I think Castro would be an excellent choice. He’s fairly unknown, but would make a great splash. He’s smart, capable, young and well-spoken. While the VP position is ceremonial in nature, it’s also a springboard many times to the Presidential spot. I don’t think it would turn off white male voters and I’m not sure how you get there. I would argue that he would get Hispanic voters, but as to whether they would be significant or not is not really relevant because Hispanics aren’t exactly flocking to the Republicans.
This is one of the best reasons he should be considered. Energizing the young vote is important and having a VP and a President hovering around their 70s is bad politics and isn’t going to appeal much to the broader electorate. For the love of God, get some young blood in there. If for no other reason, than the future of the party.
Bernie has no pluses to bring to the table as VP. The vast majority of those who will vote for him will vote for another Dem candidate in his place, so there is no win there. If Hillary picks him, her campaign will be hit with every cudgel that will be aimed at Bernie…socialism…gun control…those weird rape fantasy things he drafted years ago.
Hillary didn’t stand on that stage and essentially declare herself NOT a socialist to turn around and pick a self declared socialist for her VP. She isn’t going to do it. I’ve thought it might be one of the Castros for a long time, so we’ll see.
What machine? In all the polls, Hillary beats him handily to the nomination. How is she suffering without his machine? I would argue, given the polls in most of the states, his ‘machine’ is clearly lacking in organization.
Polls do not always reflect the ground machine that has been set up by a candidate. Numerous news articles have detailed the fact that Sanders has developed a ground structure aimed at bringing in voters. As for the national polls, those are pretty much indicative of nothing. Currently, Sanders is polling very strongly against Clinton in the first two electoral contests- Iowa and New Hampshire. While people love to dismiss those, they often ignore the reality that those two contests really impact the narrative. Iowa also depends heavily upon the ground level machine set up by the candidate since the winner is often the person who can turn out the most people.
Polls outside of New Hampshire and Iowa at this point are less likely to be as accurate as those two largely due to news coverage of those two contests and the fact that the narrative has tended to change heavily in the days after those two.
Castro has a huge negative and no real positives. His name will be used against the campaign in a huge manner. And you just noted that he is not going to bring in Hispanic voters who are flocking away from the Republican Party not towards them. Hispanic voters are going to vote for the Democrats more than they are for the Republican Party, so bringing him into the ticket is not going to help on that front. And let us be blunt here, there are two Castros that we can talk about and neither of them is going to change the color of their state. Texas is not going to go Blue while California is already blue.
I would also note that having a young man as VP is not necessarily going to energize young voters. Young voters are pretty energized around Sanders right now, and that is growing over time. Castro is not exactly an exciting person either. I’ve seen interviews with him. He and Clinton could easily be considered the Beige Candidates.
Clinton is already going to be attacked as a Commie-Fascist-Socialist-Whatever…the issue of gun control is a non-starter until, as Sanders pointed out, you get a lot of people pushing for new regulations. I’ve stated quite often that, until we can disable or destroy the NRA, gun control as a campaign subject is a moot point. And as for that ‘weird rape fantasy things’ he wrote about more than fifty years ago, I don’t think you’re going to be able to get much in the way of traction on those. It was bad satire and Sanders record largely obliterates that. Besides, the things they can go after Clinton after are far, far more numerous than anything they can go after Sanders over.
Simply put, snagging Castro to be the VP has next to no positives. I’m not stating that Sanders would be the most ideal candidate for VP, but the people everyone constantly love to bring up are pretty much worse than Sanders. The biggest problem for Castro is the fact that minorities on the whole do not vote identity politics and nominating him will seem like pandering which might actually drive away Hispanic voters.
But, you and I are going to disagree, so not much point in going forward after this point.
