After reviewing other VP options for Trump his best ones in terms of who can gain him extra votes while making large GOP donors happiest remain Glenn Youngkin and Greg Abbott.
Who can help Trump the most in terms of fundraising is an especially important criteria for VP candidates because of the potential that Trump’s legal bills could allow Biden to eke out a victory.
Biden’s plan to overcome Trump’s early poll lead will probably be to simply saturate the airwaves with attack ads to drive up Trump’s negatives to a higher level than Biden’s, rather than the Biden campaign attempting to make Biden look good in his own right.
This could be countered by Trump further raising Biden’s negatives with attack ads of his own, but this requires strong fundraising by the Trump campaign in order to afford it.
If the Trump campaign cannot afford to counter-attack heavily enough on the airwaves because of legal expenses then there is a high risk the Democrats would erode Trump’s current lead enough by Fall for Biden to be narrowly reelected, especially if some of the major 3rd party candidates drop out of the race due to Democrat pressuring/bribing them to leave in order to help Biden (which is a likely Democrat strategy).
Fundraising will be even more important in the event the Democrats replace Biden before the election with another candidate like Gavin Newsom because a new Democrat presidential candidate would require extra attack ads to negatively define a more unknown candidate to the public before they can positively define themselves.
Youngkin and Abbott are the VP options who can most help Trump in this regard while also bringing in more votes to Trump’s total than any other VP options could.
Here, in no particular order, is an assessment of other Trump candidates.
Katie Britt – Might give a small boost to Trump with younger voters, possibly with women voters. Whatever votes she gains would be negligible compared to what Youngkin or Abbott can offer Trump.
Marco Rubio – Decent fundraising potential, though not at Youngkin and Abbott’s level. In terms of votes he could help with women voters somewhat.
J.D. Vance – He is disliked by both voters and donors. His winning a Senate seat in Ohio was unimpressive because it was narrow compared to other Ohio Republicans running statewide who won by bigger margins than he did. He also did not run a very good campaign. Mostly he won just because Ohio is so Republican that even a less than mediocre Republican can win statewide there.
But that won’t be nearly good enough nationwide in the swing states. Voters find him too angry and grating, sort of like Ramaswamy. His personality would lose Trump more women voters than he would with another running mate.
Large donors dislike Vance.
He appeals to Trump’s base, but, like Ramaswamy, this doesn’t gain Trump anything he doesn’t already have because Trump already has the Trump base secured.
Like Ramaswamy, Vance hurts Trump, net-net, with independents, women voters, and in fundraising potential.
Like Ramaswamy, Vance may also be insincere in his some of his beliefs: For example, Vance has called Trump “Hitler” in past interviews.
Pragmatically Distributed 