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Middle Barael wrote:

Joe Biden just chose Kamala Harris as his running mate. Any thoughts?

If you'll forgive me from reposting something I sent in a politics channel elsewhere:

Harris is not risky. She's young enough to be a successor (Warren isn't). But she's also experienced enough to be a leader right now (Bass, Demings, etc. aren't), and she has a strong policy record (Duckworth doesn't, as much as I liked her) as well as good campaigning skills (Rice doesn't). She's not a lefty in the vein of Warren or Sanders, so she hopefully won't scare off moderates, but she is also the fifth most progressive-voting member of the Senate, so she'll be at least tolerable on the other end.

Middle Barael wrote:

He greatly underestimated how important the Progressive vote is...

This sounds accurate only if (as I do) you live in an area that is heavily progressive. We consistently overestimate the number of people who would actually not vote for a Biden-Harris ticket but would vote for, say, a Biden-Pressley ticket. Some? Of course. More than would vote for Harris but not for Pressley? Probably not. I've heard a whole bunch of people -- all super-progressives themselves -- make this claim that the progressive vote is massive and needs to be placated or else it won't support Biden. And even as a pretty strong progressive myself, I've never seen any evidence of that being true. Like Sanders's claim in the primaries that he would bring out massive turnout from progressive non-regular-voters that no one else could get, it seems to be more of an aspirational claim than an empirical one.

Middle Barael wrote:

Kamala’s popularity among black and minority voters. ... Kamala Harris isn’t even very popular among black people; even Biden is more popular than Kamala.

This is the bigger concern. If Biden wanted "someone who will appeal to black and brown voters", she's not necessarily the best person. Plus she's from California, which really isn't helpful at all electorally as she doesn't appeal to the Rust Belt or Florida especially either. Essentially, she doesn't specifically attract any one demographic.

That said, African-American voters about equally favored Harris and Warren as their top VP choices. And it's possible she doesn't need to attract any single demographic, as long as she doesn't repel anyone -- which, given what I said up top, I think she's unlikely to do.

Middle Barael wrote:

If I were him, I would’ve picked either Karen Bass, Barbara Lee, or Ayanna Presley. They are all Black, female, and progressive, and they each carry with them some sort of weight. Karen Bass gained a lot of notoriety recently due to her being on Biden’s shortlist, Barbara Lee carries with her her experience in Congress as the former chair of the Progressive Caucus, and Ayanna Presley is very popular due to her being a member of the Squad.

"Being on Biden's shortlist" is not a qualification for the Vice Presidency by itself -- it's quite a tautological one, in fact. If one of your criteria is "carrying weight", I don't think Bass gets many positive points there (much as I liked her, experience is not her main asset). "Being a member of the Squad" is also far more likely to be a net detriment than an asset. Even solidly Democratic moderates don't have terribly favorable views of the Squad.

And while Barbara Lee is great -- and the fact that she didn't seem to be under consideration is still confusing to me -- she does fail the "young enough to be a successor?" test.

Middle Barael wrote:

... and her moderate views.

Harris votes more progressively on average than Sanders in the Senate. She's not a moderate, you've been leaning into the progressive bubble too hard. :P

The only reason she's labeled as a moderate is because she's part of the establishment-friendly "Progressive New Guard", as opposed to the anti-establishment "Very Progressives" or "Super Progressives". Policy-wise, she's just as left as any of your favorite progressive big names, but she's willing to play game with the party establishment, which apparently makes her unworthy.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-six-wings-of-the-democratic-party/