Traditionally, the nominated candidate for vice president is regarded as almost an afterthought on the ticket, chosen more for the hope of adding his state's electors to the final total than for any dramatic qualification.  This time, however, things may be very different.

Pundits are declaring that the 2020 presidential election will be the most important decision that the American electorate has ever faced.  That may or may not be true, but of one thing I am certain, it will be the most crucial vice presidential election in our history.

If Donald Trump wins, then Michael Richard Pence, vice president of the United States, will be well positioned to serve Trump's third and fourth terms as president.  Pence is only just now beginning to emerge from relative obscurity on the national stage, therefore many voters do not recognize him as the proto-Trump he is.  If you like Trump but find him abrasive and overstated, you will love Pence, even if you learn his name only in the 2024 campaign.  He is, if anything, to the right of Trump, but understatedly so, and a likely future POTUS.

The more interesting outcome (in terms of the ancient curse of living in interesting times) will occur if the Democrats succeed in their bi-annual practice of voter fraud and select either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, each of whom is an old codger with one foot (or at least a toe) in the grave.  Either of them, if elected, could plausibly be a less-than-one-term president.  In Biden's case, the 25th Amendment might actually come into play, removing him from office, ostensibly or actually, for mental incapacity.

As per the foregoing, the next vice president may well and soon become the president.  The number two on the ticket may, and well should, be the focus of our decision on November 3.

Any president who selects Hillary Clinton as his running mate has a death wish.  Given the suspicious mortality rate of her inconvenient associates, his survival for more than two years would be, in my opinion, astonishing.  (After the two-year mark, Clinton could serve a ten-year term.)  Under a Biden presidency, Vice President Clinton might even become the de facto president immediately after his inauguration (do not doubt that she knows this), much like the empress dowager of China, who ruled through her very young son from behind a curtain, whispering to him what to say and when.  Hillary is too shrill to whisper, but she has other means, daggers always at the ready, figuratively speaking.

A Bernie Sanders presidency would be a more complicated situation.  Bernie's age and infirmities would be a constant, but thin, barrier between the vice president and the Oval Office.  One must also bear in mind that if a President Sanders were to keep his promises — that is to say, if he were truly to begin to wreck the economy and gut our national security — he might precipitate a true constitutional crisis, one for which even impeachment might not be an effective remedy.  If his V.P. were someone of his socialist ilk, then replacing a totalitarian-style president with a carbon copy would be seen as futile.

Other means would become necessary.  More daggers, anyone?  Figuratively speaking, of course.

Vote for whomever you will.  As for me, I am voting Pence for vice president.