If anything, strong primary performance is usually treated as a negative, because a runningmate with a big national following would distract from the top of the ticket and line up some ugly news cycles about "second thoughts" among voters about the ordering of the ticket.

There's a reason that Barack Obama chose Joe Biden, who'd had a disastrous run in the '08 primary, and set up Hillary Clinton for an off-ticket position in the administration (and as a bonus, it was a position where her skills would be put to better use -- another relevant parallel to Warren). Biden wasn't gonna be a distraction from the Obama phenomenon (apart from the gaffes that everyone was already factoring in); he would be a team player; he shored up a few of Obama's perceived weaknesses (inexperience, skepticism from "white working class" voters); and helped solidify an important state (PA).

Sometimes primary runs go poorly because voters might respect a candidate generally speaking, but think there are better 'headline' choices for the top of the ticket. This was why I was I was thinking of Castro as an eventual runningmate for either Harris or Warren, back when their campaigns were looking strong (there was about a week like that for Harris, LOL), even though Castro's campaign never looked promising. He just seemed like a natural runningmate. I wasn't the only one saying he was actually running for Vice President. He complemented a lot of different possible candidates, brought a sense of continuity with the Obama years, and was the right age to be a very strong standard-bearer in 2028.


I actually think the argument for Warren on the ticket HAS gotten stronger lately, as the pandemic seems to have pushed a lot of people (even Trump voters) to want a technocrat with a plan for everything. If we could start the primary race over from scratch, I think Warren would do a lot better in these circumstances. And I think it could really help to have her on the ticket. At the same time, if people finally fell in love with Professor Warren, then again we'd get the problem of the ticket seeming 'upside-down' and depressing enthusiasm for Biden. I imagine Warren has the most value as a vocal surrogate on the campaign trail, with the natural implication that she might run Treasury, Labor, CFPB, Education, even HHS. Biden's argument needs to be "I'll be a manager, looking for input from non-sycophants who really know what the fuck they're doing." Barack Obama showed how much better that model is than Trump's 'first, everyone in this meeting will say I'm doing a great job' approach.

The biggest weakness of Harris as a runningmate, I think, is that she doesn't help with any important states (though the same can be said of Warren). If not for Joe's age, I'd say he needs to pick a complete newcomer from an important state. That seems to be the argument for Stacey Abrams. It's part of why I've been thinking about Val Demings. On the other hand, in this cycle where people are worried about Joe's age and there's an implicit agreement that he might retire and hand over the ticket in 2024, I think there's more impetus for an "already presidential" choice. This helps Kamala and probably Klobuchar, who I think everyone has always agreed would be a fine president if only they hadn't had to campaign for the position. It helps Warren too, but again she's a riskier bet and would probably help more elsewhere.

I'm all over the place on this, LOL.