Who cares about optics? In politics?? Are you serious?
I’m backing the idea of Mark Kelly for VP for the exact reasons you described. He doesn’t have to be top of the ticket.
Dems have been losing ground with some African American voters for awhile, but black women have largely remained supportive. A survey that just came out 2 days ago shows
64% of black women are backing Biden. One of the main criteria Biden touted in picking a VP in 2020 is that he claimed he wanted someone that could “become president at a moment’s notice.” Now that time has arrived, you think we could keep Kamala in the #2 spot, or somehow boot her off the ticket entirely, and not suffer massive blowback? That ship has sailed, I don’t see it.
And btw, I don’t think the polls are super clear. Harris is
not polling badly, considering we haven’t seen her at the top of the ticket yet and we are in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump.
If you can think of an organized way to do this without having a disunited clusterfuck of a convention, and losing massive ground with African Americans, I’m all ears. I don’t see how it’s possible at this point.