The best thing about the left’s Abrams fascination is that it’s destined to collide with their AOC fascination in the 2024 or 2028 primary. Can’t wait.
As for VP this year, it’s hard to see how she’d be a good fit for any of the remaining Democratic candidates but it’s smart of her to push her interest in the position. If she’s silent about it and someone else ends up being chosen, well, no big deal. Politicians get passed over for that job all the time.
Whereas if she’s vocal about wanting it and gets passed over, that’ll feel a bit more like a snub. And since she’s already a bogus voter-suppression cause celebre among Democrats after her near-miss in the Georgia governor’s race two years ago, a snub would be a bad look for the nominee.
But as I say, she’d be an awkward match for the five candidates left with any real shot at the nomination. (No, that doesn’t include Elizabeth Warren.) Ideally, for reasons of ideological and demographic “balance,” Abrams would be an intriguing pairing with a Bill Clinton or Al Gore type — a standard middle-aged center-left white guy in need of some youth, racial and gender diversity, and a bit of lefty cred to hold progressives’ interest. There are no such people viable this year. The closest thing is Amy Klobuchar, the least likely of the five remaining contenders to actually win. Klobuchar’s relative youth would ease fears that the nominee will die in office, leaving a 46-year-old who’s never won a federal or statewide race to inherit the most powerful job in the world. The question is whether Klobuchar would want an all-female ticket against Trump. My guess is she’d lean against the idea but not rule it out altogether.
Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg all run into a massive age problem. With each of them 77 or older, it’s perfectly possible that they wouldn’t survive their term. Abrams’s inexperience would become an issue in the campaign, especially given Bernie’s heart trouble and Biden’s periods of … sub-optimal coherence, let us say. Bloomberg is probably the most likely of the three to add her to the ticket because he’ll have enough baggage with black and women voters by the time all the oppo on him is dumped that he’ll need to show conciliation somehow. Abrams’s progressive politics might soften up a few lefty voters for him too. They’d be an odd pairing, the old Wall Street tycoon and the young lefty star, but he’s pragmatic. If he thinks he gains more by making her VP than he loses by dint of her age, hey.
And Mayor Pete, he’s just too young and green for a young and green VP. Youth tickets are nice but his and Abrams’s *combined ages* are only a few years beyond what Biden, Bernie, and Bloomy have notched on their own. I think Buttigieg would be stuck following Obama’s example from 2008 and adding an old hand to the ticket to reassure voters that he’ll have experienced people at the highest levels advising him as he learns the ropes in his first elected office grander than mayor of a small city.
Whatever happens this summer, the “Abrams vs. Tucker Carlson” election four years from now will be amazing.
Stacey Abrams “would be honored to run for vice president with the nominee” if asked.
“It would be doing a disservice to every woman of color, every woman of ambition…for me to say no,” she adds. “Of course I want it—of course I want to serve America.” https://t.co/xyA1g2qK2J pic.twitter.com/l7RPGgwQtx
— ABC News (@ABC) February 17, 2020
