Nikki Haley For Vice President?

Remember this tweet?

It’s finally dawning on him who has the biggest incentive to see him impeached. https://t.co/0uvuNZ0ue3

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) November 16, 2018

Vanity Fair says replacing Pence really is being looked at: 

On Monday, Trump hosted a 2020 strategy meeting with a group of advisers. Among the topics discussed was whether Mike Pence should remain on the ticket, given the hurricane-force political headwinds Trump will face, as demonstrated by the midterms, a source briefed on the session told me. “They’re beginning to think about whether Mike Pence should be running again,” the source said, adding that the advisers presented Trump with new polling that shows Pence doesn’t expand Trump’s coalition. “He doesn’t detract from it, but he doesn’t add anything either,” the source said. Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump had been privately asking advisers if Pence could be trusted, and that outside advisers have been pushing Nikki Haley to replace Pence. (Read the article here.)

Of course replacing Pence wouldn't change the structural reality that any vice president, no matter how loyal, has the most to gain if the president leaves for any reason. 

And speaking of replacing a vice president, how's this for a counterfactual "What if?" During coverage of the Bush funeral David Gergen told a fascinating story. Apparently way back in 1956, President Eisenhower gave serious thought to replacing his vice president, Richard Nixon. According to Gergen one of the candidates to replace Nixon was Senator Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. Bush. Think about how different history could have been if, in 1960, instead of outgoing Vice President Richard Nixon who ran against Senator John Kennedy, it was outgoing Vice President Prescott Bush. In reality Nixon lost a very, very close election to Kennedy. In our counterfactual history would Prescott Bush have been a more appealing candidate than Nixon? Probably. Could he have beaten Kennedy? Possibly. 

How would things have been different? Would President Bush (35) have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as Kennedy did? Would he have sent us to the moon? To Vietnam? He almost certainly wouldn't have been in a motorcade in Dallas in November, 1963. Would he have been reelected in 1964? Possibly.

And what about his son and grandson? George H.W. Bush was 37 in 1961, his son George W. was 15. How would their career paths been different if Prescott Bush had been president in the 1960s? There's no way to know but isn't it fascinating to contemplate?