Why the Veepstakes Matters

Gov. Josh Shapiro with Vice President Harris

In the next 48 hours, the Democrats will learn whom Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen as her running-mate.  Harris is in the middle of conducting the shortest Veepstakes in modern history, and if you believe reports from the Washington Post, the candidate pool is now down to three contenders: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  When one of them is eventually picked, I will write an article about them (we already did that for JD Vance, and have done that as far back on this blog as Sarah Palin), but for the record I do think that Shapiro will be picked, but I will be most excited for Tim Walz (whom I think should be picked, and not just out of hometown pride).  But our discussion today is instead about why the Veepstakes are important.

Pundits love to be cynical, and they love to say "I told you so."  I am not a pundit in this mold, however, and so I tend to favor being genuine and loathe saying "I told you so."  I bring this up because pretty much every single article that you read about the Veepstakes ends with some version of "it doesn't matter whom she picks."  This is both misleading and not true, but it also has a place of at least some good faith.  The VP pick historically has not mattered in an election in terms of flipping a specific state or an election.  In 1960, you can say with a pretty solid amount of certainty that Lyndon B. Johnson was able to hold onto Texas for JFK (the margin was small enough and Nixon worked hard enough there after two consecutive Eisenhower victories in the Lone Star State that he would've won otherwise).  Texas would ultimately be inconsequential in the end math there (JFK still hits 270 without it), but it's a case of Johnson winning him a state.

Since then, in terms of actually flipping a state, I don't know that you can claim a VP has accomplished that goal.  Minnesota was very close in 1980 and Tennessee was in 1992/96, but it's not obvious that Walter Mondale or Al Gore sealed the deal for the Democrats in these elections (hell, Gore couldn't even win Tennessee in 2000...if he had, he would've become president).  Most of the time they have no impact.  Paul Ryan in Wisconsin in 2012, John Edwards in North Carolina in 2004, Lloyd Bentsen in Texas in 1988...all of these were plays to loosen up the electoral college, all of them failed.  It's the primary reason I've been stunned by the insistence of people online that it needs to be Shapiro solely because he brings in Pennsylvania.  It reeks of people who don't really pay attention to history and it makes them look, well, dumb.

But this doesn't mean that the vice presidential nominee doesn't matter in other ways.  For starters, VP's have definitely hurt presidential tickets before.  In 2008, Sarah Palin made what was already a tough race for John McCain basically an impossible one through her sheer incompetence.  Dan Quayle opened up a spot that Michael Dukakis couldn't jump in in 1988 when Quayle got crushed by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen in the debates.  On the flip side, VP's have helped with elections.  The best recent example was in 2012, when (down in the polls), Joe Biden clobbered Paul Ryan in the debates and was able to help launch Obama back into the game, which the president did in his second debate victory that largely sealed the deal for his second term.  Vice presidents' impact is usually hard to quantify, but a good one can help you out and a bad one can make things more difficult (just ask Trump's campaign team how they're liking JD Vance's implosion right now).

But they matter more in the sense that winning vice presidents can be president, and so even if they won't matter in November, they should be something that pundits and commentators talk about as that person could become president.  Eight presidents have died in office and one has resigned (for a total of nine), so in those cases, nine vice presidents have gone on to be president solely as a result of a president leaving office.  In some of those cases, the vice president who took over (like Teddy Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson) had a far more profound impact on the nation than the man he initially succeeded.  Given that there was an assassination attempt on former President Trump just a few weeks ago, and that our sitting president is 81 (and the Republican nominee is 78)...we should consider the value of a vice president pretty closely.

It also matters in terms of the future of the party.  Since 1952, every elected vice president save two (Spiro Agnew, who resigned in disgrace, and Dick Cheney, who was deeply unpopular and had too many health problems to be seriously considered for the White House) has run for the presidency.  Four of them would go on to win the White House on their own (Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, George HW Bush, & Joe Biden), three would become the nominee (Hubert H. Humphrey, Walter Mondale, & Al Gore), and just two would lose in the primaries (Dan Quayle & Mike Pence).  Kamala Harris is about to be the nominee (though her fate as an eventual president remains unknown), but you see what I mean-most of the vice presidential victors become presidential contenders...in the Democrats' case all of them since Alben Barkley have been at least the nominee.

So this is why I think it's healthy we're having a vigorous debate about the Veepstakes, and why I strongly disagree with people whose only contribution to the dialogue is "we need to just support the nominee no matter what."  We do need to support the ticket no matter what, but Kamala Harris is (hopefully) picking the frontrunner for the nomination in 2032 right now...it's important Democrats voice their concerns.  The criticisms of Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly are valid, and they aren't just happening because they're frontrunners (I saw a pundit say that this morning, and my eyes nearly rolled into the back of my head imagining how rose-colored your glasses needed to be to think the only valid reason to criticize Josh Shapiro is out of jealousy).  When she announces on Monday, you're allowed to be disappointed for a day, because the VP pick does matter...you also have to get over it by Wednesday because not preferring the VP nominee to another contender is, in fact, a stupid reason not to support the ticket.