How It Works
The road to Kerry's Final Four
Veepstakes: Help him choose a (theoretical) running mate
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(CNN) -- If politics were a sport, guessing who a presidential candidate is going to pick as his or her running mate might be like filling out an NCAA college basketball bracket.
Based on that premise, we've divided 32 possibilities for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, into brackets and seeded them, just as the NCAA does. It's a game we call Veepstakes. (Play the game)
First, we have two regional brackets.
One is the Southern bracket. It's a natural for a Northeasterner like Kerry to go for someone south of the Mason-Dixon line.
The other is the Showdown States bracket, because Kerry could decide to go with someone from a showdown state on the assumption that if he picks a governor or a senator from a state that's a 50-50 chance for him, it might put those electoral votes into his column.
On the other side we have two brackets that have nothing to do with geography.
The first is the Gravitas bracket, the one Vice President Dick Cheney came from in 2000. Cheney, if you'll recall, didn't really bring anything to the GOP ticket in the way of electoral votes, but he brought a lot of gravitas.
Finally, because we're dealing with the Democratic Party, a separate bracket for women is almost inevitable. It's been 20 years since the Democrats had a female presidential running mate, and back then the highest offices Democratic women held were in city halls and the House of Representatives. Now there is a lengthy roster of senators and governors to choose from, some of whom would be top seeds in the other brackets.
Southern bracket
The No. 1 seed in the Southern bracket, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a former candidate himself, is a natural. Edwards starts out against Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 8 seed, because both are originally from South Carolina.
We're making Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida the No. 2 seed, mostly because there's been a little buzz around him recently.
Bob Graham, the other senator from Florida and a former governor, probably deserves to be a little higher than the No. 7 seed, but this matchup between two Floridians is exactly what the bracket system is about. It's a single-elimination game here. If Kerry's going to pick a Floridian, his choice is going to be Nelson or Graham.
Showdown States bracket
We're seeding Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico No. 1 in this bracket. There's a good reason for that. Not only does he conceivably bring a showdown state to the Democratic column, he's also Hispanic -- a very hot demographic in 2004.
Gravitas bracket
Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri gets the top seed in this bracket for a very simple reason: He is the Jack Kemp of this election year. Like Kemp, a former congressman from New York who for many years was often mentioned as a GOP vice presidential candidate, Gephardt has a real record in the House and a real following in his own party.
Women's bracket
Top seed in the Women's bracket? Well it's obvious: Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. We're pairing her with former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. There's a simple reason for that. This is the "annoy Bush" part of the Women's bracket. Clinton on the ticket might annoy Bush, but Richards would annoy him even more.
How it works
We're starting with 32 contenders. At the end of this first round, after a couple of days of voting on CNN.com, there will be 16 left.
You'll get to choose from among those 16. Then there will be eight left, and then four -- the Final Four.
After further voting, we'll whittle the choices to two -- one from the two geographical brackets, and one from the Gravitas bracket or the Women's bracket.
Then comes the vote for Kerry's ultimate theoretical choice. You'll be able to make that call, too.
