If I had to bet on who he'd pick from the short list they keep mentioning, my money would be on Catherine Cortez Masto. Female AND Hispanic, the media and the RATS love identity politics like that (in their ideal world, she'd be lesbian too). They'd probably use her to further the "Trump hates women and Hispanics" narrative, not that it would help.
She's only been there a few months, of course with the media double standard they'll ignore that. If she was an "R" Senator, she could have been in the Senate three terms already and they'd STILL claim she's "not experienced enough" to be veep. Gotta love the media's selective narrative about "experience".
Biden himself would probably prefer Michelle Obama as veep to make him candidacy look like Obama's third term and excite the RATS, but that's not gonna happen and Mooch-elle is not dumb enough to agree to it.
There's also the possibility of a dark horse, someone NOT on the "short list". Quite a few veep picks (Dan Quayle, Will Miller, Al Gore, Harry Truman, etc.) have been someone NOBODY was expecting. I also never expected Cheney to basically pick himself for veep in 2000, for example.
Playing safe is the smartest thing for him to do in my opinion. Hell, I’d advise him to go back to the old fashioned way of “standing” for election and let surrogates do the campaigning for him.
Klob has been vetted and the worst thing we have is she is mean to her staff. She’s popular in her home state (which will have a few close House races) and may be enough to secure it (which is actually rare in modern times as I have pointed out in the past).
Harris leads the oddsmakers, I’d put her 2nd, she’s really the only viable “Black” choice and is an Asian twofer. Unlike Abrams she, being a light-skinned ex-prosecutor, wouldn’t frighten Whites.
Cortez Castro (what we should call her) is certainly very possible for reasons you state. Her main drawback is a total lack of a national profile. Being some dog crap from Harry Reid’s political machine she’d be a very Trumanesque pick.
Warren is too old, her far-left economics would scare suburbanites and it wouldn’t even please the Berners cause they hate her now for attacking him and refusing to drop out when it might have helped. He’d be a fool to consider her (or Abrams, but I do appreciate their honesty, each admits they want the job).
Whitmer is possible but she seems like a hot potato. I don’t think it’s in their interest to make it a referendum on state lockdowns.
I doubt this is the year for a darkhorse. Weird names have come up like Val Demmings but they didn’t seem to take. I never expected Suckworh to be on the list though, that would be fun, Asian and crippled.
Michelle could have run herself and won the nomination, she’s not interested. If she was it would 100% be her though.
As for Cheney, I don’t know how accurate this is but the movie “Vice” had Bush flat out offer him the job at the jump, Cheney demurred (but agreed to lead the search) only to relent.
In hindsight I wish someone else was selected, a potential successor (and let’s face it, the most powerful VP in history deserves his share of the blame for the failures of the administration). But Cheney was a pretty solid choice for Bush on paper, if he wasn’t considered from the onset he certainly should have been. Thank God it wasn’t the runner up, John Danforth, a RINO pig.