Tulsi Gabbard 2024

Why is Tulsi Gabbard still in the Democratic presidential race?

She obviously has no hope of winning the nomination.

It might be, then, to advance her ideas—her pacifist program. But she isn’t able to do much of that, since the party establishment is determined to keep her off the debate stage.

How about this thought? Might she be keeping herself in the public eye in hopes of being nominated for Vice President? Especially in the event of a brokered convention.

Seems to me she’d make a good choice for either Bernie or Biden, were he the nominee.

In either case, she would balance the top of the ticket geographically, West and East, sexually, and in her youthfulness. She checks the intersectional boxes, so important to Democrats, as Biden or Sanders themselves do not: female, Hindu, Polynesian.

For Sanders, she might pull in more moderate voters, while at the same time seeming sympatico. Like Sanders, she is a rebel against the party establishment. She was a major backer of Sanders in 2016.

But she looks like an even better fit for Biden.

Biden might want to pick someone clearly to his left, in order to soothe the Sanders supporters. But Sanders himself is too old, and there is a grudge between Bernie and Warren supporters. AOC is too young to be legal.

Any selection on this basis also risks failing to appease Sanders supporters, who tend to be purists, while alienating the independent vote Biden needs most. The farther left, after all, in the classically cynical political calculation, have nowhere else to go.

He does not urgently need to shore up the black vote—he has been their favourite during the primaries. So there is no pressing need to pick a black running mate.

Tulsi has perhaps the best available crossover potential; oddly in both directions. A lot of independents and even Republicans like her anti-war stance. At the same time, a lot of Bernie supporters like her—see, for example, Jimmy Dore. Putting her on the ticket could also shield Biden from the charge of being a candidate entirely bought and paid for by the establishment. If, that is, he really isn’t.

Gabbard has also shown the one most valuable trait in a VP candidate: she is an extremely effective attack dog. This is the traditional VP candidate role, making the pointed attacks, so that the presidential candidate can look presidential, above the fray. Gabbard ended Kamala Harris’s candidacy in one of the most effective presidential debate exchanges of all time.

Given Biden’s age and health, Gabbard would stand a good chance of taking over during his term, or at least being given much more responsibility than a VP usually has. And she would be the natural successor in four years. Biden is sure not to be a two-term president.

If he fails, as VP pick, she still becomes the frontrunner to be nominated next time out.

I think she might stay in for that.