Weighing Kamala Harris' Veep Options

A very special Reason Roundtable crossover episode with two guests from The Dispatch!

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Weighing Kamala Harris' Veep Options

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In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie welcome not just one but two special guests from The Dispatch. In this convivial Roundtable crossover episode, Jonah Goldberg and Kevin D. Williamson ruminate on Kamala Harris' veep options, identity politics, and drug legalization.

04:54—Kamala Harris' potential running mates

20:09—Identity politics across both major parties

36:40—Weekly Listener Question

56:16—This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Josh Shapiro Is Kamala Harris' Best Bet for Veep," by Robby Soave

"Trump and Harris Are Just Making It Up as They Go," by Eric Boehm

"J.D. Vance Has Changed a Lot Since the Days of Hillbilly Elegy," by Steven Greenhut

"Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Who Defended COVID Lockdowns in Court Now Says They Were a Mistake," by Eric Boehm

"Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Is Threatening To Veto His Own School Voucher Plan," by Eric Boehm

"Majority of Public Comments Support Descheduling or Legalizing Marijuana," by Joe Lancaster

"Don't Blame Decriminalization for Oregon Drug Deaths," by Jacob Sullum

"Glenn Loury on Economics, Black Conservatism, and Crack Cocaine," by Nick Gillespie

"Paris Spent $1.5 Billion Cleaning Poop Out of the Seine, and It's Still Too Dirty for Olympic Swimming," by Natalie Dowzicky

"Full Interview with Nick Gillespie (How the World Works)," by Kevin Williamson

"Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Melissa Chen: Bringing Enlightenment Values to the Middle East," by Nick Gillespie

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsors:

• We all carry around different stressors—big and small. When we keep them bottled up, it can start to affect us negatively. Therapy is a safe space to get things off your chest—and to figure out how to work through whatever's weighing you down. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists any time for no additional charge. Get it off your chest, with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/roundtable today to get 10 percent off your first month.

Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser
• Producer: Hunt Beaty

What are we consuming this week?

Nick Gillespie

• The Untold Stories of the Middle East by Olivia Cuthbert

Kevin D. Williamson

• What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Jonah Goldberg

• The Continental

Matt Welch

• Paris 2024 Olympic Games

---

Comments

[Dillinger]

how about one of you does five words on how it's even possible Carmela is choosing a running mate? not Williamson.

[Rick James]

Wait, there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump? Where is this being reported?

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Meta AI said it was fake.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Hush up. The adults are in the room picking your next vice president.

[Uncle Jay]

I recommend Harris either pick Omar, Tlaib, Kory Bush or some other person who has her values like Omar, Tlaib, Kory Bush or AOC. But whatever she must NOT do is pick a white, male, heterosexual, God-fearing candidate.
Other qualifications must include sleeping their way into power, be a total incompetent at our borders, clueless in foreign affairs, a total disaster regarding finance and economics, be able to fake an accent according to where the person is speaking, and cackle hysterically on demand, and be able to produce a word salad in a second's notice.
Otherwise, she will have to be justifiable crucified as a racist.

[Social Justice is neither]

You bigot!! How dare you not show your inclusivity by requiring a radical gender activist, preferably one in a dress sporting a beard and purple eyeshadow. Your lack of conformity to the cause has been noted.

[Roberta]

Why would a dress have a beard and eye shadow?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I understand that there's a dude fitting that description that's looking for a job. Now it's true that he's been convicted of luggage theft but I don't know why that would be disqualifying.

[Vernon Depner]

Luggage is white supremacy.

[Kungpowderfinger]

I understand that there’s a dude fitting that description that’s looking for a job

Has Oliver Chase picked his running mate yet?

[Minadin]

Cori Bush is getting primaried out tomorrow, and I don't think it will be close.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Two members of the faux libertarian junior varsity with two Dispatch-level clingers. Four culture war casualties.

Quite the irrelevant misfitfest.

[Idaho-Bob]

“What can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Look into a mirror and say this three times. Legend has it the entire DNC will skip their primary and gift a candidacy to the DEI cackler.

[Diarrheality]

Are your neurotic ejaculations intended to be intelligible, Reverend? Lay off the pruno, you dumb shit.

[Spinach Chin]

Lol, the Dispatch clingers are two of yours, dumbass

[DesigNate]

Lol, sure Artie.

[Eeyore]

Waste of mental energy.

[Rick James]

Gillespie: Harris is weird, Trump is very weird.

Isn't it amazing how words catch on with journalists the way phrases catch on with teenagers?

[CE]

Well, Democrats are the party of science. Weird science.

[Diarrheality]

The Weird Science™

[Social Justice is neither]

Almost like they're NPCs receiving patch changes periodically.

[Rick James]

So who are these two choads, talking about how Trump "tried to overthrow the government". Shut... the fucking fuck up.

[Rick James]

Oh, vocal Never Trumpers. Carry on then.

[Rick James]

Yeah, "conservatives" who are pro Medicare For All.

So Reason found two Stockholm Syndrome sufferers who call themselves "conservatives".

[Rick James]

So the woman-of-color identity pick for Biden wouldn't be in your top 25? Maybe not your top 50. Be still my heart. If I had to pick a 'strong woman of color' to be MY running mate, Kamala wouldn't be in my top 330,000,000.

[CE]

Word is she is picking Shapiro or Walz.

Shapiro would help in Pennsylvania, but risks losing votes in Michigan and elsewhere among the terrorist-sympathizer, pro-Hamas center-left wing of the Democrat Party.

Walz would help in Minnesota, in case Harris is worried about doing worse than Mondale in the Electoral vote.

[Rick James]

Oh Jeez, I'm agreeing with Jonah Goldberg now. Ok, he's only mostly douche.

[Rick James]

HAAAA! Gillespie claims that the reason drug decriminalization was such a total earth shattering failure in Oregon was because the state wasn't expanded volumetrically enough to deal with the 2nd order effects.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

So according to gillespie... everyone needs to follow what dumb ideas liberals have or things don't work. Kind of like the excuses for communism?

[Mike Parsons]

Kamala is, and will forever be, VEEP. She doesn't get her own

[Gaear Grimsrud]

So they won't even tells us what the listener question is. They're not even trying anymore.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

So Boehm says Shapiro defended Covid lockdowns and threatened to veto school choice. Robby declares Shapiro is the best bet. I don't know why but this actually makes sense.

[creech]

Shapiro delivers 19 electoral votes in Penna. where he is very popular.
What does Waltz deliver that isn't already blue?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Well, Minnesota is a swing-ish state. In 2016, Hillary won by less than 2%.

But Walz supposedly has a populist streak. I doubt it can compare to Trump's scapegoating but there it is.

[sarcasmic]

She can't possibly do worse than Vance.

[Mazakon]

I mean, she herself is worse than Vance.

[damikesc]

Who, precisely, are the people that the Bulwark dorks are actually speaking to?

Conservatives want nothing to do with them. Progs do not much like them.

[JeremyR]

Both the Dispatch and the Bulwark are basically places that lefties read so they can hate on current Republicans

[Vernon Depner]

So, are we still going with the assumption that Trump will still be the GOP candidate on election day? Do you think they'll give up on getting rid of him just because the first assassin missed?

[Nardz]

Great Britain's government declared war on native working class Brits and authorized Muslim gangs to set up check points and hunt whites.
As close to literally as is possible without using those exact words.
The Prime Minister did say "standing army" though.
And cops are kicking in doors arresting old ladies for social media posts.
Just FYI for those of you unaware of it.
It's a real happening.

[Nardz]

https://x.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1820517532710875626?t=5VXw8yBbdR7EdiJaIStOcA&s=19

BREAKING NOW: Jamie Raskin claims Congress will STOP TRUMP on J6, 2025 and create “civil war conditions.”

Will use the 14th Amendment..

PAYING ATTENTION NOW..

[Video]

[Vernon Depner]

I've been saying here for a couple of years now that they are deliberately trying to start a civil war. Raskin is saying the out loud part out loud.

[Nardz]

No, they want the kayfabe of a civil war, not a real one.
If they wanted a real civil war they wouldn't talk about it like this.

[Vernon Depner]

They want to provoke a popular insurrection as an excuse for imposing a full authoritarian regime backed by the military.

[AT]

Tulsi Gabbard is now on the potential domestic terrorist TSA watchlist.

Can't say I'd ever considered voting for a Democrat in my life, but Tulsi - I'll take you over Trump/Kamala any day of the week.

[Ersatz]

Thats just idiotic. Her policies are closer to Kammy than to Trumps on econ, ecol.
She is just more principled is all. She would be more like Trump in that she looks like she’d accept rulings that go against her rather than like Biden\Harris and just do ‘the thing’ regardless – and rely on the slow court process to make it a fait acompli.

They want to accumulate ‘all the things’, dont you know. ????

[It's only a paper moon, Nominalists]

Joel Shapiro is the worst choice , even THE NATION says so.
His name came up before 2 things happened. Stock Market Crash and Another attack feared on Israel, in both cases JS backs what many are saying are the major causes of those things happening.
No need to go into it, you have Internet and time to check

[NHLawyer]

Wait, did I just hear Nick say "we never really tried TRUE drug legalization"?

And was that followed by the view that what it really needs to work is a big edifice of treatment, law enforcement retraining, and other government activity?

Love you guys.

[SMP0328]

She picked Walz. Cue the Trump ads featuring the 2020 rioting in Minnesota in 3... 2... 1...

[NoVaNick]

Going with plain white vanilla cis, hetero, Tim Kaine did not help Hillary in 2016, and it’s not going to help Kamala in 2024. Also, MN has only voted blue for president since 1976.

[It's only a paper moon, Nominalists]

The anti-semitism is evident and as a person of Jewish descent I cannot in any way support Harris. THAT is the way all evils enter in the modern world, the righteous hatred that anti-semitism represents. Being evil and feeling saintly about it. When Wall Street crashes that will be blamed on Jews too.