Posted by
Steve on Thursday, May 08, 2008 10:16:02 AM
We have now reached the stage where the two candidates have to select a Vice-Presidential candidate. The Democrats have the first convention, so they have to select their candidate first.
Barack Obama has a lot of holes in his resume. He needs to select someone that will fill some of the holes or will bring a state into play that would not ordinarily be in play. The Democrats believe that they will carry all the states that they won in 2004. So, they will try to capture a state they did not win. Barack Obama will select a Governor or Senator from either Ohio or Florida to fill out his ticket. Ohio is probably too close to Illinois, so that is unlikely. If he does not choose Ohio, he will probably pick someone from Virginia or North Carolina. Because of the Democrat litmus test, that person will be from the far left. Obama will not be able to select someone that will balance the ticket from an ideological standpoint.
John McCain will select next. A lot will depend on who the Democrats pick as their Vice-Presidential candidate. Because Obama is black, the Democrats will not select a woman or a Hispanic to fill out the ticket. That would be too much for the country to absorb at one time. Maybe that will happen in the future, but not right now. Obama is pretty much going to select a white male as his running mate in order to appease the Democrat leadership.
John McCain on the other hand can select any race or gender he chooses. My guess is that he would select a minority Governor or Senator or Representative who is also a true conservative. That would fill two slots in one selection. If McCain picks a Hispanic or other minority as his running mate, he will blunt much of the racism charge that the Democrats will throw at him. He may also charge up Hispanics to vote Republican in larger numbers than they normally do. In a normal election, Hispanics vote Republican about 25-40% of the time. If there is a Hispanic as Vice-President, he might even be able to get that percentage over 50%. That would completely devastate the Democrats in the race. They would not take any state with a heavy Hispanic population, which means almost every south western state, including California.
It will be interesting to see who is mentioned over the next couple of months. There will be a number of trial balloons before the real person is selected. That is generally the way things are done now a days. There will be a lot of false information given out between now and the conventions. They will try to keep the name secret until the last minute. I think it would be better to get the name out there as soon as possible and see if there are any flaws that will show up. If you float a name before the convention and it sinks, you can always say it was just a trial balloon. Waiting until the last minute and you may end up with the problem that George McGovern had. He selected one person only to find out that he had a medical problem, so he selected someone else. That really looked bad for the McGovern campaign.
As a political junkie, I love this time of the political season. All of the primaries are over and the nominees are selected. They have to wait until the convention before starting on the real campaign for the Presidency. This is where a lot of silly things happen that do affect the race. Stay tuned for more fun and games from the Presidential candidates.