WOULD BIDEN RUN WITH A REPUBLICAN IF HE COULD TURN BACK TIME?

I wish I shared Ezra Klein's confidence about the possibility that Joe Biden might pick a Republican running mate:

The degree to which this web site takes everything Biden says literally, as opposed to politically, is odd.

He's not going to choose a Republican VP. He thinks it's good politics to signal that he'll work with Republicans if they'll meet him halfway. He's probably right.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) December 30, 2019

When Biden says stuff like this, it's a low-cost way of trying to appeal to 1) the small group of GOP-leaning voters who are persuadable and 2) the much larger group of voters who hate how bitter and angry politics has become.

Maybe it works, maybe not, but that's the play.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) December 30, 2019

I can see that saying this might be a shrewd move. But when has Joe Biden ever been shrewd?

If Biden's old friend John McCain were alive and well, don't you think Biden would at least weigh the possibility of running with him? I assume it wouldn't happen even under those conditions, for several reasons: McCain, even in good health, would be an unacceptably old running mate for the elderly Biden; also, McCain would probably have returned to the fold and become a good, Trump-supporting Republican by now.

It would also be nice to believe that Biden means what he says about his own positions and priorities:

"Whoever I would pick for vice president, and there's a lot of qualified women, there's a lot of qualified African-Americans. There really truly are. There's a plethora of really qualified people. Whomever I would pick were I fortunate enough to be your nominee, I'd pick somebody who was simpatico with me, who knew what I, what my priorities were and knew what I wanted to," Biden said in Exeter on Monday. "We could disagree on tactic, but strategically we'd have to be in the exact same page."

I want to believe he'd rather pick Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris than John Kasich or Jon Huntsman. But I'm not confident. What are his priorities, beyond the restoration of a pre-Trump order?

I know he's running on a platform that's incrementalist but reasonably liberal. He's imagining a Republican who could get on board with a public option, net-zero emissions by 2050, DACA and comprehensive immigration reform, an assault weapons ban and universal background checks, and so on -- but no such Republican exists. (When asked about running with a Republican, he said, "The answer is I would, but I can't think of one now.")

I think we're saved from this because no Republican, even the ones who position themselves as mavericks, would meet him even partway. But I wish I didn't believe he's considering the idea.