He still supports a public option, he just opposes M4A because it would end existing employer-provided healthcare. Not everyone who opposes M4A is right-leaning, sometimes they just don't think that this particular model is better than other public option models.
The Green New Deal faces lots of opposition from those who agree with the sentiment, citing it as misdirected, expensive, or overly ambitious. He does generally support the move to renewables.
Additionally, he supports expanded drilling, in parallel with a move to renewables, to reduce our oil imports. We can't just snap our fingers and transition to 100% renewables overnight. It will be a gradual process, and reducing our dependency of oil imports is very possibly a pragmatic step in that process.
Policies are rarely black and white. It would appear most of his positions which seem, superficially, to be negatives are held for relatively nuanced reasons. We could do worse.
I’m thinking get the person who can run and win in 8 years.
I think at this point it's more important to pick the candidate that increases the chances of victory. Trump won't be in any shape to run (or likely even alive) in 2028 and hopefully MAGA will have died along with him.
Maga will not die with Trump. Instead it will splinter, and become a lot more chaotic. Even moreso if that happens at a time of strength for the movement.
I expect the shattering will wound the movement. With Trump, they have a consensus leader and model. Everyone else will fight each other to fill the vacuum.
If he were shooting to be president from 60-68, sure, great. But teeing up a run from the VP slot means he's looking at 68-76. That's starting the most important job in the world past retirement age.
If he were some genius lawmaker with big new ideas, maybe you excuse that because they're uniquely valuable, but nothing seems like he's a big ideas man. You don't need to push limits just to preserve the status quo.
VP doesn't have to be about setting up a Presidential run. Harris was VP, but lots of Presidents weren't a VP. Can just be aimed at shoring up the current ticket.
Cheney is the only VP in recent times that served with a 2-term president and didn't go on to get the nomination and run for president. Biden was supposedly selected because Obama didn't think he had a run in him so he'd be dedicated to the administration, but ended up running anyway.
Sixty year olds are usually sharp and deeply knowledgeable. I think we should demand better for literally the most powerful person in the world though and in this case I'm less pissed off at sixty year olds in general and more specifically pissed off that we're in a death grip of neoliberalism and politicians that aren't planning for the long term.
America has no attention span - it is generally making decisions for today that are driven by people who won't see the full consequences of their decisions... we need more people who actually give a shit about what the world will look like in twenty or forty years. And to be perfectly fair, some of our eldest politicians really fucking do care and I'd include Biden in those ranks... but we seriously need to change course.
Cognitive decline can begin as early as age 45. The youngest you can be to be elected president is 35. Should we only have a 10-year window in which people should run?