Sheriff David Clarke For Trump’s VP?

I thought this was interesting:

Donald Trump brushed off concerns Monday about possible anti-Semitic imagery in a tweet posted from his account.

The tweet, which was posted and deleted Saturday, featured a picture of Hillary Clinton on a backdrop of money next to a six-sided star that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” It drew widespread backlash almost immediately for resembling the Star of David, an important Jewish symbol.

After the tweet was deleted, a revised graphic was posted to Trump’s Twitter account, this time with a circle subbed in for the star.

“Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” the presumptive Republican nominee tweeted Monday.

The stupidity of saying that Trump would supposedly use a Jewish star to malign Hillary, when she isn’t even Jewish (and according to Dick Morris is an anti-Semite herself) is just another example of media bias. But I found it interesting for another reason.

When free associating we are most likely to see the things we were looking at frequently and recently. An architect will see crosshairs as a surveyor’s mark, while a mathematician will tend to think of an asterisk as a “multiplied by” sign. A “Sheriff’s star” is an unusual association to make for a billionaire real estate developer, unless he has been looking at a Sheriff’s star recently. Perhaps Trump is seeing a lot of Law Enforcement Officers on his campaign trips.

However, Sheriff David Clarke has been making waves recently as a Conservative Christian firebrand criticizing Obama and supporting the right to keep and bear arms, even though he runs for his office as a Democrat. He is liked by the Right, has little political history that can be used against him, and as a patriotic black American who doesn’t look like a thinner version of Little Richard, he could easily pilfer an additional 30-40% of the black vote from Hillary, all other things being equal.

On top of that by choosing Clarke, a Democrat who has demeaned the idea of party affiliation in seeking office, Trump would add to his cache as an outsider whom both parties, including the Republican establishment, hate. It would be a firmly anti-establishment law and order ticket, in an era when the approval of the establishment is probably in the single digits, and we are careening toward chaos and anarchy.

Trump likes surprises, because surprises trigger amygdalae, focus attention on him, and make people talk about him for days. Clarke would be an outside the box choice, and generate exactly the type of attention Trump seems to be a master at acquiring.

From a purely political standpoint, I would strongly prefer Allen West. His staunch history of unapologetic conservatism would bring every conservative to the polls, and in conservative’s minds set up the Presidency for sixteen years of anti-establishment conservatism. By contrast, Clarke’s history of running as a Democrat may prove a speed bump to turnout in the minds of grassroots Republicans, something that Trump will have to overcome, perhaps at the cost of his bipartisan appeal.

But this is about predictions, not politics, and I could see in Trump’s mind, Clarke being the superior choice for purposes of broad persuasion of the populace, even if some would see other options as superior.