On second thought, Mr. Vice President …

I’ve already trashed the idea of Joe Biden considering — prematurely, I must stipulate — whether he would select a Republican to run with him on a 2020 presidential ticket to defeat Donald Trump.

It’s far too early. Biden appears to be pandering to GOP voters … you get my drift.

On reflection, though, I think it’s OK to play this out briefly.

Suppose Biden emerges as the prohibitive favorite to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. Suppose, too, that he is serious about looking for a Republican to run with him. A name does pop into my head: former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. 

  • Kasich ran in 2016 against a large field of Republican presidential contenders. He was among the last of them to fold under the Trump juggernaut. Kasich emerged as my favorite GOP candidate.
  • The man’s got serious policy chops. He ran the House Budget Committee in the late 1990s. He worked with President Bill Clinton to balance the federal budget.
  • He also comes from Ohio, a state that becomes a battleground for Trump and Biden.
  • Kasich also has endorsed the idea of impeaching Trump, which the House has done; Trump is awaiting a trial in the Senate.

Those all are positives. But … and you know what comes next; it’s never a positive statement.

Kasich is a white male. So is Biden. The conventional wisdom has been all along that Democrats aren’t going to nominate a ticket with two white guys running against Trump and (presumably) Vice President Mike Pence. The 2020 Democratic ticket more than likely is going to include a white male along with a male or female “of color.”

I’m just offering some food for thought here. We’re still a long, long way from pondering the party affiliation of anyone being considered by whomever the Democrats nominate as their presidential candidate.