Uncle Vinny tries to pick a VP

People keep walking up to me on the street, asking me who Obama should pick for Vice President. He’ll decide in a few days, apparently, but for now, here’s my opinion:

My dream pick!
Al Gore

I’m warming up to:
Wesley Clark
John Kerry
Kathleen Sebelius
Mark Warner

People I guess I could live with:
Bill Richardson
Joe Biden (wrong on the war, let’s recall)
Tim Kaine
Tom Daschle

I would like ‘em, but not likely to be a net plus for the ticket:
Janet Napolitano
John Podesta
Bill Bradley
Chris Dodd

Noooooo, please noooo, oh man nooooooo
Evan Bayh
Hillary Clinton
Claire McCaskill
Sam Nunn
Jack Reed
John Edwards
Chuck Hagel
Michael Bloomberg

The word on the street is that the shortlist is Bayh, Biden and Kaine. Sigh.

Veepstakes fantasy-blogging

I posted earlier about the GOP veepstakes race, and I’m still guessing it’ll be Lieberman, Huckabee or Jindal. But lately I’ve been really stumped as to who Obama will/should pick for his running mate, and dreading the thought that he might pick Hillary Clinton or someone banally malicious from her circle like Evan Bayh.

Today it hit me that Al Gore would be my fantasy pick. Why not? Obama could promise him that he could spend most of his time on global warming. People are much more sympathetic to Gore as time has passed and he’s won all the prizes ‘n’ such. Plus, it would reassure a lot of people who are worried about Obama’s experience level.

In other news, I read today that Obama is quickly moving to reshape the DNC to match at least one of his campaign promises: no more campaign donations from national lobbyists. This is a great first step, but probably more of an matter of appearances than anything. It’s not retroactive, and not too many future donations would be rejected anyway. I love his moves towards greater transparency and accountability in politics and government, however. There was news somewhere today that McCain was signing on to the Obama/Coburn bill that would require better reporting on government spending; I love to see this kind of bipartisanship.

Gah, I’ve been very policy-oriented lately. Fluff and nonsense coming soon, I promise.

May madness!

This “choose the GOP VP” thing from MSNBC is kinda fun, and I might do better on it than I did in my office basketball pool… I could hardly do worse.

There are some fun matchups in there… I’m playing trying to figure out which is most likely, not which I think would be best for America or best for the GOP. With the “likelihood” criteria in mind, choosing between David Petraeus and Fred Thompson is pretty tough, but I chose Petraeus. Joe Lieberman versus Phil Gramm is a disaster for the GOP, America and the fabric of the universe, I chose Lieberman. There is no way anyone ever picks Lindsay Graham for VP over Bobby Jindal, and Michael Dell’s chances of getting the nod are 10 times higher than Condoleeza Rice’s, although they’re still vanishingly small.

So who do I actually think is gonna win?  I’m going to lean towards Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty and Joe Lieberman, with Mike Huckabee also a possibility. C’mon, Senator McCain, surprise us!