Despite the unprecedented and coordinated lawfare deployed against him, Donald Trump has emerged as the Republican presidential front-runner.
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who is both a centrist and moderate (by today’s definitions), has emerged as his most compelling and logical selection to be his running mate. I base my analysis on six compelling factors.
Reason Number One: She’s a woman. Let’s face 2024’s political reality. To have any chance to grab his fair share of suburban female voters in crucial swing states, Trump almost definitely has to pick a woman. While I once thought Kristi Noem would have been a great running mate, she committed political suicide last week with a puppy-killing narrative that ended any hope of that, especially after mainstream media gaslighted her in their attempt to destroy her. That narrative will never go away. Neither will the salacious reports that she had a not-too-secret extra-marital affair with Trump-aligned political consultant Cory Lewandowski. Gabbard has no such liability.
In a sane world without gender balance being an overriding consideration, I’d prefer either Kentucky Senator Rand Paul or Louisiana Senator John Kennedy to be Trump’s running mate. But both are more valuable as members of Republican leadership in the Senate. Either would be a great pick to be Majority Leader in a Republican-led Senate during Trump’s second term. And while I hate to say it, being a woman puts Gabbard in the best position among all of Trump’s potential choices to help him defuse any potentially dangerous fallout over the abortion issue—currently the only issue on which Biden has any measurable lead over Trump in polling. Gabbard’s and Trump’s positions on abortion are generally in sync, referring the issue to the states to decide.
Reason Number Two: Gabbard currently holds no elective office. This works against many others reportedly on Trump’s shortlist. These include (in alphabetical order) North Dakota Governor Doug Burgrum, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, New York Representative Elise Stefanik, and Ohio Senator J. D. Vance—all of whom might be more valuable as surrogates and elected politicians than as Trump’s running mate. I’ve left off this list of other non-elected officials like Tucker Carlson and Ben Carson, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who ruled out accepting such a role but who could end up being one of Trump’s most important surrogates in the fall).
Reason Number Three: She’s an ex-Democrat who was forced from her party by its ideological move to the far-left post-2016 after calling the Democrat Party an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” On that issue, she’s totally in sync with Trump, bringing a sense of bipartisanship to a potential Trump ticket that is almost unprecedented in national presidential politics. Can she also appeal to the voting base where Trump is weakest—college-educated women? Certainly. Can you think of anyone on Trump’s shortlist who would be better suited in this regard? Can she peel off disaffected Democrats in crucial swing states, especially Pennsylvania, that are already having a hard time voting for a second Biden term after all his policy failures? Yes, I believe she is uniquely qualified to do so.
Reason Number Four: She’s an active, current military reserve officer, another area where Trump is weak (but no weaker than Biden). Her military record and experience are better than any other potential choice among Trump’s short list of candidates. When you combine her military experience with her multicultural background (her mother is from Indiana and her father is from American Samoa), she has wide appeal. Raised Hindu, this is another area where she brings cultural strength to the ticket, certainly as much as Kamala Harris added to the Biden ticket in 2020.
On a side note, before she left the Democrat Party in 2022, she served as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, so she has intimate knowledge of the kind of dirty tricks the Democrat Party will deploy in the run-up to November 5th. Possibly her biggest political liability is that before leaving the Democrat Party in October 2022, she had endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 after ending her presidential bid in March 2020.
Reason Number Five: Temperament. With a strong personality and a well-documented history of political success combined with her military leadership, she is not a potential threat to Trump’s outsized personality. She would not try to upstage him if that was ever a possibility. On the contrary, her measured personality combined with her military experience makes her a perfect counterbalance to help defuse any media criticism of Trump’s lack of service in uniform.
What will the media do to criticize her record? Probably anything, but that’s a non-starter, even for the mainstream media, which previously tried to tar Gabbard, unsuccessfully, as a Vladimir Putin apologist and puppet. But it certainly didn’t stop Hillary Clinton in 2019. She also burnished her foreign policy credentials on a 2017 Middle Eastern visit to Lebanon and Syria, meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Reason Number Six: I’ve saved the best for last. Can you imagine Gabbard again on a debate stage in October, as early voting is starting, across from Kamala Harris? After the way she almost single-handedly wrecked and ended Harris’ 2020 presidential bid, this is one opponent that Harris fears the most. Gabbard, because she’s such a skilled politician, would absolutely destroy Harris a second time. Harris is uniquely unqualified to be vice president after all her policy failures as Biden’s vice president, especially on the border, which is Trump’s biggest winning issue, with the possible exception of the economy.
Selecting a running mate is often a matter of balance, sometimes geographically, and what crucial Electoral College votes the vice presidential pick could bring to a potential ticket. That may have been important decades ago, but is less so today. In 2016, Trump selected Mike Pence as his running mate, thinking that he would bring conservative Christians and evangelicals to the ticket, which it did to a degree. But to measure Gabbard’s strengths, ask yourself this question: Will she help Trump more in 2024 than Pence did in 2016? I think the answer is an unequivocal yes.
