“We’ve had a lot of conversations about how we build an America going forward,” Warren says of Biden. She tells that she’s “in this fight to help any way I can,” but it’s clear that her preferred method would to be Biden’s #2.

But does Warren actually help on a ticket? Let’s just say that Warren’s enthusiasm might not match her payoff:

Biden, who became the Democrat’s apparent nominee after Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race earlier this month, pledged during a Democratic presidential debate a month ago to “pick a woman to be my vice president.”

Since that announcement, there’s been speculation about who the former vice president would choose. Warren, the top-performing woman in the 2020 race for the White House, has been on many pundits’ short lists.

“If he asked you to be his running make, would you say yes?” MSNBC’S Rachel Maddow asked Warren on Wednesday night.

“Yes,” Warren said.

One can see why Warren would want the invitation. It’s tougher to see why Biden would make it. On paper, Warren checks two important boxes for Biden — fulfilling his pledge to pick a woman as his running mate, and offering an olive branch to the progressive wing of the party. Warren’s not the only Democrat who could do either or both, however, and in every other sense she’d be a drag on the ticket.

First off, Warren’s performance in the primaries should be instructive to this question. She jumped in the race first — technically in 2018 — and had one of the highest profiles of any candidate prior to the cycle except Biden himself and Bernie Sanders. Not only did Warren fail to gain any traction, she ran out of cash toward the end and needed the kind of super-PAC rescue that Warren had bitterly opposed until that very moment. Warren never came close to winning a primary, even where her brand of progressivism and her claim on identity politics should have given her a boost.

Part of the reason why Warren underperformed is that she doesn’t come across well on the stump. That’s not a problem for her in deep-blue Massachusetts, but in less progressive areas, she comes across as strident and off-putting. On top of that, Warren created credibility deficits with changing stories about her heritage, her employment history, where her son went to school, and then a weird feud with Sanders that split the progressives that Biden wants to woo. About the only state Warren could add to the mix would be Massachusetts, and if Biden can’t win that on his own, he’s toast anyway.

If there’s one thing Biden doesn’t need in a running mate, it’s an underperformer with credibility issues who can’t do fundraising. If that’s what Biden wants in a running mate, he might as well just clone himself.

Even her gender is less of a selling point for Biden, although he may not know it yet. Voters are less interested in identity politics when it comes to the VP slot than they are with experience, as yesterday’s Morning Consult poll made clear. Only 29% of voters think choosing a woman is important, but 79% want executive experience. A majority of Democrats want Biden to choose someone younger than himself (53%), and while Warren’s a little bit younger (71 in June), she’s not exactly a Millennial, either.

Even her status as a progressive might do more harm than good. While Democrats are split on the idea of a running made being more liberal than Biden (41/42), among all voters it’s a loser at 25/50. In truth, a more conservative running mate polls even worse among Democrats (21/64) and doesn’t appreciably improve Biden’s prospects among all voters (31/46), but the main takeaway is that voters aren’t looking for The Great Progressive Hope in Biden’s VP choice.

Biden’s best shot is to pick a Midwesterner with either significant legislative experience or a sitting governor. Gretchen Whitmer fills the model best while fulfilling Biden’s identity-politics pledge, even if she’s turning into a petty tyrant in the coronavirus lockdown. For Democrats, that might be a feature rather than a bug. Otherwise, John Bel Edwards or Steve Bullock would be better choices, and probably would be willing to trade up, too, unlike Andrew Cuomo.