Unconventional #30: No joke: Hillary Clinton is considering Al Franken for VP. Does he have a chance?

Unconventional is Yahoo News’ complete guide to what could be the craziest presidential conventions in decades. Here’s what you need to know today.

1. The Clinton Veepwatch, Vol. 6: Al Franken

In which Unconventional examines the Democratic nominee’s possible — and not-so-possible — vice presidential picks. Previous installments: Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine, Mark Cuban, Julián Castro, Sherrod Brown.

Name: Alan Stuart “Al” Franken

Age: 65

Résumé: U.S. senator from Minnesota; former Air America radio host; former “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer; author of six books

Source of speculation: A report last week in Politico. The story itself was mostly about how Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, long considered Clinton’s safest VP pick, had officially ascended to the top of her shortlist — intel, we can assume, that “Democratic allies and operatives close to the campaign” leaked to Politico as a way of gauging reaction among progressives and preparing them for the letdown of an all-centrist ticket.

But deep in the Politico dispatch — 17 paragraphs down, to be exact — there was a single non sequitur of a sentence that again gave liberals reason to hope, however faintly, that one of their own might someday join the ticket:

One dark horse that Clinton allies said is also on the list is Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, a close ally who is also popular with the progressive wing of the party and enjoys a closer bond with Clinton.

And that wasn’t all. Curiously enough, the Associated Press published a Franken profile the same day Politico posted its report; the headline declared that the former comedian was “ready to unleash [his] wit and wisdom on Clinton’s behalf.” Asked to respond to the running-mate rumors, Franken was characteristically direct.

“If Hillary Clinton came to me and said, ‘Al, I really need you to be my vice president, to run with me,’ I would say yes,” he told the AP.

So Hillary is reportedly considering it — and Al approves. That means a Clinton-Franken ticket is a real possibility … right?

Backstory: Before we assess the odds here, it’s worth looking back at Clinton and Franken’s long history together — and explaining why Beltway types who might have once dismissed the idea of Vice President Franken are beginning to mention him in the same breath as Kaine and Julian Castro.

Clinton and Franken have been friends for years. They met in 1994 when, for that year’s Gridiron Dinner, Franken wrote a parody of the famous anti-Hillarycare “Harry and Louise” ads for the first couple to star in. He spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a month later, then reprised his role in 1996.

When Franken ran for the Senate in 2008, Hillary campaigned for him twice, flying into Duluth for an eleventh-hour rally that Franken credits with putting him over the top.

“I wouldn’t be senator from Minnesota if it hadn’t been for her,” he said in February.

Franken went on to endorse Clinton for president long before most of his Senate colleagues, delivering this off-the-cuff announcement in December 2014. (NB: He didn’t bother to wait for Elizabeth Warren, a fellow progressive, to rule out a bid, or for Bernie Sanders to get up and running.)

And not only has Franken spent this year’s primary season stumping for Clinton throughout the country, but also he responded to mean tweets (a la “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”) in a campaign Web ad, deploying his trademark humor on Hillary’s behalf.

That said, Clinton has a lot of loyal surrogates and longtime allies; almost none of them appear on her VP list. The real reason Franken suddenly has a shot, however slim, isn’t his relationship with the nominee.

It’s Donald Trump.

Which brings us to…

Odds: Not impossible — but still very unlikely.

Trump’s improbable rise has made Franken attractive as a running mate in ways he wouldn’t have been if a more conventional Republican — say, Marco Rubio — had won the GOP nomination.

If the Manhattan mogul has any superpowers, they are his celebrity, his unpredictability and his shamelessness, all of which allow him to dominate news cycle after news cycle by saying things — insulting things, offensive things, shocking things, self-contradictory things — that “normal” presidential candidates wouldn’t say.

He is also notoriously thin-skinned.

The thinking behind the “Franken for VP” boomlet is that Franken — an SNL-trained comedian who has skewered Fox News and dueled with Ann Coulter — would be fast enough on his feet, and clever and combative enough with his comebacks, to fluster Trump. To deflate him. To leave him looking absurd.

Franken is “the funniest person in Congress,” fellow Minnesota Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison said earlier this month. “Why does that matter? I think it’s important to lampoon Donald Trump, make him what he is: ridiculous. Who better to do that than someone who is an expert funnyman?”

Franken has other advantages as well. He would make history as the first Jewish vice president. His liberal populism could help persuade at least some young Sanders voters not to snub Clinton on Election Day. (Franken was an early Wall Street critic who won reelection by 10 points in the midst of a Republican wave by “selling progressive policy ideas in simple, everyman terms.”) He has shown that he can connect with working-class Rust Belters, potentially blunting Trump’s impact in purple states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Finally, plucking Franken from the Senate wouldn’t endanger a potential Democratic majority; the governor of Minnesota, a Democrat himself, would simply appoint a Democrat to replace him. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the senators on Clinton’s list — Warren, New Jersey’s Cory Booker, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown — would be replaced by Republicans.

So what’s not to like?

Franken has been a serious and studious legislator since arriving in the Senate in 2009. He rarely indulges in comedy these days, and he tends to avoid the media spotlight. Still, he is better known as a comedian than a politician — and, in that sense, his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.

The typical knock on Franken is that his humorous Hollywood history — bestiality jokes from Playboy and other crude or controversial material — would sink him in the veepstakes.

But Clinton is smart enough to know that this stuff didn’t stop Franken from winning two Senate races, and that Trump’s own past, which is more colorful than Franken’s, and his current rhetoric, which is not a joke, would neutralize any of the senator’s remaining vulnerabilities.

Instead, Clinton is unlikely to pick Franken because of how the pick might be perceived — especially among voters who still see him as SNL self-help guru Stuart Smalley. Like she’s not taking the job seriously. Like she’s stooping to Trump’s level. Like she thinks this election is one big television show.

That may be why a recent Monmouth University poll showed that only 12 percent of voters said they’d be more likely to vote for Clinton with Franken on the ticket — while 21 percent said they’d be less likely.

None of which is fair to Franken, of course. But it’s a risk that Clinton wouldn’t be taking with Kaine or even Warren as her running mate — and Hillary isn’t much of a risk taker.

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2. Inside Clinton’s plan to unite Democrats before Philadelphia — with or without Sanders’ help

By Liz Goodwin

As Bernie Sanders refuses to fully back Clinton, weeks after she clinched the nomination, her campaign has had to launch its party unity strategy without him. At the national level, Clinton appeared in Cincinnati on Monday with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and will soon rally alongside President Obama and, later, Vice President Joe Biden. Both are incredibly popular among Democrats.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s local campaign teams in Florida and other states are arranging joint phone banks and cookouts to bring Sanders and Clinton supporters together to organize against Republican Donald Trump — even in the absence of Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton.

(For the full version of this story, click here.)

Sanders supporters are slowly warming to Clinton less than a month before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, according to an NBC News poll released this week. Forty-five percent of Sanders supporters had a positive view of Clinton, up from 38 percent last month. When asked to choose between Clinton and Trump, nearly 80 percent backed Clinton. But when given the option to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson, only 63 percent of Sanders supporters picked Clinton, which shows that her campaign still has work to do to win over her party’s progressive wing.

The Clinton team has a lineup of heavyweights to help them in this fight. In addition to Warren’s Monday appearance with Clinton, the former secretary of state’s campaign is rescheduling her first joint campaign appearance with Obama, which was canceled after the Orlando shooting. Biden is also expected to play a large role in efforts to knit Democrats together, hitting the trail alongside Clinton “sooner rather than later,” according to a source familiar with his plans.

“He will do whatever he can to help,” the source told Yahoo News on condition of anonymity. Biden “will be very focused on white working-class voters in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan — he has unique resonance with them in the party,” the source said.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton backer who once chaired the Democratic National Committee, said that he believes Warren is the “second-best weapon” for unifying the party, but that the best weapon still needs to be deployed.

“I still think we need Bernie Sanders,” Rendell said. “Ten or 15 percent of Sanders supporters can only be motivated if Bernie rolls up his sleeves and really wades in.”

That’s not an option for now, as Sanders maintains he will fight all the way to the convention in Philadelphia, even as he concedes he will not be the nominee and that he will vote for Clinton in November.

The Clinton campaign pointed to endorsements from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and progressive groups like the Sierra Club as signs the party is unifying without Sanders. Grijalva endorsed Sanders during the primary.

Her team also says the Democratic Party platform draft, released last weekend, is a key sign that the party’s factions are coming together. It calls for a ban on the death penalty, a $15 minimum wage, sweeping criminal justice reform, expanding Social Security and bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act to target banks. The Clinton campaign called the draft the most progressive platform the party has ever seen. (Sanders says the platform does not go far enough.)

Clinton’s local staffers are also organizing events to encourage collegiality among Sanders and Clinton delegates ahead of the convention. A Clinton campaign official in Florida said the phone banking, voter registration and cookouts they’ve planned with Sanders-supporting delegates in the next few weeks are designed so both candidates’ delegates can talk about the issues in which they share “common ground.”

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3. Have the #NeverTrump forces finally found their independent Trump challenger?

Unconventional has already taken a close look at the ongoing efforts to “unbind” the GOP delegates and propel someone other than Donald Trump to the nomination in Cleveland — and we’ve concluded that these efforts are unlikely to succeed unless Trump somehow implodes before the convention.

But what about the other #NeverTrump campaign? You know, the crusade to draft a true-blue conservative to challenge both Trump and Hillary Clinton as an independent candidate this fall?

Yahoo News Senior Political Correspondent Jon Ward reports that progress is being made — and that a few “national or semi-national figures” may be interested:

Anti-Trump forces who are working to lay the groundwork for an independent candidate for president said they are ramping up efforts to get on the ballot in at least 40 states and are aiming for all 50.

Better for America, the grouppreparing for an independent run, currently has 25 paid staff, most of them in New York, and from both Republican and Democratic political backgrounds. An official with the group said that there are three individuals who have said they would be willing to run for president, but that the group is still working to convince better-known individuals to take the plunge.

“[We have] not said we would support them nor have they said they are running at this moment. But all three are national or semi-national figures,” the official said. When asked if the three potential candidates were better known than National Review writer David French, who was thrust forward by conservative figure Bill Kristol, the Better for America official said two were “a little bit above [French] in terms of stature.”

Though Kristol is “in close communications” with Better for America staff, the official said he is not involved in this effort to recruit a candidate. “Bill remains very supportive but also understands that he’s got a key role in his role at the Weekly Standard. … This is not the Bill Kristol remix.”

And since the terrorist attack on an Orlando nightclub two weeks ago that took the lives of 49 people, some public figures who had previously declined to run as an independent presidential candidate have begun to reconsider, the official said. Trump’s response to the shooting, a “self-congratulatory tweet … broke the dam loose,” the Better for America official said.

“It’s been pretty remarkable some of the people who have said let me know what, let me take another look at this,” the official said. “I’ve had more outreach to me in the last two weeks than I had over the previous two months from potential candidates.”

We’re skeptical. Like Ward, we think that an “independent bid will likely remain a long shot unless Trump plummets in the polls, falling even further behind Clinton than he is now” — much like the push to replace him in Cleveland.

But we’re paying attention.

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4. In the arena

Our roundup of the big names making convention news today

Donald Trump has declared that he wants Cleveland to be a gathering of “winners” — not politicians, like pretty much every convention that preceded it. “We’re going to do it a little different, if that’s OK,” Trump said in Virginia earlier this month. “I’m thinking about getting some of the great sports people who like me a lot.” On Tuesday, Bloomberg Politics reported that a few such “winners” have already signed on: legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight,NASCAR chief Brian France and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. In a tweet, Trump denied that Tyson had been invited.

Various third-party groups have also booked various musical acts to perform at various venues throughout Cleveland during the convention. These include Mike Love’s latest iteration of the Beach Boys (which doesn’t include Brian Wilson or any of the band’s other surviving members); 1970s rock band Journey; former Poison frontman and reality TV star Bret Michaels; ’80s hitmaker Rick Springfield; country singer Martina McBride; and country band Rascal Flatts, which formed in Ohio in 1999.

Last week, Trump told the New York Times that he would not invite either Ted Cruz or John Kasich, his former rivals for the Republican nomination, to speak in Cleveland unless they endorsed him. Cruz and Kasich don’t seem to care. “We have not sought nor are we expecting a speaking slot at the convention,” Kasich’s spokesman told the Times on Monday. A Cruz spokesman said much the same thing.

At a small news conference Tuesday on the floor of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena — known locally as “The Q” — convention CEO Jeff Larson and executive producer Phil Alongi unveiled what Alongi described as “one of the most advanced stages ever put together.” Reached by twin white staircases and flanked by tall silver “blades” that “mask [its] guts,” the stage is most notable for what hovers above it: 1,711 square feet of video screens with more than 10 million pixels, plus 647 moving light fixtures designed to manipulate the “texture, color and tone” of the event.

“It’s not putting up a small stage for a Madonna concert or something,” Larson said.

Alongi added that the set was the result of a “very open discussion” between the Trump campaign and convention organizers.

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5. Best of the rest

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History lesson

Does this year’s anti-Trump convention rallying cry — “Free the Delegates” — sound familiar? It should. In 1980, Sen. Ted Kennedy arrived at the Democratic convention in New York City trailing incumbent president Jimmy Carter by 700 delegates. But the momentum was on Kennedy’s side. He had won the last big primaries in California and New Jersey. The Billygate scandal — in which it was revealed that Carter’s brother, Billy, had been paid hefty fees to lobby for the Libyan government — was in the news. And Ronald Reagan was beginning to overtake the president in the polls.

The Kennedy camp came up with a plan: They would convince the delegates to change the rules and unbind themselves so they could vote their consciences — which presumably would mean a vote for Kennedy.

As Bob Shrum, Kennedy’s strategist and speechwriter, has put it, “We had the argument that people should not be bound to vote for a candidate regardless of what circumstances occur after the primaries. What if someone committed a crime, for example? The rule was too abstract, and it was clear [Carter] would lose to Reagan.”

Both campaigns spent the month before the convention contacting and cajoling delegates. Team Carter “called and recalled every one of its pledged delegates to explain the rule, the controversy, and the motives of the Kennedy campaign,” writes Elaine Kamarck in her book “Primary Politics.” Meanwhile, “the Kennedy campaign organized an equally impressive delegate tracking operation, hoping to convince delegates that they could abandon Carter and vote for him.”

Kennedy forces dubbed Rule F3© “the robot rule,” splashing the slogan “free the delegates” across posters and printing a cartoonish image of a robot with a red slash across it on their buttons.

But alas: On Monday night, the Rules Committee voted — by a wide margin — to keep the robot rule in place. Kennedy immediately withdrew from the race.
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Countdown

For the latest data, make sure to check the Yahoo News delegate scorecard and primary calendar.