Below is my dream list of possible tickets. Please read to the end.
Michelle Obama (60), President
Pete Buttigieg (42), VP
The Cool-Kids Ticket
“Bama-Butt” is an unbeatable pairing of languid wisdom and pugnacious uber-preparedness. President Michelle, as she will invariably be called, will sigh deeply when she first steps back into the White House. “Here we go again,” she’ll think, “but sometimes ya just gotta take one for the team.”
Their administration will be characterized by an unusually visible and energetic VP, fun state dinners, and a renewed focus on vegetables and highways. Note: this will be a President and Vice President who do roast people behind their backs. They can’t help themselves.
The effects of finally having a woman president will crop up everywhere, from the unprecedented number of storage ottomans in the Oval Office to her sarcastic replies to dumb questions. (No president in history has ever rolled their eyes this much.) But we know we are in good hands. President Michelle brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan AND does her homework, bestows a great wit and zest to our national life, gives slow and forceful speeches, so slow it’s like “hear the words coming out of my mouth,” and surrounds herself with other smart men and women.
Josh Stein (57), President
Rafael Warnock (53), VP
The Gen X-Daddy-Right-Side-of-Southern-History Ticket
Yum and phew. Two upstanding Gen-X men: steady-eyed Democratic candidate for Governor of North Carolina Josh Stein—who is currently the state’s Attorney General and whose father opened the first racially integrated law firm in the state (which was firebombed and burned to the ground), plus Rafael Warnock, a Baptist preacher who became the first person in his family to attend college and, in 2021, the first Black person ever to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate.
Senator Warnock gave a great maiden speech on the floor of the Senate in 2021. It was largely about voting rights and the assault on them in the name of fraud prevention. Of the 250+ new voter suppression laws popping up around the country that year, Warnock said, “We know what’s going on. Some people don’t want some people to vote.”
I feel like just about every non-evil American would vote for them.
Liz Lynn Cheney (57), President
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (34), VP
The Limited Liability Ticket (aka The Backbone Ticket)
AOC LLC, LLC AOC—whichever way you spin it, this ticket covers a lot of ground and very little at the same time! But maybe our love of drama and surprise could give the odd couple a big boost at the polls?
Would AOC spend all her time biting her tongue, not biting her tongue, or running a hard sell on her boss to get her to see things differently? Would they temper each other and bring each other toward the center? Would they even agree to this?
Anyway, it’s time for an all-female ticket! And this one could appeal to old-guard (and elderly) Republicans, democrats, voters under 40, people yearning for bipartisan cooperation, and the press.
Gretchen Whitmer (52), President
Jon Ossoff (37), VP
The Hot Ticket
The gorgeous Governor of Michigan and the gorgeous Jewish Senator from Georgia both have parents who were also ambitious and successful in public service. Whitmer is a Virgo (earth sign of analysis and perfection), and like Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan before him, Jon Ossoff is an Aquarius, the air sign about vision, subtlety, and contradiction. (He has shaved his beard since this photo.)
Joe Biden, President
Kamala Harris, VP
The Only Proven Leaders to Actually Step Up and Offer to Do This Ticket
As a former two-term VP and current President of the United States of America (that makes a total of 12 years of White House experience), Joe Biden has been a public servant since 1973 and most recently led the team that managed to rescue our country from a global pandemic and an ever-ending war in Afghanistan, plummeting economy, international dismay at America’s craziness, violent insurrection, and Cuba-level crumbling infrastructure problems. He teams up again with tough-on-crime Black/Indian Kamala Harris, the witty and loyal first-female VP in U.S. history.
Not only is this team a good bet for business, for jobs and the economy and the environment, but they are the only two people who’ve stepped forward, raised their hands, run campaigns, and said, “We will do this.”
This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter for brilliant people, by Emily Sanders Hopkins.