Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz or Pete Buttigieg? Here is Kamala Harris' best pick for VP, campaign expert says

[Zoomie1986]

44. He wouldn't be my choice if he were straight

Because his resume is so thin that it does nothing for the ticket.

He has never won anything but a small town mayor's office and a couple of primaries in small, racially homogenous states. He couldn't carry over his appeal to bigger states with more diverse voters, and that's beyond concerning in a party that relies on appealing to diverse voters to win.

He has zero foreign policy experience.

He's never served in a legislature, and certainly not at the federal level, when one of the most important jobs of a VP is wheeling and dealing with Capitol Hill. Every VP all the way back to Truman has served in the Senate, to capitalize on those valuable experiences and tap into the network they build from serving there.

He's never been a governor or even lt governor, only a cabinet member or a mayor. This is important because being a governor gives him experience at making decisions about a broader range of issues that are far more complex than what a mayor or cabinet member faces.

You know who he is?

The gay Anglo version of Julian Castro, but without the rags to riches back story. Their resumes are freakishly similar and they're not far apart in age, so why isn't anyone pushing for Castro as VP, when he could bring in not only the youth vote, but also wake up that sleeping giant known as the Hispanic demographic, which could throw a spanner into the GOP's complacency about Texas? I don't think he'd turn the state blue, because, well, Texas, plus Anglos aren't as enamored of him as the Hispanics...

But he might scare the pants off the GOP with how much Hispanic turnout he could generate in the state. He could very well generate enough to put Colin Allred over the top for his Senate bid against the loathsome Ted Cruz (or Red Ooze as my mother calls him).

So why not push for Castro, when he has a similar resume to Buttigieg, was mayor of a far larger city (at least 10X as large as South Bend during his tenure), whose job as San Antonio mayor meant regularly engaging with Latin America (at least some foreign policy experience), and who loses us nothing with the youth vote but could tap into an even bigger demographic?

When looked at objectively, the reason Buttigieg is not a good fit for VP is why Castro isn't: Neither is ready for prime time yet, and won't be until they win a statewide office, get elected to Congress or the Senate, wrangle a major foreign policy position at the federal level--something--anything--that shores up those thin resumes.

I hope you do not think that these criticisms mean that I don't like the man when I do, very much. I think he's super-intelligent and quick on his feet in interviews. I think his future is as bright as he is--he's going places, if he plays his cards right and gets some more experience under his belt. We all know it.

But none of that is enough for the job at hand right now.