this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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I'd rather she be VP for Walz first. I'm not ready to roll the dice again on Americans voting for a woman, and AOC in particular has been heavily demonized. Walz has the benefit of being a folksy old white dude, which seems much more electable across the board.
I'm okay with Walz if it comes down to it, but honestly, I don't know that the demonization moderates may see towards AOC really outweighs energizing the base at this polarized point in our political history.
That's why I think a safe-but-amenable ticket header like Walz works best. We get the benefit of base activation since she's still on the ticket, without fully exposing ourselves to the biases against her.
No one gives a fuck who the VP is. JD Vance proves that pretty effectively but so did your own suggestion of Walz. He just was VP and it didn't do shit for Harris.
On the contrary, I was one of many who breathed a little easier voting for Harris because he was on the ticket. The general wisdom is you choose a VP that scoops demographics that the ticket head misses. Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one does. I'm sure Vance scooped a couple shy demographics for Trump.
I like Walz. My leftist Minnesotan friends like Walz. He's a likeable guy, he seems remarkably leftist for his demographic, which is the highly electable "old white dude". The people who care about VPs will care that it's AOC, and the people who don't will see a friendly, straight-shootin' white dude. Have a sense of strategy for Marx's sake.
Sure, that's the conventional wisdom but it seems like you're missing that this is quite literally exactly what they said about Walz and Harris and we already know how that played out. I'm not sure how many times we have to do this the safe way before people start to understand that the safe option isn't what people want.
Howso? That's not what I saw at all.
It is what most people want. There is a fraction of a percent of the population who wants the exact same outcome as you. Most of them just wanna mind their own business and try to be a good neighbor.
You're not going to radicalize 80 million people. Until the electoral mechanism is changed, you're going to have to find the 80 million voter bloc that offends you the least and caucus with them.
I'd argue Walz is too folksy. I can see MAGA walking all over him. I can't see them doing the same to AOC or an American born version of Mamdani (if they exist), for example.
Doesn't mean more regressive white people would vote for AOC or that hypothetical but Obama won twice with only 43% and 39% of the white vote so its doable.