Veepstakes - Why not Bonior?

Englishlefty — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:03:58 GMT

The Democrats have plenty of strong VP picks this cycle. Amongst those who get a lot of blogosphere attention I'm particularly partial to Sherrod Brown, Brian Schweitzer, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Kathleen Sebelius and Bill Richardson.

Nevertheless, the blogosphere doesn't make the decision. And we have less influence than the media. The conventional wisdom in the media is that Obama needs to pick a moderate elder statesman with defence and foreign policy credentials. A lot of people seem to be backing Sam Nunn.

This would be a truly appalling choice. He's been good on nuclear non-proliferation issues and is no doubt a dab hand at negotiating with banana republic despots, but he's terrible on economic issues and routinely favoured regressive social policies.

He supported the Iraq war and he mulled an independent run this year. The only saving grace is that he's too old to run as Obama's successor.

Thankfully such a choice appears unlikely at present. Obama's decision to interview Patty Murray suggests that he's not fooled by the beltway consensus that Unity 08 was a great idea.

Nevertheless, there's still an outside chance that Nunn, or similar wastes of space like former Indiana congressmen Lee Hamilton and Tim Roemer. And even if that doesn't happen, this kind of media discourse pushes the Overton window leftward, so figures like Feingold are not perceived as remotely plausible candidates.

To that end, I have a solution: David Bonior.
David Bonior was a Democratic representative from Michigan for more than two decades and was the Whip of the Democratic Caucus from 1991. In 2002 Republican redistricting divided up his district, so he ran for Governor instead, losing in the primary to Granholm. This cycle he was John Edwards' campaign manager and has since become a forceful advocate for Barack Obama.

He's got close ties to labour and has been an opponent of all manner of free trade agreements. He'd probably be able to bring Michigan out of McCain's reach and his background would be helpful in the Rust Belt and parts of Appalachia.

I won't pretend he's a perfect candidate. His base is white union members, which is not a demographic Obama has problems with, and it's far from certain he could also help in non-union households. Also, he's pro-life.

Yes, this is a major problem. Ordinarily, I'd say it disqualifies him. Except he's not going to succeed Obama, the judges he'd name would be economic populists more than they'd be pro-lifers and, most importantly of all, we're not trying to make him get the nod.

I don't think David Bonior should be VP. We have a lot of good candidates already and we should pick someone who can carry on after Obama. But putting him forward as an acceptable elder statesman is the best counter to Nunn. If change must be balanced with experience, let's have someone on the side of the working man. Let's have an opponent of the Iraq war. Let's stop pretending that sitting on Intelligence and Defence committees automatically makes you an expert on national security.

Why not David Bonior? There are good reasons why not, but all of them should move the narrative in a more progressive direction.

Open Left - David Bonior

Veepstakes - Why not Bonior?