9 ms·

> Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ? I think it would be very hard to convince the

• rzz3 2y ago
  But there’s no one else to vote for, they’d still vote for her with Romney as the VP. With that vs Trump as the other option, she’d still get the votes from the progressive base and potentially bring over a few more independent voters.
  • woodruffw 2y ago
    The US doesn't have mandatory voting; when people are thoroughly demotivated by their party's platform but are unwilling to vote for the other party, they stay home. (I'm not saying whether or not I would. But I think this kind of brinkmanship is a very dangerous game to play, especially in the context of a cross-party ticket.)
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      Assuming the Democrats go with Harris, I can say whole heartedly that I won't be voting this year. I view voting as a responsibility to pick a candidate I want to lead rather than a vote to block someone I don't want to lead. This time around I have seen no candidate I could feel even mildly comfortable with. I'm not happy about it, but given my view on why I should vote I don't feel comfortable voting for Trump, Harris, or Biden. Voting for one to spite another would require me first to change my mind on what a vote means or cave on my principles.
      • uxcolumbo 2y ago
        Don’t you think Trump will dismantle our rights (see project 2025) and that it is our duty to vote to make sure he doesn’t get into power and turn this country into an autocracy?
        • greenchair 2y ago
          did he turn this country into an autocracy from 2016-2020? k
          • amanaplanacanal 2y ago
            He tried to overturn the election in 2020, but he didn’t really have his ducks in a row. If he is in power in 2028, he will likely be more successful.
        • neverartful 2y ago
          Can you provide any evidence that Trump supports project 2025?
          • trealira 2y ago
            In April 2022, at a dinner with the Heritage foundation, he said that the Heritage foundation was going to "lay the groundwork for what our movement will do." https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216 https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216 "Our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions such as Heritage is to lay the groundwork, and Heritage does such an incredible job at that. [...] But this is a great group. They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming." Here's the whole transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-keynote-speech-in-florida-4-21-22-transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-k... At the same time, Trump has been saying "I know nothing about Project 2025" and "I have no idea who is behind it." Edit: Also, CNN says 140 people from the Trump administration worked on Project 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project...
  • xhevahir 2y ago
    There's always the option, taken by millions of Americans every election, of not voting for anyone. A unity ticket of two unpopular centrist candidates is not a recipe for success.
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      Not voting is a vote for “whatever”. If you really don’t see a difference between Trump and Harris (or Biden or any other), I’m really not sure what to say…
      • lotsoweiners 2y ago
        Yet you still felt the need to say something.
  • magicink81 2y ago
    RFK Jr and Nicole Shanahan are running, and already on the ballot in 29 states. Though you won't see them interviewed on CNN or Fox News, many polls show them winning against Trump. One of the reasons that RFK Jr started his campaign last year was a poll by Zogby which "surveyed over 26,000 likely voters across all 50 states, indicated that Kennedy could potentially outperform both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in head-to-head matchups." I believe the poll showed the majority of independent votes going to RFK Jr, and a significant portion of D and R votes going to him as well. Given recent events, perhaps Trump is now much more popular, but previously polls showed RFK Jr beating Trump. https://www.kennedy24.com/ https://www.kennedy24.com/
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > perhaps Trump is now much more popular, but previously polls showed RFK Jr beating Trump Trump isn’t more popular. RFK was never beating anybody. If he played his card better he might have put himself into the running for Trump’s VP. The bigger problem is there is a strong political incentive to look at who doesn’t vote and transfer their chips to those who do. (Appealing to non-voters doesn’t work. Most non-voters aren’t principled, they’re just lazy or indecisive, irrespective of what they say.)
    • jncfhnb 2y ago
      It’s more conceivable than people are willing to believe that RFK could get more votes than trump in this election. For example, trump might die before election day, in which RFK might have a chance. Not at winning broadly of course.
• _heimdall 2y ago
  Technically prior to that wasn't the VP always the runner up? Practically we had two parties thanks to Hamilton and Jefferson, but the rules weren't specific to that unless I missed something important there.
  • SllX 2y ago
    You are correct. What motivated the change was Aaron Burr campaigning against Jefferson in the 1800 Presidential election and both were part of the Democratic-Republican Party. For subsequent elections the Democratic-Republican Party continued to dominate elections during the era of Good Feelings right up until the 1828 Election when Andrew Jackson under the Democratic Party defeated John Quincy Adams under the National Republican Party. Note on those parties: the Democratic-Republican Party isn’t related to either of those parties; Andrew Jackson was the first time the Democratic Party put any candidate into the office of the President and while that’s the same Party as the one that exists today, the National Republican Party is not related to today’s Republican Party. We just really like reusing two words for most of our party names.
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      I think it may have a been on the Dangerous History Podcast, but I listened to an episode of the hodtory of American Policies parties. It was fascinating to hear how often they flipped and was seems to have been the reason when parties did change or disolve.
      • SllX 2y ago
        I'll check it out when I get a chance. As irritating as this particular election is to me, I'm still fairly into the history of our elections.
        • _heimdall 2y ago
          Found a link to the episodes, it was a two part series. The Dangerous History Podcast: Ep. 0118: Party Systems in American History, Part I Episode webpage: http://profcj.org http://profcj.org Media file: https://chrt.fm/track/95538/traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6638757482.mp3 https://chrt.fm/track/95538/traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL66387574...
• haunter 2y ago
  > liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) ? I thought the core of the party is establishment centrist gerontophiles. If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.
  • woodruffw 2y ago
    That was meant to be +1 SD on the "left" side of the party. If I did +1 SD on the "right" side of the party, it would be liberal-centrist. (The point is not that the DNC's progressive base is dominant, but that it's big enough to influence the party's direction. Compare this with the +2 SD left part of the party, which is currently being almost entirely ignored by the party's +0 and +1 leadership.)
  • Jensson 2y ago
    > If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already. He meant socially, not economically. Democrats are made up of very left social issues and centrist economic issues, Bernie who is very left economically of course has a hard time there. But still the Democrats are very left, just not in terms of taxes, but in terms of affirmative action etc. Those are very left wing and USA is more left wing on those issues than most of the world, even Europe is much more reluctant to go that hard on those things. So yes, Democrats are very left wing, just not in the ways that makes things better for poor people, they are social signaling kind of left wing and center/right on taxes and wealth transfer.
    • woodruffw 2y ago
      That isn't really what I meant :-) What I meant was that the DNC is still, somehow, a "big tent" party. The plurality demographic within that party is liberal; if you add the next biggest groups on either side you get progressives (left) and centrists (right). The problem the DNC would face in a two-party ticket is that centrists would willingly go for such a split, liberals would be reluctant, and progressives and onwards would sit out of the vote in substantial numbers. Those sit-outs don't matter at the party level, but they do matter in general elections. (This is true regardless of the social/economic axes used to distinguish the party's demographics internally.)
• cheema33 2y ago
  > I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this. I am quite liberal. I'd vote for this a million times before I'd consider Trump as a president.
  • woodruffw 2y ago
    Congratulations, that makes you a member of the largest DNC voting demographic! But the DNC doesn't win elections based on internal pluralities; if it did, we'd be living in a very different political landscape. (To be clear: in a sufficiently dire situation, I would also vote for a cross-party ticket. But I know a lot of people who wouldn't, and there's a basic sense that their lack of turnout matters much more than my tepid support.)
  • lotsoweiners 2y ago
    Sounds like they were going to get your vote either way so why would the democratic party go for this?
    • lupire 2y ago
      The issue is whether the Democrats would lose more votes than they gain by shifting rightward. PP was providing evidence that they would not.
• slantaclaus 2y ago
  It’s not the base that would need to be convinced, it would be the DNC
  • woodruffw 2y ago
    I don't think this is even remotely true. The DNC leadership is skewed towards the liberal-centrist wing of the party with significant (but not controlling) progressive representation.
    • slantaclaus 2y ago
      Having spoken with DNC people organizing rallies, they don’t have any interest in bipartisanship. This is radical from the DNC’s point of view, not the American people’s point of view
• mcswell 2y ago
  Larry Hogan would make an interesting VP candidate on Harris's ticket. He's a Republican, but was a two term governor in the blue state of Maryland. (Maryland has a two term limit on the governor, so he's now running for Senator.) To the extent that the candidate for VP pulls in votes, I think he'd do an awesome job.
  • fakedang 2y ago
    The fact that you had to explain who Larry Hogan is and why he would make a good VP candidate to pull votes, is precisely why he isn't a good VP candidate to pull votes.
• wayeq 2y ago
  The number of voters aligned with old school Reagan/Bush era Republicanism has all but disappeared. The majority of GOP voters consider Romney to be part of 'the swamp'. Politics in America is increasingly driven by hatred of the out-group, so it is hard to imagine a mixed ticket doing well in 2024.
  • lolinder 2y ago
    > Politics in America is increasingly driven by hatred of the out-group, so it is hard to imagine a mixed ticket doing well in 2024. I do wonder how much of this is driven by loud minorities on both sides rather than by actual majorities anywhere. I at least would happily vote for a mixed ticket that seemed to be committed to make bipartisanship work. I'm sick of our hate-fueled political system and am desperately hoping for a change.
  • shiroiushi 2y ago
    Yes, the vast majority of current GOP voters consider someone like Romney or McCain (RIP) to be a "RINO". Only Trump and his sycophants are "true Republicans" to them now. However, having a mixed-party ticket like this doesn't need to worry about swaying the Trump voters; they're not going to change their vote for anyone. The appeal here is to get some of the minority of GOP voters, the "never-Trumpers" and others who really don't like Trump much, to switch their vote (or actually vote, if they're sitting it out in disgust). I do think this idea would succeed in getting some of these peoples' votes. However, I have no idea if that would outweigh the number of votes they'd lose from people on the left.