The Veepstakes are over and the party candidate who has been Biden his time on picking a VP has finally chosen. It was expected. It was cliche. And most of all, contrary to my first impression, it was really smart. 

When I first heard Kamala Harris was Biden’s VP, I didn’t understand it. In my mind Biden has 3 groups to realistically pursue: young people, liberal people, and those mostly midwestern inbetween people who go between Republican and Democrat and are trying to decide between a devil we know and a devil with dementia.

I don’t see where Harris helps with any of these groups. Young people and liberal people don’t like her, as seen by her presidential campaign, because she tried to be too hip, too fake, and was a criminal prosecutor. She went after this group hard and got little support except for her zinger against Biden. Those midwestern people probably aren’t excited about some elite coastal Californian Woman of Color who they’ll call a bossy bitch who just wants to ascend to the presidency. 

So where is the gain?

Well, it shores up Biden’s base; all the moderate older black people and other people of color  as well as the liberal but not too woke white people are behind it. They can feel good about voting for a huge first for women and people of color while still voting for the whitest thing since cornbread. It lends credence to the whole “Biden actually isn’t going to destroy the police” narrative because Harris was a prosecutor and was ‘tough on crime’ for so long. It puts someone who has actually won elections (looking at you Susan Rice) in a position to win an election and offsets Biden’s weird way of talking with a very put together sharp tongue.

Biden’s also winning by about 7-8 points nationally and has about eclipsed the 50% mark nationally. That’s a good spot to be in and hey, why potentially jeopardize it? Hold and maybe grow, but don’t go for the touchdown when you only need a field goal.

Also Harris’s downsides aren’t that low to be honest. Yes she and Biden had a spat in the debates, but hey Ted Cruz and Trump are best buddies now after threatening bodily harm against each other, so I think everyone won’t give a damn. She’s too ambitious? Well, most VPs do actually run for the presidency, so how is that a problem? Also I love the idea of having someone I could envision being president as a vice president when the president will be 78 on inauguration and, again, probably has dementia.

Most VP candidates shore up a presidential candidate’s base; Tim Kaine shoring up people who were nervous the rest of the country was sexist, Joe Biden shoring up people who were nervous the rest of the country was racist, Mike Pence shoring up the religious people who were disgusted with Trump, Sarah Palin shoring up young people with what was, at the time, an extremely old nominee. Paul Ryan was just kind of a weird choice to be honest, but Romney is a Mormon so it makes sense.

Throw in the fact that Harris has already been vetted by the news media. There probably aren’t many skeletons in her closet that we don’t know about, unless conservative media held them back knowing she’d be in the spotlight again, which I doubt.

I recently heard that some people think she isn’t qualified, which is an idea so ridiculous I wasn’t even going to mention it. She’s a Senator (Like Tim Kaine and Biden before her, more than Pence or Sarah Palin) and was the DA of San Francisco and Attorney General of the largest state in the union.

Most of the other VP candidates had much larger avenues of attack. Warren feeds into the right wing theory that Biden is just pretending to be a moderate and is actually a radical left wing puppet. Whitmer feeds into the theory that Democrats are authoritarians (ironic, I know). Susan Rice revives Benghazi. The rest, like I said, haven’t been vetted by the news media, both mainstream and fringe, and only Rice is black. 

Harris is the obvious choice. The right choice. When you’re winning, do no harm.