Julian Castro is on Clinton's,shortlist for VP

[Mister Mets]

I think Manchin would only be picked as a Hail Mary if she is trailing and only getting ~25% of white men in her polling.  However, the odds that she will need to Sista Souljah the social justice activists have gone up with this week's events at Yale and Mizzou.  We'll see. 

I also forgot to mention Booker and Patrick, both of whom could help assure continued Obama-level black support and turnout.  Booker probably dominates Patrick here because Patrick barely made it out of 2010 in a 60% Obama state and he now works for Bain Capital, which could get very awkward if Republicans run Obama's anti-Romney ads against Patrick.

Isn't Booker too Wall Street-friendly for the base?

That would be a risk.  But if she wants a black Dem who has won outside of a VRA district, she is unfortunately down to those two options.

Anthony Foxx was Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina and Obama's Secretary of Transportation. He's as qualified as Castro, but comes from a swing state.

[Mister Mets]

Clinton-Castro legimitately scares me. Julian Castro is more inexperienced than Sarah Palin...

WTF?!

Geographic Region     Population
Alaska                          736,732
San Antonio               1.409 million

Castro was mayor of San Antonio for half a decade and he is currently a cabinet secretary.  Sarah Palin didn't even finish one term as governor.

Isn't San Antonio one of the "weak mayor, strong city council or manager" cities? Because if he had little power as mayor, that undercuts the argument of him having extensive experience.

It is.  He's basically a figurehead/spokesperson for the city who casts a vote among many on the council.  It's probably more or less equivalent to being in your party's leadership in the state legislature in terms of experience.

I do think Democrats need to get more comfortable with running mayors for congress and statewide offices in general, but for VP I'd want them to be the mayor of a much larger city.  The problem is that only a few mayors will have experience running against serious R's.  A place like Houston/San Diego/Charlotte that's routinely R-contestable would be a good place to look for a high quality statewide candidate, but again, VP out of city hall is pushing it. 

To be fair, Castro isn't just a mayor. He does have a cabinet post, and is head of the HUD department.