Vice President Kamala Harris is beginning to vet about a dozen possible candidates to be her running mate as she approaches one of most consequential decisions of her new presidential candidacy.
He also has a twin brother who is also an astronaut, that means double the campaigning and no one will know! /s
For real though, Kelly would probably be a great choice, if nothing more than because his politics are at least okay, and his career hopefully makes it really really hard for Republicans to criticize him.
Out of all the likely names I've seen, Roy Cooper (well liked governor from a swing state) seems like the one with the fewest turds on his record. He made some rough pro-Israel statements in October, but when progressives in his state complained he met with them and started stressing the need to protect Palestinian civilians after that (who had just gone entirely unmentioned in his first statements).
Not to mention, his wife was a politician who survived an assassination attempt - she was shot in the head and had to relearn a lot of basic tasks. Takes a bit of the wind out of Trumps sails on that front.
I wouldn't mind an astronaut. At all. He'd probably kick our space program in the ass and we can finally get that moon base done.
I read that most people that go up there, after they come back, their entire worldview changes from what they thought before, and all petty human issues become meaningless. You finally realize how precious life on Earth is, and how small we are. It's a documented phenomenon.
He has. He and his twin brother were actually part of a study into the effects of long term space habitation (his trips were shorter). They're the only two siblings to ever both go to space.
I mean, the VP does still have to win elections to get there, it's not really undemocratic in that regard, there's no garuntee. And it probably gives more relevant experience to the position than just about any other job
I dislike the concept of a former VP rolling in as a presumptive nominee - I think it's fine for them to enter the race but being able to chose someone else during the primary is how we stay responsive to what excites people. It's important to remember that we essentially skipped this primary because no serious politicians would dare run against an incumbent because... tradition... and that's how we got in this fix in the first place.