> hard to imagine any party conjuring the courage to do something like that even if they thought it was wise.

They would if they sincerely believed that losing this election would doom democracy. If they nominate a straight polarized political ticket instead of one that can actually unify everyone who doesn't want to see a second Trump term then we know that they don't actually believe their own apocalyptic rhetoric.

I imagine a mixed ticket is unlikely to sway many Republicans and likely to lose a lot of Democrats, especially younger ones.

I think both choices are defensible here depending on what factors you think are more important. If you think you can actually sway moderate Republicans away by giving them a home in the VP (I think Romney would only do numbers as the actual nominee) then a split ticket makes sense. If you think mobilizing your base like Obama in 2008 and get more of the non-voting population to show up at the polls then a "polarized" ticket makes sense.

Yeah, I don't think split ticket with Harris is honestly the way to go. To pull it off you'd need a Democrat from closer to the center who can credibly pitch a narrative of healing a bitterly divided nation and fixing the poisonous rhetoric that is driving us apart. Nominate someone like that with a Romney (but not necessarily actually Romney) as VP and you'd have a ticket that's actually designed to address the democracy-ending problems that the Democrats purport to see.

Nominating Harris with another left-leaning running mate may make the most sense from a purely strategic perspective, but I don't think that's because anyone seriously expects her to win at this point or because it's actually their best shot at protecting democracy from the impending apocalypse. They're just hoping that having her in the president slot leads to fewer losses in the rest of the races.

They're almost certainly going to pick someone centrist for the VP. Politico has a list of likely running mates [1]. They're pretty much all centrists.

Of course, whoever they nominate will just be called a leftist anyways. Even Harris is on the right wing of the Democratic party, and here you are calling her "left-leaning."

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/21/harris-potential-vp...

> from closer to the center

People keep repeating this, what the heck does it actually mean? If we define Kamala Harris as "left of center" what does it actually look like if she "moves to the right"?

Just listening to the news/social media for the past decade, every single "right wing" issue that gets brought up is purely performative culture warring, so what do these "centrists" want?

>If we define Kamala Harris as "left of center" what does it actually look like if she "moves to the right"?

Seriously, if you look at her record, she's very center or even right of center. We're so polarized now though that the far right is straight up fascism.