The complete rollercoaster that has been the 2024 presidential contest is now practically complete, with both party leaders having at least presumptively clinched their nominations and having selected their running mates.
Last week, we asked if any vice presidential nominee could save the incumbent vice president. Now, we can clearly see that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) will likely do more harm than good to Vice President Kamala Harris’ electoral prospects, but we also understand why she selected the little-known Midwestern governor.
Let’s start with what people, namely those in the Democratic camp, are raving about: Walz’s “folksy” Midwestern appeal. We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out how mainstream media and talking heads alike are recycling the same characterization of the Minnesota Governor, almost as if they were handed a script and marching orders from top branch, but we’re just speculating.
To his credit, Walz does have a mild-mannered way of speaking that does, in fact, make him seem like an ordinary American.
He can also get through an entire sentence without delivering a cackle worthy of a straitjacket, but the bar has been lower, unfortunately.
Walz also blends two important folds of the Democratic coalition together: working-class Midwesterners, among whom he will likely help Harris across the must-win Rust Belt states, and progressives, without whom the party would likely be one that remained in power and wouldn’t have necessitated someone like Donald Trump.
A soft-spoken Rust Belt governor who has appealed to the progressive left during his time in St. Paul is arguably one of the better choices from her shortlist.
The cons, on the other hand, don’t outweigh the pros, in our opinion. And the pros probably would have picked someone much more moderate like Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who, despite his likely ability to appeal to moderates and true swing voters, probably would have had virtually no name recognition outside the Bluegrass State.
The first problem the Walz pick sheds light on is that the Democratic Party is in their ultimate “have their cake and eat it too” phase, wherein, in order to win elections, they have to court the middle, but they have regressed so far into progressive politics, that, if they were to abandon those values, they wouldn’t have a soapbox to mount to prevent the general population from life’s simple pleasures, like finding the fun or humor in practically anything.
Democrats can’t go for someone like Beshear because he’d probably be more ideologically opposed to Harris than anyone else, despite being a champion for some more liberal values in an otherwise solidly-Republican state.
The other problem is found in who Harris was widely expected to pick, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. With the Keystone State being the one of the Rust Belt Quartet that Democrats need the most help in winning, Shapiro was a no-brainer. But the party’s growing schisms among Jewish voters and anti-Israel agitators seemed to have left no oxygen in the room for someone who could have been the country’s first Jewish vice president.
Predictably, pundits, news stations, and even the general public came down hard on Harris for passing on Shapiro, likely because his Jewish heritage would have created more chaos on the ticket when such chaos contributed to alarmingly-large protest votes against Biden in the Michigan and Minnesota primaries earlier this year. These aren’t people racing to Trump if Shapiro was their vice presidential nominee. They probably would have just sat the election out, a lesson in enthusiasm gaps that Democrats learned the hard way in 2016.
But as far as progressive values go, Walz is pretty much just as progressive as Harris. He signed a bill codifying abortion rights in the Minnesota state constitution that provide no gestational limits on pregnancy termination. Regardless of the debate on when abortion is considered moral, most Americans don’t agree that babies should be aborted (killed) right up until the due date.
But Walz’s most egregious display of governance was during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots that made the Twin Cities an epicenter of lawlessness, third-world country-like behavior, and the complete lack of control and order elected officials are typically able to exhibit. Riots in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, were branded by CNN as “fiery, but mostly peaceful protests” were just another chapter in the long, arduous journey cynically referred to as the “Summer of Love.”
Walz called the responses by the Twin Cities mayors’ an “abject failure,” despite waiting to send in the National Guard to quell the protests that resulted in over $500 million in property damages, over 1,500 properties destroyed, over 600 injuries, two riot-related deaths, and the Minneapolis Third Precinct Headquarters being burned to the ground.
This is the guy who could be second in line for the presidency.
Some Democrats took to social media to express their disdain for the pick, citing Walz’s apparent inability to “balance the ticket,” a concern some Republicans have readily expressed over Trump’s pick in Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH).
The reality is: Walz is just as progressive as the next guy. The voting base in his state demands progressivism pathologically, and Walz has been more than eager to deliver. It’s why the Twin Cities were front and center in 2020 and it’s why Minnesota doesn’t differ much from other much bluer states in terms of policy.
Harris is as progressive as they come. In her first year as a Senator from California, the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index ranked her as the sixth-least bipartisan Senator out of the body of one hundred lawmakers. Harris remained in that position in the 116th Congress (2019-2020). Harris has also only had one close race in her life: her first statewide campaign in the 2010 California Attorney General race. As the San Francisco County District Attorney, Harris defeated Los Angeles County D.A. Steve Cooley (R) by under one percentage point. Her 2014 re-election was by a much larger margin, and she was succeeded in 2018 by Xavier Becerra, who is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Harris won her first and only term in the U.S. Senate against another Democrat, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, thanks to California’s top-two primary system that frequently results in two Democrats advancing to the general election. It’s hard to believe that just six years prior, legendary Senator Barbara Boxer (D) was only narrowly re-elected in California over Carly Fiorina (R), who would later run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
After just more than one-half term in the Senate, Harris ascended to the vice presidency, but not before running for president herself, barely registering above 5% in her home state, and dropping out well before Super Tuesday.
At least Walz has faced closer races and run in more competitive turf.
Ironically, both Harris and Trump have picked running mates from states they didn’t need that much help in winning. Trump will likely carry Ohio by at least ten points, and while Minnesota is certainly more competitive than the former, conventional wisdom states it’s the Rust Belt state that Harris needs the least help winning. At this point, we’ll buy that Harris picked Walz just to avoid a humiliating defeat in Minnesota, where Democrats have won in every presidential race since 1972.
At this point, the country can pick a president under whom the world saw remarkable displays of peace, or they can pick a new ticket under whom the country was “mostly peaceful.”
2024 was never seen as a waltz for either candidate. Harris choosing Walz doesn’t make it any more so for her.
