2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAny thoughts on potential VP Vilsack?
Haven't heard much opinion on him around DU.
What do folks think about him as VP?
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Her Sister
(6,444 posts)But I trust the nominee to pick her running mate! Many good choices: a good problem.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)That's why it is her choice 100 percent.
chillfactor
(7,573 posts)
OnDoutside
(19,948 posts)
Renew Deal
(81,846 posts)He's Big-Agra
Funtatlaguy
(10,862 posts)1. Swing State
2. Iowa Senate race - coat tails?
3. Well respected, no real enemies.
Cons
Another old boring white male.
Fairly moderate - won't excite progressives or millenials
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)I expect Perez to be the top choice.
flor-de-jasmim
(2,125 posts)She is the only one on the list who seems to generate excitement. KAine was dull on the campaign trail--Martin O'M would bring more.
People want to feel that the status quo will change for the betterment of the 99%. LIz Warren is the best bet of those being considered.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Is he a good choice?
PatSeg
(47,275 posts)There were many objections to him as Secretary of Agriculture because of his close ties to Monsanto.
Vilsack was named Governor of the Year by the biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.
The undemocratic and highly unpopular 2005 seed pre-emption bill was Vilsack’s brainchild. The law strips local government’s right to regulated genetically engineered seed (including where GE can be grown, maintaining GE-free buffers or banning pharma corn locally).
Vilsack is an enthusiastic supporter of corn and soy-based biofuels, which use as much or more fossil fuel energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor. Funny how GM corn and soy now proliferate the US landscape, under heavily government subsidized funding, no less.
snip
Vilsack has, in fact, promoted the most controversial and dangerous forms of agricultural biotechnology, including pharma crops, plants genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. When grown outdoors on farmland, where most pharma crop trials have occurred, pharma crops can easily contaminate conventional and organic varieties.
http://naturalsociety.com/agriculture-secretary-tom-vilsack-meets-with-monsanto-to-discuss-agricultural-advances-for-2016/
He is much more than another boring white guy.
treestar
(82,383 posts)why not consider MOM?
CrispyQ
(36,423 posts)People want to feel that the status quo will change for the betterment of the 99%.
I would also like Warren & think that it could generate a ton of excitement. It's riskier, but personally, I'd bet on it.
Response to oberliner (Original post)
Chan790 This message was self-deleted by its author.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Though I don't really know many specifics about him except what I've looked up online.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Nothing wrong with him, per se, but he'd be a very conventional choice who evoke lots of "WHO???" comments.
Not the right choice for this cycle IMO.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Personally, I think a conventional choice might be the way to go, but what is your perspective?
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)None of her top choices are BAD. But I think this cycle requires something more than merely a perfectly competent pick. <shrug>
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Would certainly add some fireworks!
Bad Thoughts
(2,514 posts)I'm not excited either.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)by 5 percentage points.
Obama easily won re-election because he inspired Democrats to turn out, and Democratic turnout beat Republicans overall.
If Clinton wants to drive up Democratic turnout to 2008 and 2012 levels, she is NOT going to get it with Tom Vilsack or Tim Kaine.
The people on the short list that would drive up turnout would be Elizabeth Warren for some of the Sanders/progressive holdouts, and Xavier Becerra or Julian Castro to drive up Hispanic turnout even further.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I think Trump voters are Trump voters - they aren't going to switch to Hillary.
It's all about making sure the Democratic base gets out and voters in large numbers.
Particularly, women and minority voters, as Trump will win big with white males (probably even more so than recent Republicans).
TheBlackAdder
(28,167 posts).
Then, there would be no doubt that Monsanto is partially controlling public policy!
Moving from the Dept. of Agriculture to the Veep's Office!
.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Can you clarify?
TheBlackAdder
(28,167 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Do I at least understand that correctly? That your post was sarcastic?
TheBlackAdder
(28,167 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)I will have to look into that issue - I confess to total ignorance on the subject.
TheBlackAdder
(28,167 posts)PatSeg
(47,275 posts)Vilsack and Monsanto. Plenty of reasons to not pick him.
brooklynite
(94,355 posts)Republicans are good at netting down their message into simple words, and repeating them. We are not.
An Apocryphal joke by Al Franken goes:
"I was in a parking lot and there were two cars, with Republican and Democratic bumper stickers.
The Republican bumper sticker said 'Cut Taxes; family values; strong defense'.
The Democratic bumper sticker had 10 lines of 6-point type, which ended with 'continued on the next bumper sticker'".
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I still don't think we have a good slogan for our side in this election to be honest.
metroins
(2,550 posts)Our side is severely lacking in message.
I mean we'll win, and win easily, because Trump is so bad; but if they had a real candidate, without a message we'd be falling behind.
CanonRay
(14,084 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)No thanks.
Warren would be good. A bunch of others mentioned above would be good.
But please, not Vilsack. He's like the peanut butter and jelly choice. Kaine provides the white bread.
Her Sister
(6,444 posts)Plodding!? Nope! She did awesome!
HRC #45
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I am not sure I get what you are saying here.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)her campaign is pretty much MIA.
She should be getting face time for live TV interviews, and responding to specific attacks live and in color.
Hunkering down and letting surrogates say something, or tweeting a response is neither smart, nor effective.
Look at her opponent. In every other case, the candidate was saved for last. The last night, the big roll out, the adulation and joy of having a united party. Il Cheeto has destroyed that approach, probably for good. Honestly, I doubt that we will ever have a convention in the conventional sense ever again. Instead, technology will probably be used in ways I cannot imagine. Il Cheeto appeared monday, he was on the air on Tuesday, he already gave one interview today, and his ugly mug will be plastered on the TV most of the evening tomorrow.
Free advertising, free PR, free propaganda. And in response? Silence from Hillary. THAT IS A CAMPAIGN AIMING TO NOT LOSE, not aiming to win. And with an unpredictable, TV-savvy, attention whore like him, we can and will lose.
I guarantee you that at this rate, during the DEM convention, Il Trumpo will have far more face time on boredcast and cable than she will, especially during prime time. I bet that even during some stirring speeches by supporters and surrogates, the media will cut away and listen to Trump. In fact, I guarantee it.
She and her campaign will scream bloody murder, but they will have already squandered every opportunity she has now and through her convention.
And when the predicted post convention bump fails to appear, watch her reboot her campaign for the fourth time.
We can lose this thing, and I gotta say, she seems to be aiming to not lose. That is unforgivable.
CrispyQ
(36,423 posts)Like it or not, perception is a big part of how people decide who to vote for. HRC needs all the enthusiasm she can get this election.
PatSeg
(47,275 posts)
Vilsack is much worse than a yawn. Progressives find his history with Monsanto very disturbing and were upset when Obama nominated in Secretary of Agriculture. He would be a terrible choice.
CrispyQ
(36,423 posts)
Dem leadership continues to make poor choices, yet if we end up with President Trump they will blame the left. She needs a high energy running mate.
PatSeg
(47,275 posts)A lot of Democrats that I know are still lukewarm or even hostile to Hillary. A great VP pick might get them on board. We can't risk a Trump presidency.
Got your PM!
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)Why him?
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Their campaigns have worked together and continue to work together very well. They'll make an excellent President and VP.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)The article is about the Vilsacks and their long friendship with the Clintons and how hard they worked for her.
http://www.gq.com/story/trail-of-tears
Sitting in the kitchen, waiting for him to wake up, I can’t help but wonder why they never replaced this hideous linoleum floor. (Governors don’t get paid much, but Jesus.) This is so Vilsack. Tom and Christie spent eight years in one of the most glorious governor’s mansions in the country—18,000 square feet of splendor in Des Moines—but were happy (relieved, actually) to come back to the place they call home: This big old house filled with mismatched “antiques” that Christie inherited from her family, who generations ago picked up pieces on the sidewalk and restored them to make a living. The only relics from their time in the mansion are on a silver tray in the dining room: teacups commemorating each year that Tom was governor. (Christie’s idea.)
SNIP
Tom’s wingtips are neatly placed by the kitchen door. It was impossible not to notice how, the moment he walked into the house, he removed his shoes, Boy Scout–style. Or how everything in the house—the sturdy kitchen table that Tom’s mother gave them the money for decades ago; the floral-print couch that is their newest acquisition (purchased twenty years ago); the homemade pie shell on the kitchen counter; the child-sized rocking chair and baby rattle, the only things left from Tom’s Dickensian childhood—seems to state the obvious: These are good people. Good people who are about to get their wholesome asses handed to them.
SNIP
It wasn’t until he ran for president that he knew much of anything about where he came from. Last winter, during a campaign stop, he gave an interview and mentioned that he was adopted and grew up in Pittsburgh. Soon after, he got a letter from a nun: She worked at the orphanage where he’d been born and enclosed pictures of the place and of the kids who’d lived there with him. Did he want to know more? He did. She told him that his birth mother had been 23 (not the desperate teenager he’d imagined), that she’d called herself Gloria (an alias), and that his birth name was Kenneth. When he was fifteen months old, a couple from Pittsburgh came to the orphanage and picked him out of the litter. “My mother used to make fun about this,” he says, “and I always thought she was kidding. She made it sound like she was shopping for a Thanksgiving turkey. She said, ‘We looked for the plumpest kid we could find,’ on the theory that I’d be the healthiest kid.”
His father was a real estate agent, “a truly great human being, a people person. But not a good business guy. When he died, he was virtually penniless.” Both parents drank, but his mother was an especially ugly alcoholic. His childhood memories are these: being afraid to come home from school because he never knew how drunk his mother would be and whether she would beat him. Waking up in the middle of the night and peeking out his bedroom door to see his father walking his mother up and down the hall, trying to keep her awake and alive till the ambulance came, because she had drunk too much or taken pills to try to kill herself. Hearing the clunk clunk of liquor bottles crashing. “She’d go up in the attic and lock herself up there for weeks, and all you’d hear would be the dropping of liquor bottles on the floor.”
By the time he was an adolescent, his mother had been in and out of hospitals, mental and otherwise, and was living on her own. On his thirteenth birthday, his father took him and his sister to Mom’s apartment—she wanted to make him a steak dinner for his birthday. When they arrived, she was blotto (as usual), staggering around, too drunk to cook. The birthday boy got up and walked out. “That’s it, I’m done,” he told himself. Two weeks later, on Christmas Day, his mother was on a train somewhere, drunk, when she decided she’d had enough. “She had a religious experience, a revelation, whatever you want to call it.” She never drank another drop.
In the years she had left (she died at 57 of cancer), they grew very close. He learned to love her in ways he never dreamed possible. “She taught me to never give up,” he says. “She taught me the capacity of the human spirit to overcome anything.” She also left him with the legacy of a son of an alcoholic, something his pal Bill Clinton shares: You always try to fix things, always try to please, and always, at some level, feel that whatever happens, it is probably your fault.
