Rant 802: Walzing Along

Copyright ? 2024 by Richard L. Hermann

Kamala Harris’s selection of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate punches a lot of important tickets:?

·???????? Walz is a white male, which balances the ticket.

·???????? He is a Midwestern, small-town farm boy.

·???????? He is quintessentially working class.

·???????? He is a very successful governor.

·???????? He represented a rural, Republican district in the U.S. House of Representatives which flipped immediately back to Republican when Walz was elected governor.?

·???????? He is highly articulate, as evidenced by his complete undressing and exposing of “weird” JD Vance and his even weirder running mate, Donald Trump.?

·???????? He is a veteran.

·???????? He is a gun owner who once had an “A” rating from the NRA.?

·???????? He was a high school teacher and football coach, who turned around a winless program and won a state championship.?

·???????? When a student group wanted to form a gay-straight student alliance, he volunteered to be its faculty advisor.?

·???????? He offends no Democratic constituency.?

·???????? He can unquestionably serve as a highly competent and able governing partner to a President Harris.

·???????? He is avuncular in the best sense, as opposed to crazy Uncle Donald.

·???????? He compares favorably to his Republican, hedge-fund, faux-hillbilly counterpart in every conceivable way.

·???????? He actually cares about people who feel left behind, as opposed to Trump and Vance pretending to care.

·???????? He is NORMAL!

Trump and Vance will try to paint him as a radical leftist. However, when you see him and hear him talk, he comes across as anything but.

The other two finalists–Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Sen.Mark Kelly of Arizona– while both exceptional leaders with stellar credentials–would have brought with them some uncomfortable baggage. Shapiro may have been too much of a centrist for the Democrats’ progressive wing to swallow. In addition, he is an unabashed supporter of Israel, a position that could have jeopardized Democratic chances in crucial Michigan with its large Arab population. His presence on the ticket might have generated massive protests at the imminent Chicago convention reminiscent of the chaos of 1968. Finally, a Harris-Shapiro ticket would have meant that three quarters of the first and second families would have been Jewish. America may not quite be ready for that. And you could have bet the mortgage that Trump’s just-below-the-surface anti-Semitism would have had a field day with that. Kelly is suspect among the labor unions for some of his Senate votes.???

The downside of the Walz pick is that he does not hail from a swing state that Harris will need to win the election. Of course, the conventional wisdom is that VP picks have little if any impact on the outcome of presidential elections. Pundits point to Lyndon Johnson in 1960 as the last VP candidate to make a difference, LBJ being credited with putting Texas in the Kennedy win column.?

My historical take on the impact of VP candidates is a little different. In 1980, Reagan’s choice of George H.W. Bush helped unify Republican support as it brought together the two major GOP constituencies–the traditional conservative Eastern establishment and the hard-right Goldwater wing. In 1992, Clinton’s pick, Al Gore, emphasized the ticket’s youth and solidified its appeal to sunbelt states. In 2008, McCain’s surprise selection of Sarah Palin, a woefully inexperienced and inept loose cannon, arguably hurt him, voters questioning both his judgment and his seriousness. In 2016, Mike Pence reassured Evangelicals that Trump, despite his singularly non-biblical past, was palatable.

And that brings us to John David Vance who, after only several weeks as Trump’s VP choice, is already proving to be a train wreck of Palinesque proportions. He has already forfeited the “childless cat lady” vote and cemented the public’s perception of him as both weird and creepy, not the best adjectives to shoulder moving toward November.

The contrast between Walz and Vance could not be starker. Bizarre and conspiracy theory-prone, fake hillbilly shtick vs. rock-solid mainstream, salt-of-the-earth American. Given the contrast, Walz could actually boost Harris’s chances.

The Democrats now have two people at the top of their ticket who contrast sharply with their Republican rivals: competence vs. incompetence; normal vs. anything but normal; forward-looking vs. past-obsessed; supporting policies favored by the majority of Americans (e.g., women’s health; guns; privacy, inequality); high cognition vs. deeply impaired; youth vs. age; other-directed vs. self-consumed; and so forth.

Getting back to Walz vs. Vance, who would you rather have “a heartbeat away”? Speaking of hearts, it is clear that Walz has a big one. Vance (and Trump) have already proven that they are heartless.

Dick Hermann

August 11, 2024

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