Tuesday, 6 July 2004

I can't handle this confusion

It appears that the Kerry Veepstakes will come to an end today. Will Collier is betting on Gephardt, both Dan Drezner (who thinks Edwards is the man) and Matt Yglesias think Gephardt would be a bad choice, and Robert Garcia Tagorda is, as they used to say, afk.

I really don’t care much either way (except that it’ll be a relief to go from the endless McCain speculation to the endless explanations of why the selectee is inferior to McCain), but I think the better choice—grudges and ego aside—is John Edwards. I suspect this election is largely going to revolve around motivating the base to turn out,* and Edwards is far better on the stump with Democratic constituencies than Gephardt—or, for that matter, Kerry—is. Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dick Cheney would wipe the floor with Gephardt in the veep debate, while I think Edwards could hold his own.

* This is another reason why McCain wouldn’t have been a good choice for Kerry, especially when you consider that there’s probably a vault full of S&L dirty laundry in Washington with McCain’s name on it.