The Biden-Warren calculus

There is a fellow I know, well-educated and professionally accomplished and reasonably admirable, whose politics are moderate in a right-leaning, business-first kind of way.

He comes from a well-known family and went to a noted college and is generally establishmentarian, though not without independent thought.

He hasn’t much use for Donald Trump, though his disdain is not as thorough as I think it should be. To explain the preposterous second-place and Russian-endorsed atrocity as merely “a real estate developer from Queens” is to be unfair to real estate developers from Queens.

My friend maintained for months, through the competitive portion of the Democratic presidential primary, that he would vote Democratic in the fall unless he got saddled with Elizabeth Warren as the alternative. In that case, he’d go libertarian or with some other off-brand.

I don’t think he’d ever vote for Bernie Sanders, either, but Warren’s mainstream bona fides worried him more. He thought he was more likely to confront the distaste of her nomination than Bernie’s.

He was in a funk when Warren burst into the polling lead, then of a better mood as she faded, then near-blissful to have the uninspiring comfort of Joe Biden as his alternative.

Then, last week, he was concerned that he might yet get Warren as the running mate to a 77-year-old nominee—78 by the time he’d be sworn in—if you get that drift.

I should explain why my acquaintance has such an aversion to Warren.

It’s that he loves small local banks with their personal and community connections and vital roles in local economies. He is repulsed that Warren insisted post-2008 not only on regulatory restraint on the big banks, but that small banks get included in a way that impaired their ability to loan funds.

But, most of all, he is offended that Warren, given the opportunity years ago to relax the rules for small banks, leveraged her national Democratic prominence to protect her “brand” against any appearance of retreat.

And he thinks she hasn’t been truthful about that and that the media give her a pass.

He’s probably correct about all that, but it doesn’t seem nearly reason enough to cast the vote for Trump that a throwaway vote effectively would amount to.

By tweeting “liberate Michigan” and saying that some of these Democratic governors have been extreme in their coronavirus restrictions, Trump is essentially cheering insurrection by armed protesters.

He is endorsing illegal resistance to his own coronavirus policies, which he doesn’t believe in because he doesn’t believe in anything other than the incessant fleeting delusions of his narcissism.

Trump doesn’t really intend to foment illegality. His ego simply blinds him to any context outside himself.

We might fix the small-bank issue. You can’t fix Trump.

What’s happened most recently is that Warren has now issued her endorsement of Biden, one grounded on his personal decency, which is the right place, and maybe only. Then she answered a reporter’s question as to whether she’d accept an offer to be Biden’s running mate by saying simply “yes.”

Since then, the idea has gained currency. Biden must win in pivotal upper Midwestern states, and a poll shows that—right now, anyway— Warren’s populism would help Biden more in Wisconsin than Amy Klobuchar’s geographic and ideological proximity.

By the way, Minnesota has a Democratic governor in the middle of his term, and he would appoint Klobuchar’s successor, removing that factor in her case.

Warren would give the ticket more pizzazz, more substance, more passion and more vital ideological balance, meaning hope of appeal to the left flank, even Bernie’s part of it. And that might mobilize the strong turnout a Democratic victory would require.

People who saw what Warren did to destroy mega-billionaire Michael Bloomberg in a debate salivate at the thought of her squaring off against Mike Pence, throwing down her smart spunk against his unctuousness.

There are two prevailing reasons for Biden not to choose her, and one is bogus.

The bogus one is that Democrats would lose her vital Democratic Senate seat from Massachusetts and perhaps thus squander a shot at control of the Senate.

Then-Democratic leader Harry Reid had that matter legally researched in 2016 and was satisfied he could spare Warren as Hillary Clinton’s running mate. That was because, in the event of her Senate resignation, the moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts could make an appointment of only 145-160 days during which a special election would be called and almost certainly won by the Democrat in that state.

You might wind up after a relatively fleeting moment with a different Democratic senator from Massachusetts and the former one as the president of the Senate, where she could cast tie-breaking votes.

Warren could resign in June as the vice-presidential nominee and force the Republican governor to set the special election to replace her to coincide with the general election in November. The only downside to that is that she would wind up with nothing if she and Biden lost. Those are the stakes and the risks. That’s life.

The better reason for Biden to go with someone other than Warren is that modern running-mate selections have been factors only in a negative sense, by doing harm, and seldom if ever by making a positive difference.

By that reckoning, Warren has higher negatives than, say, Klobuchar, and might, in the end, do more harm than good for a nominee who, for better or worse, will have to make his own case in October.

Bush the First won with Dan Quayle. But McCain lost with Sarah Palin. The difference was that Quayle clung to enough blandness, albeit shallow blandness, to do no harm, while Palin offended enough to do harm.

If this comes down to a standard election by which Biden will need a running mate doing him no harm, then Klobuchar would be best.

Stacey Abrams lacks national experience, and Kamala Harris turned people off in the primary. Thus, for their clear positives, they risk negative effects.

But if this is a unique modern circumstance in which Biden, because of age and declining skills, needs an injection of energy and substance and a solid heir-apparent, then he must look long on the irrepressible Warren, notwithstanding the lightning rod she is.

Biden can’t go wrong with the dono-harm Klobuchar. He conceivably could go wrong, but also more right, with the greater dynamism that is Warren.

He’d lose my buddy, but energize others to greater electoral effect.

Anyway, my friend lives and votes in Arkansas, currently a Trump wasteland politically. So, his electoral votes— like mine and yours—will be cast for Trump no matter how he votes.