
IE the people like most of our relatives - YOU know EXACTLY who all I'm talking about lol - who will probably hop back to pre-Trump Normie Republicanism if they see enough core Never-Trumpers flocking to Cheney's banner to put her in real contention.
But I think that while everyone kind of just *figures* that Christie and Rubio were just being the spineless losers they are during the Trump years, and therefore wouldn't be shocked for them to join up with Cheney, for Pence to do the same thing would just stretch belief. Most of the MAGA base would call bullshit and scream that Pence was "never loyal to MAGA in the first place"... which, yes, they're already saying about him for his actions on Jan 6, and yes, is also equally true of Christie and Rubio, but again, those two weren't so absurdly close to the throne like Pence was, so it hits harder with him IMO.