Back To 1972

Despite a brief detour into 2008 on Monday, I'm back to thinking the 1972 election is the closest parallel to what we see this year. The most visible Democrat problem then was the running mate, which is precisely what we see now, but the material cause of the problem was that McGovern was going to lose the election, and nobody, starting with Ted Kennedy, wanted to be the loser's running mate. So let's look at what happened to Kamala's field of choices to see if there are parallels to this year.

This story at NBC News says

With a looming deadline that Democrats concluded they had to meet to finalize their nominee, people close to Harris and outside allies began a few days before [Biden's] announcement to start thinking about what her campaign might look like and started batting around names of potential running mates at daily meetings.

Almost immediately after Biden dropped out, her team concluded that it most likely had to be a middle-aged white man, for many of the reasons Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate.

. . . By Saturday, the team had whittled the list down to three names — Walz, Shapiro and Kelly — who were told to prepare for face-to-face meetings with Harris.

But let's recall that earlier lists of possibilities looked more like this: Gavin Newsom, J B Pritzker, Mark Kelly, and Gretchen Whitmer, with some also-rans like North Carolina Gov Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov Andy Bashear. and eventually Minnesota Gov Tim Walz. For whatever reason, Newsom seems not to have been mentioned much in early running, and Pritzker had the same problem as Shapiro, plus he was short and fat. He wasn't taken seriously, or at least not as seriously as Shapiro.

But the field also began to narrow itself. By July 29, both Whitmer and Cooper had taken themselves out of the running. Whitmer is 52, 8 years younger than Harris, and has a credible political future outside the vice presidency, Cooper, 67, claimed he withdrew because his lieutenant governor might try to seize power while Cooper was out of state for a campaign event, but this seems weak, and likely Cooper felt he didn't need the exertion of a losing campaign as he was on the verge of retirement.

So Harris's choices were limited, much like McGovern's in 1972. But given the short list of willing candidates, she went beyond even that. According to the NBC link,

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was a dark horse from the start, left off early lists of potential running mates. But no one used the 16 days since President Joe Biden stepped aside more effectively than Walz, who charmed Harris and national Democrats alike with a Diet Mountain Dew-fueled media tour that labeled the opposition as “weird” and won him a spot in history.

So, once most of the other possible candidates were crossed off the list, according to the link, Walz joined it, with the final three consisting of Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro, and Walz. I don't think it's too hard to surmise Kamala's thought processes here: Mark Kelly was a combat figher pilot and then a space shuttle pilot before his political career, which says he's an alpha male, although he's 60 and looks older. The NBC link has little to say about why he was ruled out:

Kelly had the most impressive résumé of any candidate, but many Democrats see him as an underwhelming speaker and personally cool.

Some Harris allies also felt he was not loyal enough to Biden in the trying weeks after his poor debate performance and believed he had not done enough to defend the administration’s border policies, according to a person familiar with the process.

In other words, as an alpha male, he was likely to upstage Kamala and make her complicity in Biden's policies look bad. Shapiro had similar disadvantages besides his Jewish heritage:

But perhaps more important than any specific issue was concern that Shapiro’s personal ambitions could conflict with hers — something raised directly to Harris’ team by an adviser to Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has clashed publicly with Shapiro.

“I would not want to be ahead of Josh Shapiro in the line of succession,” said a senior Democrat who has worked with him.

Shapiro is 51, 9 years younger than Kamala, ambitious, and he could be a credible prospect for 2028. He'd be working against Kamala his whole time as her vice president. The word seems to be that she didn't cross him off her list so much as he crossed her off his list:

Pennsylvania Gov. JOSH SHAPIRO’s team felt that his own interview with Harris did not go as well as it could have. There was “not a great feeling” coming out of it, according to a person in touch with Shapiro’s advisers. A person familiar with the selection process told our colleagues that, after their meeting on Sunday, Shapiro called Harris’ team and made clear that he was “struggling with the decision to leave his current job as governor, in order to seek the vice presidency.”

Or put another eway, he didn't need eight years as vice president under Kamala when he'd prefer to run for president himself in 2028, but beyond that, after reading Kamala face to face in the interview, he decided she was goinmg to lose in November, and he didn't need to be identified with that, either.

This brings us to the material cause of Walz's pick: the most attractive potential candidates for Kamala's running mate either specifically ruled themselves out -- Whitmer and Shapiro -- or were ruled out because they might add too much to the ticket -- Kelly and Shapiro. Why would this be? Because Whitmer and Shapiro, as well as Newsom, want to run in 2028. They don't want to waste their political appeal on a losing 2024 campaign.

The similarity with 1972 is the material cause of the vice presidential choices, Eagleton/Shriver in 1972, Walz in 2024 -- they're driven by the likelihood that the ticket will lose in November. The difference is that McGovern at least wanted the best running mate he could get; Kamala just wants someone who won't upstage her. And let's keep in mind that, according to the NBC link, her handlers wanted a middle-aged man -- but they got one who looks as old as Biden, with a lot of baggage. This is the choice forced on a likely loser.