With the Walz pick, the Harris campaign is using vibes as a cloak to disguise what would otherwise be very unpopular policies.
Sometimes I have to admit my limits as a political prognosticator and analyst; frankly, for all my attempts at logic, I really don’t have any particular ability to predict the future. I figured J. D. Vance was a candidate who offered zero upside to Donald Trump when I wrote up my Republican veepstakes piece; Trump then chose Vance as his running mate. In my Democratic veepstakes piece a few weeks later, I dismissed Tim Walz as a “dark horse” candidate whose charisma wasn’t nearly as transferable to Pennsylvania or Michigan as Democrats believed, and Kamala Harris has now picked him. Others will write longer reactions, so I will simply remark: Blah.
People will call Tim Walz “Minnesota nice.” First of all, most people who haven’t spent time in that state fail to grasp that there is nothing necessarily nice about “Minnesota nice,” a concept better described as “Scandihoovian social protocol.” Second, Walz’s general blandness may satisfy Democrats seeking a progressive who doesn’t remind voters of Bernie Sanders, but beyond that his selection emphasizes once again that this is a campaign about vibes rather than concrete policy — vibes as a cloak to disguise what would otherwise be very unpopular policies indeed.
Perhaps that is as deep as the thinking here went: He is as progressive as the party now thinks it can get away with, without startling mainstream voters. “Normal midwestern governor” will be the pitch, not “committed progressive who oversaw a disastrous Covid response and the George Floyd debacle.” There is a logic in the Walz pick that I can well discern, for it applied in its own way to the Vance pick as well: Both candidates have decided that the Midwest is where the race will be won or lost in November. That still seems like the right bet, even though the new volatility of Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada keeps a larger set of victory combinations in play. Harris will need to win at least two of the three states in order to triumph on Election Night, and assuming Arizona and Georgia return to the Republicans this cycle, will need all three.
Does Tim Walz do that? He certainly pleases the far-left wing of the Democratic base — notice the happy reactions to the pick among the online Democratic world, which had been holding its breath fearing Shapiro. And this is no small thing to sneeze at, because youth enthusiasm (which tracks base enthusiasm closely among Democratic voters) had been an extremely sore spot for the Democrats since October 7. The mention of October 7 brings us to another ugly point worth noting: that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro — the strong favorite among the sorts of people alienated from the bases of both parties — was probably torpedoed from the VP nod because Harris genuinely feared a Jew on the ticket in 2024 could cost her Michigan. Such is the state of the modern Democratic coalition, and none in the mainstream media dare call it what it is: a shameful abasement before antisemitism for crude electoral advantage.
I am left marveling at how, in an election where a clear majority of American voters are practically begging one or the other of the two major parties to offer them even the slightest concession in terms of political moderation, the response of both has been to double down, to first shore up their own base — white working-class men for Trump, progressives for Harris — rather than reach out for a broader coalition. This is indeed not a coalition-broadening pick for Harris (her most realistic path to victory remains an electoral performance worse than Joe Biden’s). She is instead trying to juice her core voters and pick up just enough across the Midwest to recreate Biden’s map in 2020. I say good luck with that, as I wonder whether either of these parties actually wants to win this race.