I was wrong.

I predicted yesterday Mitt Romney would choose Marco Rubio to be his running mate. I often tell people that whatever my prediction happens to be they should vote against it.

Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his Vice Presidential choice. As a Democrat I could not be happier that I was wrong.

What does this choice mean?

For one it means that the Romney campaign felt the election slipping away from them. Ryan is not a choice aimed at expanding Romney’s electoral coalition. He is unknown outside of conservative circles and outside of his home state of Wisconsin (even outside of his district in Wisconsin).

This is a choice aimed at shoring up Romney’s base.

Rather than make a cynical choice by choosing Rubio–a choice that would indicate that the Romney campaign felt it had a chance of winning and wanted to shave a point or two off of Obama’s lead with Latinos–Romney made a stupid choice.

Mitt Romney has hung the Ryan Budget around his neck.

Every element of the Ryan Budget echoes the successful arguments that the Obama campaign has made about Romney over the last few months; that he favors the rich and would gut programs for everyone else.

The Ryan Budget cuts the top tax rate from 35% to 25%. The rich would pay lower taxes (though even 25% is above the 15% effective tax rate that multimillionaire Mitt Romney paid in 2010). It would end Medicare by turning it into a “voucher program” that will leave seniors in the future to pay ever-increasing health premiums. Romney and Ryan would cut food stamps to pay for huge tax cuts for the rich.

The Center for American Progress concluded that the Ryan Budget would cut investments that tend to benefit the middle-class and serve the national interest:

…the Ryan budget will rob Americans of future economic opportunities by slashing more than $871 billion of investment in education and skills training, science and technology research and development, and transportation infrastructure in the decade between 2013 and 2022.

Rather than ask the most fortunate Americans to dedicate themselves to balancing the budget, the Ryan Budget relies on cuts to programs that benefit the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. The U.S. Catholic Bishops have roundly criticized his budget ideas as unjust. Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, CA criticized cuts to nutrition programs:

…deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the [Ryan Budget] fail this basic moral test.

In the short run this announcement will deliver a bump in the polls; but it does not change the narrative. The choice of Ryan will not change the strategy of the Obama campaign to define Romney as out of touch with the needs of average Americans, it will intensify those arguments and make them more successful.