Perhaps this is a misreading of the situation due to recency bias, but it strikes me that the best thing the Dems have going for them at the moment is that they're managing to project an air of pleasant normality, minimal infighting, and fun-to-be-around-ness. Walz seems like a straightforwardly very good choice to reinforce that; excellent bio, doesn't divide the coalition in any way, seems to be a charismatic guy.
A lot of stuff is going to happen between now and election day, but the best terrain for the Dems to fight this on pending all that unknowable stuff is that things are pretty good right now and the Republicans are running a couple of genuinely unpleasant human beings who have made the mistake of putting too many of their unpopular plans in writing. Gimme a cheerful miltary vet schoolteacher dad to hammer that without causing a twitter freakout that will inevitably impact journalistic perceptions...I like it a lot.
I really think the American people will like him. I just hope he is ready to answer tough questions on BLM riots, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and (maybe) COVID. He’s been folksy and likable when playing offense, can he do the same when playing defense?
On the issue driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, the simple response is that it's not a gift from the state, nor is it something likely to make a difference in practice in one's decision to illegally immigrate, nor does the governor of Minnesota have any control over the federal government's immigration policy.
What driver's licenses for illegal immigrants does do is acknowledge the reality that they are going to be driving anyway, legally or illegally, and that issuing licenses at least encourages illegal immigrants to learn enough of U.S. traffic laws to pass the licensing test, which is justifiable on purely public safety grounds (e.g. reducing the number of traffic accidents).
I tend to think anyone looking hard at a VP's policy positions already knows who they're voting for. The goal here was to not take on a liability, and to get someone who's refreshing and fun enough on TV to carry forward the refreshing-and-fun-in-contrast-to-Biden-and-Trump energy that's been Harris's biggest asset so far. I'm optimistic.
I feel like Shapiro had a few question mark maybe scandals that weighed him down. That plus Freddie's point about his possibly taking Kamala's clout is what probably doomed his VP chances.
Though I think Freddie is repelled by one sort of left-wing activists, while leaning very hard into another sort of left-wing activists, who are often conflated by people who aren't aware of the important differences.
An interesting common denominator here: both Matt and Freddie take a basically materialist and consequentialist approach to politics; the sort of left-wing activists that both of them dislike… don’t.
We do not and may never know the frank vetting conversations that took place. I think this was a “keep it simple, stupid” choice which is super alright by me. Turn Tim Walz loose and let’s drive this campaign home!
Agreed on this one. All the stuff about her ego just doesn't have any real evidence for it. Whatever "iron law[s] of institutions" one wants to subscribe to, are ultimately still subject to individual choices and contingencies.
I knew it was going to be Walz as soon as the shortlist with Beshear, Cooper, Kelly, Pritzker, Shapiro, Walz, and Whitmer was leaked, before the Walz boom and the Shapiro haters came out of the woodwork. Parties almost never nominate VPs without Washington experience. The last Democratic VP nominee without Washington experience was Charles W. Bryan, 100 years ago, ie before the modern nominating system, the 22nd Amendment, the modern vice presidency, and even before the Democrats got rid of the 2/3rds rule. The only Republican without Washington experience nominated under current nomination rules and the post-Mondale vice presidency was Sarah Palin, a notoriously poorly-vetted disaster for her party. The second most recent Republican VP nominee without Washington experience was Agnew, the only VP to resign the office in disgrace.
I doubt it’s weird happenstance either. Presidential nominees without Washington experience probably deliberately select for Washington experience with their VP nominees, so it’s no surprise someone like Clinton or Reagan picked a VP who had some. I suspect presidential nominees with Washington experience favor VP candidates who share it for a different reason. During the vetting process, when the campaign is throwing out trial balloons for their various candidates, they’re much more likely to hear positive things about VP candidates with Washington experience just because their professional networks overlap more. A lot more people they know and trust will have had positive experiences with a prospective VP who’s been around Washington, and they may even know each other personally from serving in the same caucus together (eg Obama-Biden, Kerry-Edwards). However, the positive things that they hear through their network about, eg the governors of Kentucky or Pennsylvania are likely to be more remote—second or third hand accounts, or gleaned from TV—so presidential nominees would tend to put less stock in those opinions.
It’s hardly an ironclad rule, of course. But considering how often it holds true compared to how much hype random governors get in the veepstakes, you could make a lot of money for yourself shorting candidates without Washington experience in prediction markets.
He arguably could be a liability if he makes it harder to win over undecided voters who don't want to vote for Trump but are worried that Kamala is "too liberal".
He seems like a cool guy and I like his views on housing and he has been adaptable in the past, so hopefully that will continue.
My own awareness of Walz is probably as minimal or even lower than that of the average American -- as in, he's nothing more than a name and now a face to me, and it won't change my vote one iota because seriously, it's the VP pick -- but do I think as far as "contrast" and "energy," go, it might have behooved Harris to pick someone less visibly old.
I've listened to one podcast interview with Walz so I am now an expert (sarcasm) - but he seems like a genuinely good communicator. And he has a sense of humor and warmth and ability to improvise that make him seem younger and seem like good VP assets. And it doesn't seem like an act.
It's very true. What strikes me is the contrast with Trump, who is often touted as being successful because he is so "authentic" and so "funny". But Walz actually seems authentic, warm, funny, and able to speak off the cuff at length. I am also encouraged by his introductory ad, which is lunch-bucket to the core, with concrete nods to abortion rights and child care.
1. I beg people not to make the mistake of insisting that swing voters are political moderates/doctrinaire centrists. They aren't, and we've known that empirically for a very long time. They're mostly low-information voters, voters with incoherent politics relative to the American political binary, or both. They also tend to care less about explicit policy than the average politico or journalist. Because most people are checked out and embrace vibes. There's a long empirical record on this. See for example https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-a-myth/
2. Shapiro is simply too obviously ambitious. I don't for a second think Israel sunk him; I think Harris's team was too averse to picking anyone who could steal her thunder, which also effectively ruled out Whitmer (on anyone's shortlist for 2028/2032) or Klobuchar (already ran). I mean, if you're Kamala Harris or her team, and you watch what happened to Joe Biden, are you going to pick a man who's ten years younger than you and clearly plans to be President in the next decade? Not saying that's good for the ticket or the Democrats. But most partisan politics has this "iron law of institutions" element to it.
If that's the case, then I disagree with her reasoning, but I don't see any indications yet that that was her actual reasoning.
IMO we're in a moment when the entire team needs to be on offense. This isn't football, where one ball-hog might conceivably be "stealing" touches from the other players, but rather baseball, where every player needs to be slugging at their best right now.
Right, Kamala’s best chance to be president is now, not in 2028. The idea that she wouldn’t pick the person who best positions her to win now even if they might be more popular in 2028 is nonsensical. Also, had she chosen Shapiro it’s not like he could’ve usurped her in 2028. Either he would’ve been part of a successful admin and ran as her VP for reelection or he would’ve been part of a failed administration in 2028 and had no chance anyways.
I do think having both people on the ticket be from the current administration would make it really hard to present it as any kind of break or new hotness.
Pete lives in Michigan now. I fully expect him to run for governor in 2026 as Whitmer is term limited. I think he needs to show he can get elected to something bigger than mayor of South Bend, IN. Being governor of a big midwestern state sets him up beautifully for either 2028 (if Harris loses) or 2032 (if Harris wins).
Democrats are way too afraid of the gay thing. There are no voters in the country short of actual white supremacists (whose votes we aren’t getting) who care about identity as much as Democrats do (or as much as Democrats think other people do).
Pete's current polling with Blacks is fine now. He has put in the work as DOT Secretary, done transformational projects in the community and earned the trust of Black leaders. It's 2024, not 2020.
I think there are genuine foreign policy or international concerns. Not with our friends, or even so much with our foes, but more with what used to be called "the 3rd world". Places like Africa, the ME, the Caribbean are often woo'd by the US in competition with China or Russia or others. Or we just want them onboard with something or other. I'm not sure what the reactions would be in those countries.
I don't think that's a 'genuine' concern. We shouldn't be making decisions on which politicians to nominate to important offices, so that we don't offend Mali or the UAE or somewhere. We're the world's superpower, they get no say in who we nominate and they simply have to deal with it.
I mean, you could use your same argument to argue against nominating a woman for President, which is at least as big a hurdle to the 3rd world as being a gay man
He's represented the US in international forums and negotiations as DOT Secretary including some of those countries ( Saudi Arabia, Kenya etc.) without incident. He's fluent in Arabic and six other languages Btw.
Sometimes your best slugger isn’t the one you want on cleanup. But no matter what Tony La Russa-type lineup wizardry you want to screw around with, ultimately you always want the best hitters getting the most at-bats.
So if the at-bats are functionally unlimited - or at least limited by the number of slots on a 24/7 news cycle - then fuck it, maximize them until you get to the point where you actually DO have to make lineup decisions.
This to me was the obvious reason he couldn’t be picked. Harris needs to plausibly create space between her potential administration and the current one. I was surprised he was being put out there as a serious possibility.
Yes, exactly. Good, young, presidential campaign experience, obvious designs on the big chair = threatening to a candidate who didn't win a conventional primary and is (reportedly) staffed by people who feel that she's been unfairly targeted within the party.
The memo that got released made it seem like Pete (and Whitmer) might be the best top-of-ticket choices.
He out performed her is the 2020 race, he is obviously hoping to be president. And I imagine if he started getting too much attention their might be some weird conversations about why that is unfair and that would just be needlessly messy.
That said, he is really good on TV and I think he is smart enough to credit the top-of-ticket rather than be a gloryhound so I think he would have been a good choice.
VPs -- whether as nominees or in office -- are *never* threatening to the Big Cheese in the Oval Office. That's why they're the Top Dog, Numero Uno, the Big Boss, El Jefe.
I want to see Pete as either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State in the Harris-Walz administration. He's earned it, he would be good at either, and we need to continue to deepen his resume for his eventual run. I can see Governor of Michigan too.
Pete, the guy who when the ONE TIME the Transport Sec had something meaningful to do (East Palestine, Ohio) came off looking LESS COMPASSIONATE than Donald Trump.
That is a hard hard thing to do, but Pete managed it.
On what planet is being mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and then f**king up the one crisis he had to deal with as a minor cabinet secretary (14th in line for presidential succession) sufficient qualification to be SecDef?
Pete Buttigieg is not qualified. Two terms as mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana and three years as the head of a relatively unimportant executive department doesn’t cut it.
TO BE CLEAR, I am not saying Shapiro did anything wrong in either case. I don't think there's enough public information to know. But that's the nature of scandals sometimes, and the snub may well have had more to do with wanting to avoid all of that than anything to do with Israel, vouchers, fracking, or whatever else.
>It also seems like Shapiro's scandals were ignored by people on both sides of what they wanted to be an ideological proxy war.<
I wasn't ignoring them. They were my main worry about Shapiro. He wasn't my first choice as such (that was Beshear), but I was beginning to warm up to him the more I contemplated the Electoral College math.
If anything I think the specter of an Israel-Iran war was making him a more desirable running mate, and I also reckoned that the inevitable, sharp critique from The Groups might well have reverberated to Harris's advantage among moderate voters.
But yeah, I was worried about lots of stories in August about sexual harassment.
In many ways I expect MAGA got the running mate they wanted in Walz, because they're going to hit him hard as an extreme lefty as part of their general effort to pain the ticket as ideologically extreme (they've been doing this since Pontius Pilate was in office). But I also have a feeling the Walz choice isn't going to be of much help to them. He's a lefty, sure, but a decidedly populist version: gun owner, football coach, graduate of a non-fancy school, non-lawyer, etc. The GOP really hasn't had much success painting Democrats as ideologically extreme. What they've been successful at is portraying them as elitist, limousine liberals. That's not Walz. He's got the common touch.
The effort to paint Walz as an extreme lefty reminds me a bit of how Democrats tried to paint Glenn Youngkin as a MAGA extremist in 2021. It just didn't work! Candidate vibes matter.
I'm not saying they were ignored by everyone. I mean, they were reported on after all. My point is they were largely ignored by both anti-Shapiro people who wanted opposition to him to be focused on Palestine (and to a lesser extent vouchers), and pro-Shapiro people who, well, were pro-Shapiro.
"It shouldn't be Shapiro because he has multiple scandals that could be difficult to deal with both substantively and politically" was not a very popular take, but it strikes me as correct and wouldn't be surprised if it was in fact what Kamala et al. thought.
Agree with you that trying to paint Walz as some uber lefty won't go very far, especially considering since he was a governor beholden to a state budget, nothing he signed will strike any semi-normal person as radical. His affect and background certainly helps deflect that stuff too.
At the end of the day, I think the "safe" pick made more sense than Matt gives it credit for considering Shapiro came with serious risks. When you weigh those risks against the potential benefit of getting half an extra percentage point or so in PA...Walz strikes me as the right pick.
I do think there is one unspoken factor here. Regardless of the validity of Shapiro's scandals, they absolutely would have have been highlighted (and exaggerated) by leftist twitter if he had gotten the nomination. Which would give them additional credibility (since its not just coming from the right).
Whether this would have overwhelmed his popularity in PA is a totally different question, but a big part of the problem is Dems have a rogue element in their coalition that still is getting catered too. In the short run, it may be worth it, but it concerns me in the long run.
Far be it from me to deny that this would’ve been a real possibility, but I would’ve been more concerned about the hay Trump, Vance, et al. could’ve made out of them.
“You know what’s weird? The death of someone with 20 stab wounds being ruled a suicide!”
It would have to be workshopped a bit but they absolutely would’ve ran with it, and at a minimum I think it would’ve been enough to draw attention away from Trump’s myriad scandals, Vance’s…weirdness, etc. Time spent denying you covered up a murder as a favor to a friend is time not spent talking about abortion.
Again, I’m not weighing in on the validity, but it’s not like Trump and Vance would’ve cared.
I think this is totally wrong. After all the whole American political system is based ambition, see here: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp. The real danger lies when it comes to Vice Presidents is a lack of ambition, see Dick Cheney who of course never wanted to be president and instead worked very hard and very successfully to steer another person's presidency into the ditch. It would have been much better is Dick had thought "If this Iraq thing goes bad that's the end of my career, better be cautious." The fact that he just didn't care about that sort of thing helped lead to any number of bad calls.
Also Biden dropping out seems to be a special case, as long as you can do a semi-decent job in a presidential debate, you don't have to worry about it happening to you. And of course if you can no longer do a semi-decent job (Joe did fine in 2008,2012, and 2020) then maybe you shouldn't be running anyway!
Likewise IIRC Bush the Elder was against sending the Marines into Lebanon because he didn't want to get stuck with an open ended commitment in his own presidency after Dutch left the scene, and considering how it went he was totally right!
I'm confused by the implication of "stealing her thunder". Why is it a bad thing for Harris if she picks a very popular VP that then runs for pres after her? The only way I can see this being bad for her is if her VP challenges her in 2028, but that would be completely unhinged.
The possible worry would be a VP with designs on the presidency acting like Ron DeSantis or Gavin Newsom - doing things to attract media attention, not worrying about whether they might cost the popularity of the current party office holder.
Point 2 reads to me as a sort of conceptual chinese finger trap. "We can't pick anyone that is politically ambitious" is code for "we can't pick anyone that could be too good." This to me is strange, because I would personally try to pick the best person possible. Them possibly stealing my thunder is small fry considering that we should be trying to steal Trump's thunder.
My pet theory is that this is how Kamala Harris consolidated the party so quickly to support her nomination. By promising not to choose a VP with obvious presidential ambitions, she maximized her chance of winning by getting other potential candidates to stand down knowing that in event of a loss in 2024, the playing field would be cleared for 2028. It was good for the party's chances this year, and it is good for the next cycle as well.
On #1, Right. So when you pick someone immoderate you end up alienating all the swing voters who disagree with whatever "extreme" policies your candidate has. By definition, a swing voter will disagree with some of the platforms of each party, so if your candidate seems too committed to them those disagreements will be more impactful.
Picking a "good vibes centrist" is the right trick because it doesn't alienate anyone, but you win on vibes.
No, I think you have a second goal in mind - not making your life a living hell for the next four years if you win, and perhaps even helping make governance work well. (This doesn't necessarily count against maximizing your odds of winning, sometimes the same person is best for both. But not always.)
We really don't know her thinking. As for Shapiro it may be that she's worried that being adjacent to a MeToo type event would cause problems electorally or it may just be that she thinks less of Shapiro as a person for not defending the woman who credibly thought she was being horribly treated.
Do people like Whitmer maybe decline because they roll the dice on getting the top of the ticket in the next cycle? Versus the risk of being a loser VP candidate or spending 8 years in the VP role...
My interpretation is that Whitmer made a calculated decision not to involve herself in this situation. But to your point that has its own risks, and she could end up being viewed as stale by the next opportunity.
With the benefit of hindsight, DeSantis would've been better off doing that as well. On the other hand, Democrats aren't as invested in Harris personally as Republicans are in Trump.
I could see Shapiro or Pete talking about “people” needing autonomy over reproductive decisions—I can’t see Walz making that mistake. He’s a former high school teacher FFS—he knows how to communicate in basic, colorful, and consumable words.
Having known tim as a 10 year legislator in congress, a few comments:
(1) the idea that this was some sop to the left is wrong. Tim is a good, nimble politician, with a lot of experience and good connections in DC. He is a thoughtful moderate who is not very brain poisened by the internet and can win over voters of multiple stripes and has real credibility where Kamala doesnt (e.g. with unions).
(2) More importantly he has both more federal legislative chops and actual executive experience than Kamala or Shapiro. This is very good for trying to actually govern. The VP has very little effect on electoral politics (Gore, Edwards could win their states as statewide candidate but couldnt as nationwides). The idea that Shapiro is a silver bullet to take Penn off the map seems historically inaccurate. That some folks perceived as the "moderate" to kill off progressives seems very wrong and the fixation with Israel was too high on both sides of that dispute.
(3) He is charismatic in a way that shapiro is not. We dont need a bunch of slick lawyers, and I think Tim is a good contrast whose life parallels normal voters more clearly.
(4) Matt's continued dislike of biden is both silly and kinda weird. If Obama had not effectively pushed biden aside in '16 he would have won and the world would be a different place. That seems like an obama problem rather than biden as a pick. Further, Biden was the candidate in 2020 that was the best performer and won a tough election where the others would not. So this seems more like personal animus rather then analysis. Biden as a successor in '16 couldnt look better.
I think there's one sense in which he's a "sop to the left", and that is that they were specifically asking for not Shapiro, and sorta asking for Walz. If he's good on the merits, and you can show them that you're willing to give them this at the same time, that's great for the team.
Vetoing the demand of the left just because it's the demand of the left isn't a good strategy when you're in the middle of the campaign, unless their demand is specifically publicly unpopular, and vetoing it publicly can get you popularity points.
I think your second point is exactly correct.. It bothers me that certain people on the center-left (Chait's column today is a good example) insist that in order to appear moderate, the Democrats must be actively angering the left. There are ways to appeal to moderates that leftists can tolerate (even if they aren't necessarily excited). Choosing Walz over Shapiro is an example!
I also think some centrists have negative-polarized themselves into thinking that because the online left demanded Walz, the median voter will also perceive him as a lefty radical. I don't buy that at all.
Well said. Center-lefty here and I think sometimes the punching left happens a little too reflexively and is egged on by how sanctimonious much of the woke left is and the fact that they really get their panties in a bunch when criticized. All that being said, what Dems of all stripes really need to focus on is persuading those that don't agree with them. This is where I get a little annoyed with the Welcome PAC folks, MY, Dreyfuss, etc. insisting that they just have to punch left and adopt right-leaning stances on things. At some point you have to ask, what's the point of being a Dem if your right leaning district if you always have to adopt right leaning positions? I kind of want to see the Welcome PAC folks articulate why they are Dems and not Republicans. For the record, I really like Welcome PAC and think they do great work so my intent is not to bash them but a sincere understanding of what my fellow center-leftys are hoping to accomplish when elected. Why is a moderate Democratic position better than a moderate Republican position? Why did you run as a Democrat instead of a Republican?
Right - speaking as the resident leftist, outside of one weird Jacobin writer and maybe people with 245 followers on Twitter were asking for Bernie or Tliab as the VP - they wanted a normie center-left Democratic Governor of a blue-ish state who got a lot of normie Democrat's things done. He didn't pass single payer or ban gas cars.
It seems completely unsubstantiated that Kamala did this because people online disliked Shapiro. My point is that Tim Walz is a terrific candidate and specifically compliments her more, particularly from a governing strategy, than a young governor with relatively little federal experience.
It seems unwise to assume that this decision had to do with the left or any of that, really. You pick a VP who you like, won't outshine you, and will help compliment some of your deficiencies. Walz does all that. If Shapiro was not from Pennsylvania this would not even be a discussion.
As David Frum pointed out, to show that Harris is not beholden to The Groups, it would help if Walz goes out and gives a pro-Israel speech (but obviously, not pro-Bibi).
This is just too online and terrible advise. Tim Walz is fine and has a track record that is very clear to many people, including AIPAC. That he is not as publicly strident enthusiast (or detractor!) of the current Israeli policy in Gaza is probably smart.
You want to choose a VP and show party unity. That Walz gives you that benefit is great! The idea that his first act as the VP nominee would be to inflame interparty politics is wildly dumb and seems more about making Frum feel good than trying to win an election.
Most voters dont care about Israel, Walz has a clear record on the topic of Israel. Kamala and Walz are trying to win, not help Frum feel good that Walz is on Frum's side on Frum's topic.
There is a lot of discussion of race, age, gender and baseball card stats—how many elections won, bills passed, etc. But Walz seems to be very good at talking in a way that no one else (except maybe Mayor Pete) is.
I have been reading quotes from him and they are all just fantastic examples of natural, plain language loaded with metaphors that communicate "vibes" and ideas very well. If he is like that all the time, then he was indeed a very good pick for a condensed campaign against two very online weirdos.
#3 is interesting. I wonder if Shapiro not only being a lawyer but also, like Harris, an attorney general was the kiss of death. One too many lawyers and prosecutors.
Re: 4, I thought Matt's point was simply that Obama chose Biden as his VP specifically because he expected Biden to be too old to run for president, and given that Biden *did* run for president after all, this means that it was a poor VP pick.
From here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/make-the-vp-selection-on-the-merits -- "The 1864 selection is an unusually high stakes example, but versions of it happen pretty regularly. Barack Obama, for example, selected Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008, in part because he believed Biden would be too old to harbor his own continued presidential aspirations (oops)... The common thread in all of this is that presidential nominees use the VP selection to put out some kind of political brushfire, even though the substantive stakes in the selection are potentially very high and it’s extremely unusual for a voter to be persuaded by a vice president."
Sure by that logic I guess it makes sense. But in retrospect, Joe Biden would have been a terrific candidate in 2016 and Obama was in fact wrong then and wrong in '16 to push clinton. Biden was in fact a "great" VP both in that job and to succeed Obama. Instead Obama was succeeded by Donald Trump. So history does not suggest that, even if his plan was to pick Biden so Biden would *not run, Obama made a bad choice on the VP. His bad pick was to think Hillary was a good successor rather than his blue collar VP.
As you have said Matt, voters are almost comically forgiving of flip-flops.
Walz was the candidate he needed to be in order to win in an R+1 seat in a red wave, and he was the candidate he needed to be to win a blue state governorship, and was a likeable and engaging media presence in both guises, and seems to have won the admiration of the people he worked with in both guises.
The Harris/Whoever ticket must position itself to target the median voter in order to win, which above all is going to be about the issues Kamala Harris runs on and emphasizes in campaign messaging. Walz' well documented ability to be personally likeable on TV is a much, MUCH stronger qualification in that effort than the fact of a Shapiro pick angering the kinds of shrill Twitter leftists who are annoying in your replies.
There is also the Pennsylvania thing with Shapiro. If Kamala loses in a Florida 2000 situation this will look like a catastrophe. But for 49 other states the fact that Walz so sharply and obviously won the TV hit beauty contest made this a pretty clear decision, imho.
I can sympathize with your and Jonathan Chait's feeling that a shot across the bow of very obnoxious, habitually wrong, and bad coalition partner idiots online would have given you confidence that this ticket is aimed in the right direction and listening to the right people. But a broken clock is right twice a day, and I think leftist twitter happened upon the best advocate for the median voter-targeting campaign that needs to be run to win.
"As you have said Matt, voters are almost comically forgiving of flip-flops."
My response of someone criticizing that is "why shouldn't they be"?
A politician's job is to represent their voters and do what those voters elected them to do. If you have different voters in a new race, shouldn't you flip-flop a bit?
If lawyers can effectively argue that whoever pays them is innocent, and no one seems to question that, why can't politicians do whatever the voters who elected them want?
To play devil's advocate (angel's advocate?), one idea could be that elected officials will have to make a number of unanticipated decisions, and that those can't always be made based on what's popular with voters (or the politician may not know what's popular), so it's useful to have some sort of conviction, philosophy, or other heuristic generator.
I've been wanting to bring this up in the SB comments for a while, actually. What's the right amount of agreement with the voters, knowing that voters are fickle, stupid, and weird? If you're 80% true believer and 20% panderer, is that the right amount?
Governance, especially at the “running the executive administration” level is very information-asymmetric, failures to deliver are common, and it’s hard to verify whether or not an executive is actually making a best-faith effort to implement voter priorities.
If you want policy X implemented, you’ll probably prefer candidates whose commitment to implementing policy X is credible. Having publicly supported policy X for a long time and not changed positions on it— especially if there were points in time where publicly supporting policy X was politically costly— is a credibility signal.
The Walz pick doesn't confirm that Harris is stuck in a too-liberal lane or is afraid of The Groups. That pick *plus* continued kowtowing to those beliefs and those groups would be bad, however.
Every day she has another chance to show that she really is going for the median voter at the same time that she is working hard to fire up her base.
Might a candidate have as much of a regional effect as a home-state effect? Empirically thin on both counts of recent, but the one that gets referenced most, the John Edwards effect on NC relative to the nationwide shift — it was the exact same change in vote share relative to national in SC, and even more pronounced in VA. So even if taking the assumption that Shapiro automatically delivers +1.7 in PA, do we know that other candidates from say traditional Big 10 country can't deliver 1%+ for states therein?
>a missed opportunity for Harris to either moderate her image or secure gains in a swing state<
She's a glamorous, childless, biracial, liberal lawyer from Berkeley whose parents were both academics and who grew up in a French-speaking social democracy.
He's a gun-owning, football coach from the Midwest who attended Chadron State College and did a long spell in the National Guard. He doesn't look like a guy who owns a $7,000 training bicycle or spends $200 on a haircut. Wouldn't even be surprised if he's familiar with the charms of a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast.
If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn David Shor created Walz in a laboratory.
Walz moderates Harris's image in exactly the way she needs to have it moderated.
He's a big supporter of "right to repair" laws and signed such legislation into law, I'm told. Policy-wise, he's great on economic stuff. Basically a YIMBY, pro-growth, pro-market, pro infrastructure, pro nuclear power dude who also happens to be properly skeptical of letting big firms rig the game. And he also wants to plow the gains from growth into programs to support working families.
Basically a neoliberal who likes to hunt, and shops at Target.
To me, his image right now seems to be that of a liberal governor who rubber-stamped a progressive wish list in liberal Minnesota and has become a champion of the left in recent weeks. Not really the vibe you want if Harris is trying to moderate her image.
Normal people will see a DNC speech where he talks about winning football games, getting kids free lunches, and protecting abortion rights. Also, a lot of the stuff people here are worried about doesn't matter that much to voters in 2024.
As a former normal person and as someone who's friends and family are basically all normal people of all kinds of political ideologies and views, I feel pretty confident in my assessment of how normal people will perceive Walz. Very few are going to watch a DNC speech or know the specifics of his biography or know policy specifics from his governor tenure.
Right now, it appears that progressives and liberals and Walz himself are touting all the progressive legislation he signed, meanwhile Trump and the GOP are using that to call him a "liberal extremist" and that's the information most will use when assessing Walz and whether it changes their perception of how Kamala would govern as POTUS.
There is still plenty of time of course for Walz to pivot towards the center and start talking like he did when he was representing his rural Minnesota district a decade ago, but I'm not entirely confident that he will do that.
> Very few are going to watch a DNC speech or know the specifics of his biography or know policy specifics from his governor tenure.
I don't think that's true, but we'll go with it
> Right now, it appears that progressives and liberals and Walz himself are touting all the progressive legislation he signed
Hang, no one is going to watch the DNC speech, but they *will* know what "progressives and liberals" are saying about Walz? I don't buy that even a little.
The DNC and RNC each averaged ~20 million viewers per night, but more than 150 million votes in the election. How else do you think the vast majority of people who didn't watch them formed opinions?
The task is to consolidate as close to 100% of Dem votes as possible, then get as many normie, non-hate-filled independents as possible. Nobody is going for obsessive anti-trans or pro-coal votes here.
And who says he can even do the first part? There are lots of people who were previously reliably Dem votes in the past who have been wavering in recent years in part because they feel the party has gone too far to the left. Walz lost his former district in 2022, which he had consistently won for over decade prior to the election.
My amusing anecdote is that according to usual accounting funyuns about P/E ratio blah blah blah, my boss is worth well in excess of $10M. As an adult, he has never had a haircut from anyone but his (now)-wife. "She's the only one I have to impress".
A mashup of Kerry and Edwards, although in 2024 I reckon the former's bike would be a lot more. Well over 15 grand. They both must have had super pricey hair stylists, though.
Underrated liability of Walz no one is talking about: Being a Minnesotan, and presumably Vikings fan puts him in direct contention with Packers and Lions fans, hurting him in the two critical swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Alternatively, Shapiro can claim either Eagle or Steeler allegiance, alienating DC, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland sports fans - states that are far less likely to be lost on the margins to gridiron enjoyers.
I'm half joking, I know my Minnesota relatives don't like Wisconsin and I'm sure there are equally agitated cheese heads. Proximity doesn't naturally mean kindred political identification.
My Grandma's rule for rooting for sports teams could probably be codified as: 1. Exact geographic closeness to her house, 2. Minnesota, her home state, above any team not within 50 miles, 3. Wisconsin teams always root against, can't stand Wisconsin!
That doesn't work for me because I'm in a massive void with professional sports, and I didn't attend either BSU or U of I on the collegiate level. So I just got to pick my own pro teams, and don't have a college team.
MattY, I mean this is the nicest way. Go touch corn. It’s a type of grass. It tastes great when boiled. Walz will moderate Harris’s image. He is the anti-elite.
It's corn. You grill it wrapped in aluminum foil with butter or in the husk rather than exposing the kernels directly to the gases and particulates from the grill. Seems like the heat is all that matters rather than its manner of generation.
As you say, the foil is unnecessary. You don't need to husk it or anything. Just lay that little baby on the grill and you're on an express route to flavortown.
Also the number ears depends on the height and if the weather has been good you might have two or three ears coming out of each point (per Winston Peterson.)
Agreed. The dismissive attitude in this post is *exactly* why Walz has a moderating effect on a ticket that would otherwise be two coastal liberals with elite law degrees.
When economic gains for the past 40 years have accrued to people with college degrees who happen to be geographically concentrated, acting like the large segments of society don't deserve any acknowledgement does not win you votes with that segment of society.
Elitism means that the policy discussion gets focused on status competitions between elites rather than material concerns.
I present to you, a native of Hyde Park, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, a scion of the Delano and Roosevelt families, four time President with 60% of the popular vote and up to 99% of the electoral college vote :)
But I think people like competence, and value expertise. It's to the credit of the American system that talented, competent people choose public service. In many countries it's literally "random name in the phone book" or based on connections or wealth or bloodlines. Don't take Obama or Bill Clinton or John Kennedy for granted!
As Ezra Klein said, "People don't want to like politicians. They want politicians to like them."
Coming off as elitist may or may not matter substantively, but it does fit in with the heuristic of, "Does this candidate understand and care about my concerns?"
This pick could give them the leeway w/ base to moderate platform where needed for the general, unlike 2016 and 2020 where they didn't quite do that and Trump rallied in the polls.
Tim Kaine brought exactly zero to the table in 2016 apart from being a quasi-well-known white man.
Honestly I’m amazed that Virginia keeps electing him to the senate. When spanberger completes her term as governor that seat may as well have her name on it.
I think #6 and #7 are off-base. Klobuchar's not nearly as good with media as Kamala is, and two overly-nasal voices on a ticket might be too much -- and her recent resume's too thin. Whitmer is probably needed to defend the EC vote in Michigan if Trump attacks on EC day; her resume's decent, but she hasn't passed as much legislation (especially YIMBY!) as Walz. Pete is a good communicator who hasn't been elected to enough offices -- he needs at least one more cabinet-level position under his belt to be considered outside of just fantasy politics.
The point is, there were good reasons to skip all of those candidates besides identity.
"That is faint praise, but both the selection of J.D. Vance and the selection of Kamala Harris failed to clear that bar, and in crucial respects, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden based on confusion about his future presidential ambitions also failed to clear that bar."
Yes but downside risks included changing the Republican Party into a group of crazies led by someone who refuses to countenance a naval ship named after you.
I had never head of Tim Walz before last week, but I saw this quote from him in an interview with Ezra Klein:
> The thing is, we have to get them away from what he’s trying to sell because that’s not who they are. Just picture in your mind Donald Trump coming home after a day of work and picking up a Frisbee and throwing it. And his dog catches it, and the dog runs over, and he gives him a good belly rub because he’s a good boy. That’s what I do. And that’s what those rallygoers do. That is exactly who they are, and they’re going through the same things all of our families are.
I think that is just masterful messaging. I cannot get the image of Trump playing frisbee with his dog out of my head because it is so incongruous with Trump's essence. And it perfectly captures the cognitive dissonance of otherwise perfectly ordinary people supporting Trump and throwing in with the very online MAGA crowd precisely because it is otherwise such a totally ordinary thing for any other person to do.
If Walz is always this good at talking, then I fully endorse and understand picking him as VP. When tent cities and dumb slogans take over Columbia next month, stick Walz in front of the cameras and have him drop some school-teacher wisdom while Harris barnstorms the swing states and stays above the fray.
Unfortunately, ChatGPT refuses to draw a picture of Donald Trump playing frisbee with his dog. It also refused to draw a picture of Angela Merkel playing frisbee with her dog, but was happy to draw a picture of Pete Buttigieg playing frisbee with his dog. Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload that picture to Substack, and imgur won't let me upload that file type either.
That messaging seems fine to me, but unless you are a swing voter yourself, I don't think you have a very good ability to assess what kind of messaging would be most effective at reaching swing voters. In other words, I am concerned that Walz is an educated urban progressive's idea of what a rural or working-class swing voter finds appealing, not necessarily what the latter actually finds appealing.
If Walz is really so great at reaching those voters, then that should show up in his past electoral data. But it really doesn't show up in his gubernatorial elections. As Matt points out, there is some evidence of this ability from his old House races, but it's unclear to me whether that data is still reliable. Things were less polarized back then, and his district was still ancestrally Democratic.
His district wasn't that ancestrally Democratic - it had elected a Republican for 37 years of the prior 47 before he won office, with the only Democrat (Tim Penny) being so moderate he eventually left the party, ran for governor as an independent, and eventually supported John McCain in 2008. I understand district boundaries change but Minnesota doesn't do much gerrymandering so the district should have been mostly the same over that time. This was an ancestrally Republican district if anything.
This isn't an attack at all, I'm just curious - where did you get the info that he's from an ancestrally Democratic district? I'm wondering if the media is being lazy again, or if it's just an assumption because rural Midwesterner
If Harris wants to moderate her image (she should) a popular governor who is also a retired Master Sergeant (but not retired as a CSM for reasons I'm not sure I follow) gives her all the opening she needs to do that. So suggesting Walz has a limited upside feels wrong. I think he has a higher upside potential than yet another private college/'almost Ivy"-educated lawyer, no matter what his potential EV impact is.
Walz is a huntin', finshin', God-fearin', retired Army NCO, and a popular governor of a state that as recently as 2 weeks ago looked like it was (at risk of?) slipping away. His background gives him an in to reach out to the voters the Democrats need in the swing states. Having been in the Army myself, I think it would be exceedingly difficult to paint a former CSM as a radical left-winger, and provides a pretty good opening for Harris to moderate her positions/image as she feels she needs to.
If you take Wikipedia for granted, Walz received his promotion to CSM but didn't go to some kind of command school that would be required to actually take on the billet.
Dunno, not military, only stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Sounds like a totally normal situation. Some Army schools run almost continuously - multiple classes per year. The Sergeant Major Academy is almost a year long, so even if you’re otherwise qualified it can be a long wait. Not sure how it operates for National Guard and Reserve soldiers, but some of the longer schools let you break it up over multiple years.
I'm glad some people are hearing his argument, but even if you don't like Freddie, he has a point.
All reports have Shapiro basically didn't mesh well with Kamala, and this is actually important - one could argue part of the worries over Kamala being the nominee was the frosty Biden/Harris team relationship and look into the odd things John Edwards did to become the VP candidate that made Kerry weary of him.
It's one thing to have two ambitious young pols on a ticket when they know and work well together, as Clinton/Gore seemed to be, or possibly something like Kamala/Beshear could've been. But, if you're Kamala and more importantly. Kamala's team, do you want the guy much of the Democratic centrist pundit class wanted as the nominee instead of you?
Plus, Shapiro had real non-Israel downsides _and_ Walz is a do no harm pick that has upside.
More importantly, as I said in the Substack chat, as somebody whose been using Kamala/Walz as a 2028 stand-in that can win before there were even whispers of Biden stepping down, I have to support this choice.
Yeah that's where people are getting it wrong about him not being a threat. Sure he wouldn't have tried to stage a coup. But the real "threat" is him not getting along well with Kamala and marching to his own beat. We need unity on the ticket.
Perhaps this is a misreading of the situation due to recency bias, but it strikes me that the best thing the Dems have going for them at the moment is that they're managing to project an air of pleasant normality, minimal infighting, and fun-to-be-around-ness. Walz seems like a straightforwardly very good choice to reinforce that; excellent bio, doesn't divide the coalition in any way, seems to be a charismatic guy.
A lot of stuff is going to happen between now and election day, but the best terrain for the Dems to fight this on pending all that unknowable stuff is that things are pretty good right now and the Republicans are running a couple of genuinely unpleasant human beings who have made the mistake of putting too many of their unpopular plans in writing. Gimme a cheerful miltary vet schoolteacher dad to hammer that without causing a twitter freakout that will inevitably impact journalistic perceptions...I like it a lot.
I really think the American people will like him. I just hope he is ready to answer tough questions on BLM riots, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and (maybe) COVID. He’s been folksy and likable when playing offense, can he do the same when playing defense?
On the issue driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, the simple response is that it's not a gift from the state, nor is it something likely to make a difference in practice in one's decision to illegally immigrate, nor does the governor of Minnesota have any control over the federal government's immigration policy.
What driver's licenses for illegal immigrants does do is acknowledge the reality that they are going to be driving anyway, legally or illegally, and that issuing licenses at least encourages illegal immigrants to learn enough of U.S. traffic laws to pass the licensing test, which is justifiable on purely public safety grounds (e.g. reducing the number of traffic accidents).
Walz DECISIVELY won the cable news interview vibe check.
Reasonable people can disagree, but I think putting a lot of weight on that is pretty wise.
Yes. And back-to-back enthusiastic endorsements from AOC and Joe Manchin is nice to see.
I tend to think anyone looking hard at a VP's policy positions already knows who they're voting for. The goal here was to not take on a liability, and to get someone who's refreshing and fun enough on TV to carry forward the refreshing-and-fun-in-contrast-to-Biden-and-Trump energy that's been Harris's biggest asset so far. I'm optimistic.
I feel like Shapiro had a few question mark maybe scandals that weighed him down. That plus Freddie's point about his possibly taking Kamala's clout is what probably doomed his VP chances.
Beg pardon, Freddie (if we're talking about the same one) has never exuded a single cogent point.
Freddie's actually made some good points in this thread. He's decided to not be an asshole today for some reason.
Freddie can come off kind of aggressive but he is probably just doing some marketing here.
Despite their political differences Matt and Freddie both tap into the "people who are left-of-center but find left-wing activists annoying" market.
Though I think Freddie is repelled by one sort of left-wing activists, while leaning very hard into another sort of left-wing activists, who are often conflated by people who aren't aware of the important differences.
An interesting common denominator here: both Matt and Freddie take a basically materialist and consequentialist approach to politics; the sort of left-wing activists that both of them dislike… don’t.
I don’t think Freddie would describe himself as left of center despite his disagreements with the Left (and center and right and poptimists).
We do not and may never know the frank vetting conversations that took place. I think this was a “keep it simple, stupid” choice which is super alright by me. Turn Tim Walz loose and let’s drive this campaign home!
Agreed on this one. All the stuff about her ego just doesn't have any real evidence for it. Whatever "iron law[s] of institutions" one wants to subscribe to, are ultimately still subject to individual choices and contingencies.
I knew it was going to be Walz as soon as the shortlist with Beshear, Cooper, Kelly, Pritzker, Shapiro, Walz, and Whitmer was leaked, before the Walz boom and the Shapiro haters came out of the woodwork. Parties almost never nominate VPs without Washington experience. The last Democratic VP nominee without Washington experience was Charles W. Bryan, 100 years ago, ie before the modern nominating system, the 22nd Amendment, the modern vice presidency, and even before the Democrats got rid of the 2/3rds rule. The only Republican without Washington experience nominated under current nomination rules and the post-Mondale vice presidency was Sarah Palin, a notoriously poorly-vetted disaster for her party. The second most recent Republican VP nominee without Washington experience was Agnew, the only VP to resign the office in disgrace.
I doubt it’s weird happenstance either. Presidential nominees without Washington experience probably deliberately select for Washington experience with their VP nominees, so it’s no surprise someone like Clinton or Reagan picked a VP who had some. I suspect presidential nominees with Washington experience favor VP candidates who share it for a different reason. During the vetting process, when the campaign is throwing out trial balloons for their various candidates, they’re much more likely to hear positive things about VP candidates with Washington experience just because their professional networks overlap more. A lot more people they know and trust will have had positive experiences with a prospective VP who’s been around Washington, and they may even know each other personally from serving in the same caucus together (eg Obama-Biden, Kerry-Edwards). However, the positive things that they hear through their network about, eg the governors of Kentucky or Pennsylvania are likely to be more remote—second or third hand accounts, or gleaned from TV—so presidential nominees would tend to put less stock in those opinions.
It’s hardly an ironclad rule, of course. But considering how often it holds true compared to how much hype random governors get in the veepstakes, you could make a lot of money for yourself shorting candidates without Washington experience in prediction markets.
He arguably could be a liability if he makes it harder to win over undecided voters who don't want to vote for Trump but are worried that Kamala is "too liberal".
He seems like a cool guy and I like his views on housing and he has been adaptable in the past, so hopefully that will continue.
My own awareness of Walz is probably as minimal or even lower than that of the average American -- as in, he's nothing more than a name and now a face to me, and it won't change my vote one iota because seriously, it's the VP pick -- but do I think as far as "contrast" and "energy," go, it might have behooved Harris to pick someone less visibly old.
I've listened to one podcast interview with Walz so I am now an expert (sarcasm) - but he seems like a genuinely good communicator. And he has a sense of humor and warmth and ability to improvise that make him seem younger and seem like good VP assets. And it doesn't seem like an act.
It's very true. What strikes me is the contrast with Trump, who is often touted as being successful because he is so "authentic" and so "funny". But Walz actually seems authentic, warm, funny, and able to speak off the cuff at length. I am also encouraged by his introductory ad, which is lunch-bucket to the core, with concrete nods to abortion rights and child care.
Make America Fun Again!
1. I beg people not to make the mistake of insisting that swing voters are political moderates/doctrinaire centrists. They aren't, and we've known that empirically for a very long time. They're mostly low-information voters, voters with incoherent politics relative to the American political binary, or both. They also tend to care less about explicit policy than the average politico or journalist. Because most people are checked out and embrace vibes. There's a long empirical record on this. See for example https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-a-myth/
2. Shapiro is simply too obviously ambitious. I don't for a second think Israel sunk him; I think Harris's team was too averse to picking anyone who could steal her thunder, which also effectively ruled out Whitmer (on anyone's shortlist for 2028/2032) or Klobuchar (already ran). I mean, if you're Kamala Harris or her team, and you watch what happened to Joe Biden, are you going to pick a man who's ten years younger than you and clearly plans to be President in the next decade? Not saying that's good for the ticket or the Democrats. But most partisan politics has this "iron law of institutions" element to it.
The 2nd part feels like why we couldn't have Pete. He is too good on TV and very young.
If that's the case, then I disagree with her reasoning, but I don't see any indications yet that that was her actual reasoning.
IMO we're in a moment when the entire team needs to be on offense. This isn't football, where one ball-hog might conceivably be "stealing" touches from the other players, but rather baseball, where every player needs to be slugging at their best right now.
Right, Kamala’s best chance to be president is now, not in 2028. The idea that she wouldn’t pick the person who best positions her to win now even if they might be more popular in 2028 is nonsensical. Also, had she chosen Shapiro it’s not like he could’ve usurped her in 2028. Either he would’ve been part of a successful admin and ran as her VP for reelection or he would’ve been part of a failed administration in 2028 and had no chance anyways.
Yeah, I agree. This whole thing about the supposed threat of VPs outshining the principal is always a really dumb discourse.
It makes absolutely non sense if you think it through for 30 seconds.
I mean, Pete is obviously the best we have. He was the best Biden we had during 2020.
Maybe he was just too tied to the current admin and they wanted some distance.
I do think having both people on the ticket be from the current administration would make it really hard to present it as any kind of break or new hotness.
Pete lives in Michigan now. I fully expect him to run for governor in 2026 as Whitmer is term limited. I think he needs to show he can get elected to something bigger than mayor of South Bend, IN. Being governor of a big midwestern state sets him up beautifully for either 2028 (if Harris loses) or 2032 (if Harris wins).
Democrats are way too afraid of the gay thing. There are no voters in the country short of actual white supremacists (whose votes we aren’t getting) who care about identity as much as Democrats do (or as much as Democrats think other people do).
Unfortunately I think there is definitely some evidence that it matters at the margin of the potential Trump/Kennedy/Stay Home non-white voter.
Bringing that group back into the tent is basically the entirety of Kamala's polling surge, Biden was collapsing with that demo.
Pete never had a whisper of a pulse with black voters in 2020, if he did things might have gone very differently.
Pete's current polling with Blacks is fine now. He has put in the work as DOT Secretary, done transformational projects in the community and earned the trust of Black leaders. It's 2024, not 2020.
The polls seem to indicate that even if they might lose some people he still performed fine.
I think there are genuine foreign policy or international concerns. Not with our friends, or even so much with our foes, but more with what used to be called "the 3rd world". Places like Africa, the ME, the Caribbean are often woo'd by the US in competition with China or Russia or others. Or we just want them onboard with something or other. I'm not sure what the reactions would be in those countries.
I don't think that's a 'genuine' concern. We shouldn't be making decisions on which politicians to nominate to important offices, so that we don't offend Mali or the UAE or somewhere. We're the world's superpower, they get no say in who we nominate and they simply have to deal with it.
I mean, you could use your same argument to argue against nominating a woman for President, which is at least as big a hurdle to the 3rd world as being a gay man
He's represented the US in international forums and negotiations as DOT Secretary including some of those countries ( Saudi Arabia, Kenya etc.) without incident. He's fluent in Arabic and six other languages Btw.
That’s a good point. Have we ever sent any openly gay diplomats to Saudi Arabia? Or would they be persona non grata?
Then let him slug.
Sometimes your best slugger isn’t the one you want on cleanup. But no matter what Tony La Russa-type lineup wizardry you want to screw around with, ultimately you always want the best hitters getting the most at-bats.
So if the at-bats are functionally unlimited - or at least limited by the number of slots on a 24/7 news cycle - then fuck it, maximize them until you get to the point where you actually DO have to make lineup decisions.
This to me was the obvious reason he couldn’t be picked. Harris needs to plausibly create space between her potential administration and the current one. I was surprised he was being put out there as a serious possibility.
The main reason he was out there as a possibility is because Fox News loves having him on, and not because he agrees with them.
Yes, exactly. Good, young, presidential campaign experience, obvious designs on the big chair = threatening to a candidate who didn't win a conventional primary and is (reportedly) staffed by people who feel that she's been unfairly targeted within the party.
The memo that got released made it seem like Pete (and Whitmer) might be the best top-of-ticket choices.
He out performed her is the 2020 race, he is obviously hoping to be president. And I imagine if he started getting too much attention their might be some weird conversations about why that is unfair and that would just be needlessly messy.
That said, he is really good on TV and I think he is smart enough to credit the top-of-ticket rather than be a gloryhound so I think he would have been a good choice.
VPs -- whether as nominees or in office -- are *never* threatening to the Big Cheese in the Oval Office. That's why they're the Top Dog, Numero Uno, the Big Boss, El Jefe.
The Duke, the A-Number-One!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlXHCykk7fU
Everyone knows that every job Pete gets will be considered in the light of what it does for a future presidential campaign.
I want to see Pete as either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State in the Harris-Walz administration. He's earned it, he would be good at either, and we need to continue to deepen his resume for his eventual run. I can see Governor of Michigan too.
What credentials does he have for either role? He was given transportation because it’s a low level cabinet post and often doled out as patronage.
Pete, the guy who when the ONE TIME the Transport Sec had something meaningful to do (East Palestine, Ohio) came off looking LESS COMPASSIONATE than Donald Trump.
That is a hard hard thing to do, but Pete managed it.
He needs to go back to South Bend and stay there.
Does the DoD run on compassion?
On what planet is being mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and then f**king up the one crisis he had to deal with as a minor cabinet secretary (14th in line for presidential succession) sufficient qualification to be SecDef?
Pete Buttigieg is not qualified. Two terms as mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana and three years as the head of a relatively unimportant executive department doesn’t cut it.
It also seems like Shapiro's scandals were ignored by people on both sides of what they wanted to be an ideological proxy war.
It may well have been as simple as Democrats not wanting to get badgered with questions about why someone was allowed to stay in Shapiro's office for six months after he was accused of sexual harassment, and only resigned when reporters found the complaint (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/03/us/politics/shapiro-aide-sexual-harassment.html), and/or why Shapiro's office didn't further investigate what may well have been a murder committed by the nephew of a donor (https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/josh-shapiro-ellen-greenberg-case-suicide-homicide-review-20240805.html)
TO BE CLEAR, I am not saying Shapiro did anything wrong in either case. I don't think there's enough public information to know. But that's the nature of scandals sometimes, and the snub may well have had more to do with wanting to avoid all of that than anything to do with Israel, vouchers, fracking, or whatever else.
>It also seems like Shapiro's scandals were ignored by people on both sides of what they wanted to be an ideological proxy war.<
I wasn't ignoring them. They were my main worry about Shapiro. He wasn't my first choice as such (that was Beshear), but I was beginning to warm up to him the more I contemplated the Electoral College math.
If anything I think the specter of an Israel-Iran war was making him a more desirable running mate, and I also reckoned that the inevitable, sharp critique from The Groups might well have reverberated to Harris's advantage among moderate voters.
But yeah, I was worried about lots of stories in August about sexual harassment.
In many ways I expect MAGA got the running mate they wanted in Walz, because they're going to hit him hard as an extreme lefty as part of their general effort to pain the ticket as ideologically extreme (they've been doing this since Pontius Pilate was in office). But I also have a feeling the Walz choice isn't going to be of much help to them. He's a lefty, sure, but a decidedly populist version: gun owner, football coach, graduate of a non-fancy school, non-lawyer, etc. The GOP really hasn't had much success painting Democrats as ideologically extreme. What they've been successful at is portraying them as elitist, limousine liberals. That's not Walz. He's got the common touch.
Getting shrill attacks from The Groups on Twitter all fall would be good.
Getting Palestine campouts tear gassed in front of the Chicago convention center next week would be bad.
Had not considered the possibility of going too far in putting down the pro-Hamas people at the convention, good point.
The effort to paint Walz as an extreme lefty reminds me a bit of how Democrats tried to paint Glenn Youngkin as a MAGA extremist in 2021. It just didn't work! Candidate vibes matter.
I'm not saying they were ignored by everyone. I mean, they were reported on after all. My point is they were largely ignored by both anti-Shapiro people who wanted opposition to him to be focused on Palestine (and to a lesser extent vouchers), and pro-Shapiro people who, well, were pro-Shapiro.
"It shouldn't be Shapiro because he has multiple scandals that could be difficult to deal with both substantively and politically" was not a very popular take, but it strikes me as correct and wouldn't be surprised if it was in fact what Kamala et al. thought.
Agree with you that trying to paint Walz as some uber lefty won't go very far, especially considering since he was a governor beholden to a state budget, nothing he signed will strike any semi-normal person as radical. His affect and background certainly helps deflect that stuff too.
At the end of the day, I think the "safe" pick made more sense than Matt gives it credit for considering Shapiro came with serious risks. When you weigh those risks against the potential benefit of getting half an extra percentage point or so in PA...Walz strikes me as the right pick.
I do think there is one unspoken factor here. Regardless of the validity of Shapiro's scandals, they absolutely would have have been highlighted (and exaggerated) by leftist twitter if he had gotten the nomination. Which would give them additional credibility (since its not just coming from the right).
Whether this would have overwhelmed his popularity in PA is a totally different question, but a big part of the problem is Dems have a rogue element in their coalition that still is getting catered too. In the short run, it may be worth it, but it concerns me in the long run.
Far be it from me to deny that this would’ve been a real possibility, but I would’ve been more concerned about the hay Trump, Vance, et al. could’ve made out of them.
“You know what’s weird? The death of someone with 20 stab wounds being ruled a suicide!”
It would have to be workshopped a bit but they absolutely would’ve ran with it, and at a minimum I think it would’ve been enough to draw attention away from Trump’s myriad scandals, Vance’s…weirdness, etc. Time spent denying you covered up a murder as a favor to a friend is time not spent talking about abortion.
Again, I’m not weighing in on the validity, but it’s not like Trump and Vance would’ve cared.
It appears that the Trump campaign was seeding those stories. I don't think they would have just let it go had Shapiro gotten the nomination.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-world-fueled-anti-shapiro-whisper-campaign
I read the Inquirer article. Strange, disturbing story but as far as Shapiro's role goes, a total nothingburger.
I think this is totally wrong. After all the whole American political system is based ambition, see here: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp. The real danger lies when it comes to Vice Presidents is a lack of ambition, see Dick Cheney who of course never wanted to be president and instead worked very hard and very successfully to steer another person's presidency into the ditch. It would have been much better is Dick had thought "If this Iraq thing goes bad that's the end of my career, better be cautious." The fact that he just didn't care about that sort of thing helped lead to any number of bad calls.
Also Biden dropping out seems to be a special case, as long as you can do a semi-decent job in a presidential debate, you don't have to worry about it happening to you. And of course if you can no longer do a semi-decent job (Joe did fine in 2008,2012, and 2020) then maybe you shouldn't be running anyway!
Likewise IIRC Bush the Elder was against sending the Marines into Lebanon because he didn't want to get stuck with an open ended commitment in his own presidency after Dutch left the scene, and considering how it went he was totally right!
You really think Harris was worried about facing a palace coup at the age of 63? Seems far-fetched.
I'm confused by the implication of "stealing her thunder". Why is it a bad thing for Harris if she picks a very popular VP that then runs for pres after her? The only way I can see this being bad for her is if her VP challenges her in 2028, but that would be completely unhinged.
The possible worry would be a VP with designs on the presidency acting like Ron DeSantis or Gavin Newsom - doing things to attract media attention, not worrying about whether they might cost the popularity of the current party office holder.
Point 2 reads to me as a sort of conceptual chinese finger trap. "We can't pick anyone that is politically ambitious" is code for "we can't pick anyone that could be too good." This to me is strange, because I would personally try to pick the best person possible. Them possibly stealing my thunder is small fry considering that we should be trying to steal Trump's thunder.
My pet theory is that this is how Kamala Harris consolidated the party so quickly to support her nomination. By promising not to choose a VP with obvious presidential ambitions, she maximized her chance of winning by getting other potential candidates to stand down knowing that in event of a loss in 2024, the playing field would be cleared for 2028. It was good for the party's chances this year, and it is good for the next cycle as well.
If she loses in November, her VP nominee, no matter that person's obvious presidential ambitions, will go down with the ship alongside her.
So you don't think Tim Kaine will run next time?
On #1, Right. So when you pick someone immoderate you end up alienating all the swing voters who disagree with whatever "extreme" policies your candidate has. By definition, a swing voter will disagree with some of the platforms of each party, so if your candidate seems too committed to them those disagreements will be more impactful.
Picking a "good vibes centrist" is the right trick because it doesn't alienate anyone, but you win on vibes.
This seems like a *massive* stretch to me.
You’re Kamala Harris, you have exactly one goal in mind with your veep selection: maximizing your odds of winning in 2024.
Anything else is just imagination, imo.
No, I think you have a second goal in mind - not making your life a living hell for the next four years if you win, and perhaps even helping make governance work well. (This doesn't necessarily count against maximizing your odds of winning, sometimes the same person is best for both. But not always.)
You’re running for president…your life being a living hell for the next four years is your best case scenario.
We really don't know her thinking. As for Shapiro it may be that she's worried that being adjacent to a MeToo type event would cause problems electorally or it may just be that she thinks less of Shapiro as a person for not defending the woman who credibly thought she was being horribly treated.
I am sure Matt understands the dynamic of swing voters and their issue profiles, it definitely came up on The Weeds while he was hosting.
Do people like Whitmer maybe decline because they roll the dice on getting the top of the ticket in the next cycle? Versus the risk of being a loser VP candidate or spending 8 years in the VP role...
My interpretation is that Whitmer made a calculated decision not to involve herself in this situation. But to your point that has its own risks, and she could end up being viewed as stale by the next opportunity.
With the benefit of hindsight, DeSantis would've been better off doing that as well. On the other hand, Democrats aren't as invested in Harris personally as Republicans are in Trump.
DeSantis almost certainly would have performed even worse in 2028, assuming he even made it that far.
The Jennifer Granholm problem...
Big Gretch is quietly and secretly kinda maybe hoping Harris loses in November. That's the only she would ever be President.
It's odd seeing a sensible Freddie take after his less than sensible takes earlier in the day. Such high variance.
What Freddie said, among other things.
I could see Shapiro or Pete talking about “people” needing autonomy over reproductive decisions—I can’t see Walz making that mistake. He’s a former high school teacher FFS—he knows how to communicate in basic, colorful, and consumable words.
https://www.andrewbenjaminhall.com/Hall_APSR.pdf
who's the extremist, exactly
I think Milan might be trying to say that while your first point of swing voters is true there are still electoral benefits to selecting a "moderate".
Or maybe not, he just posted a link to the paper, I was just guessing from there.
If true, the second point is a terrible look for Harris.
Having known tim as a 10 year legislator in congress, a few comments:
(1) the idea that this was some sop to the left is wrong. Tim is a good, nimble politician, with a lot of experience and good connections in DC. He is a thoughtful moderate who is not very brain poisened by the internet and can win over voters of multiple stripes and has real credibility where Kamala doesnt (e.g. with unions).
(2) More importantly he has both more federal legislative chops and actual executive experience than Kamala or Shapiro. This is very good for trying to actually govern. The VP has very little effect on electoral politics (Gore, Edwards could win their states as statewide candidate but couldnt as nationwides). The idea that Shapiro is a silver bullet to take Penn off the map seems historically inaccurate. That some folks perceived as the "moderate" to kill off progressives seems very wrong and the fixation with Israel was too high on both sides of that dispute.
(3) He is charismatic in a way that shapiro is not. We dont need a bunch of slick lawyers, and I think Tim is a good contrast whose life parallels normal voters more clearly.
(4) Matt's continued dislike of biden is both silly and kinda weird. If Obama had not effectively pushed biden aside in '16 he would have won and the world would be a different place. That seems like an obama problem rather than biden as a pick. Further, Biden was the candidate in 2020 that was the best performer and won a tough election where the others would not. So this seems more like personal animus rather then analysis. Biden as a successor in '16 couldnt look better.
I think there's one sense in which he's a "sop to the left", and that is that they were specifically asking for not Shapiro, and sorta asking for Walz. If he's good on the merits, and you can show them that you're willing to give them this at the same time, that's great for the team.
Vetoing the demand of the left just because it's the demand of the left isn't a good strategy when you're in the middle of the campaign, unless their demand is specifically publicly unpopular, and vetoing it publicly can get you popularity points.
I think your second point is exactly correct.. It bothers me that certain people on the center-left (Chait's column today is a good example) insist that in order to appear moderate, the Democrats must be actively angering the left. There are ways to appeal to moderates that leftists can tolerate (even if they aren't necessarily excited). Choosing Walz over Shapiro is an example!
I also think some centrists have negative-polarized themselves into thinking that because the online left demanded Walz, the median voter will also perceive him as a lefty radical. I don't buy that at all.
Well said. Center-lefty here and I think sometimes the punching left happens a little too reflexively and is egged on by how sanctimonious much of the woke left is and the fact that they really get their panties in a bunch when criticized. All that being said, what Dems of all stripes really need to focus on is persuading those that don't agree with them. This is where I get a little annoyed with the Welcome PAC folks, MY, Dreyfuss, etc. insisting that they just have to punch left and adopt right-leaning stances on things. At some point you have to ask, what's the point of being a Dem if your right leaning district if you always have to adopt right leaning positions? I kind of want to see the Welcome PAC folks articulate why they are Dems and not Republicans. For the record, I really like Welcome PAC and think they do great work so my intent is not to bash them but a sincere understanding of what my fellow center-leftys are hoping to accomplish when elected. Why is a moderate Democratic position better than a moderate Republican position? Why did you run as a Democrat instead of a Republican?
Amen.
Right - speaking as the resident leftist, outside of one weird Jacobin writer and maybe people with 245 followers on Twitter were asking for Bernie or Tliab as the VP - they wanted a normie center-left Democratic Governor of a blue-ish state who got a lot of normie Democrat's things done. He didn't pass single payer or ban gas cars.
It seems completely unsubstantiated that Kamala did this because people online disliked Shapiro. My point is that Tim Walz is a terrific candidate and specifically compliments her more, particularly from a governing strategy, than a young governor with relatively little federal experience.
It seems unwise to assume that this decision had to do with the left or any of that, really. You pick a VP who you like, won't outshine you, and will help compliment some of your deficiencies. Walz does all that. If Shapiro was not from Pennsylvania this would not even be a discussion.
As David Frum pointed out, to show that Harris is not beholden to The Groups, it would help if Walz goes out and gives a pro-Israel speech (but obviously, not pro-Bibi).
This is just too online and terrible advise. Tim Walz is fine and has a track record that is very clear to many people, including AIPAC. That he is not as publicly strident enthusiast (or detractor!) of the current Israeli policy in Gaza is probably smart.
You want to choose a VP and show party unity. That Walz gives you that benefit is great! The idea that his first act as the VP nominee would be to inflame interparty politics is wildly dumb and seems more about making Frum feel good than trying to win an election.
Most voters dont care about Israel, Walz has a clear record on the topic of Israel. Kamala and Walz are trying to win, not help Frum feel good that Walz is on Frum's side on Frum's topic.
There is a lot of discussion of race, age, gender and baseball card stats—how many elections won, bills passed, etc. But Walz seems to be very good at talking in a way that no one else (except maybe Mayor Pete) is.
I have been reading quotes from him and they are all just fantastic examples of natural, plain language loaded with metaphors that communicate "vibes" and ideas very well. If he is like that all the time, then he was indeed a very good pick for a condensed campaign against two very online weirdos.
#3 is interesting. I wonder if Shapiro not only being a lawyer but also, like Harris, an attorney general was the kiss of death. One too many lawyers and prosecutors.
Re: 4, I thought Matt's point was simply that Obama chose Biden as his VP specifically because he expected Biden to be too old to run for president, and given that Biden *did* run for president after all, this means that it was a poor VP pick.
From here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/make-the-vp-selection-on-the-merits -- "The 1864 selection is an unusually high stakes example, but versions of it happen pretty regularly. Barack Obama, for example, selected Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008, in part because he believed Biden would be too old to harbor his own continued presidential aspirations (oops)... The common thread in all of this is that presidential nominees use the VP selection to put out some kind of political brushfire, even though the substantive stakes in the selection are potentially very high and it’s extremely unusual for a voter to be persuaded by a vice president."
Sure by that logic I guess it makes sense. But in retrospect, Joe Biden would have been a terrific candidate in 2016 and Obama was in fact wrong then and wrong in '16 to push clinton. Biden was in fact a "great" VP both in that job and to succeed Obama. Instead Obama was succeeded by Donald Trump. So history does not suggest that, even if his plan was to pick Biden so Biden would *not run, Obama made a bad choice on the VP. His bad pick was to think Hillary was a good successor rather than his blue collar VP.
"The actual story is that Minnesota is a better-educated, more urban, and more liberal state than Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania..."
Stop it, you're making Minnesota uncomfortable with such bold compliments!
You think you're telling a joke, but you're not.
Oh please. I've heard that all the children there are above average.
As you have said Matt, voters are almost comically forgiving of flip-flops.
Walz was the candidate he needed to be in order to win in an R+1 seat in a red wave, and he was the candidate he needed to be to win a blue state governorship, and was a likeable and engaging media presence in both guises, and seems to have won the admiration of the people he worked with in both guises.
The Harris/Whoever ticket must position itself to target the median voter in order to win, which above all is going to be about the issues Kamala Harris runs on and emphasizes in campaign messaging. Walz' well documented ability to be personally likeable on TV is a much, MUCH stronger qualification in that effort than the fact of a Shapiro pick angering the kinds of shrill Twitter leftists who are annoying in your replies.
There is also the Pennsylvania thing with Shapiro. If Kamala loses in a Florida 2000 situation this will look like a catastrophe. But for 49 other states the fact that Walz so sharply and obviously won the TV hit beauty contest made this a pretty clear decision, imho.
I can sympathize with your and Jonathan Chait's feeling that a shot across the bow of very obnoxious, habitually wrong, and bad coalition partner idiots online would have given you confidence that this ticket is aimed in the right direction and listening to the right people. But a broken clock is right twice a day, and I think leftist twitter happened upon the best advocate for the median voter-targeting campaign that needs to be run to win.
"As you have said Matt, voters are almost comically forgiving of flip-flops."
My response of someone criticizing that is "why shouldn't they be"?
A politician's job is to represent their voters and do what those voters elected them to do. If you have different voters in a new race, shouldn't you flip-flop a bit?
If lawyers can effectively argue that whoever pays them is innocent, and no one seems to question that, why can't politicians do whatever the voters who elected them want?
To play devil's advocate (angel's advocate?), one idea could be that elected officials will have to make a number of unanticipated decisions, and that those can't always be made based on what's popular with voters (or the politician may not know what's popular), so it's useful to have some sort of conviction, philosophy, or other heuristic generator.
I've been wanting to bring this up in the SB comments for a while, actually. What's the right amount of agreement with the voters, knowing that voters are fickle, stupid, and weird? If you're 80% true believer and 20% panderer, is that the right amount?
Obama's ratio. He perfected this.
Maybe a mailbag question?
And on that, Walz has long been supportive of gay rights. All the way back to the 90s as a school teacher! He has some sincerely held beliefs.
Governance, especially at the “running the executive administration” level is very information-asymmetric, failures to deliver are common, and it’s hard to verify whether or not an executive is actually making a best-faith effort to implement voter priorities.
If you want policy X implemented, you’ll probably prefer candidates whose commitment to implementing policy X is credible. Having publicly supported policy X for a long time and not changed positions on it— especially if there were points in time where publicly supporting policy X was politically costly— is a credibility signal.
The Walz pick doesn't confirm that Harris is stuck in a too-liberal lane or is afraid of The Groups. That pick *plus* continued kowtowing to those beliefs and those groups would be bad, however.
Every day she has another chance to show that she really is going for the median voter at the same time that she is working hard to fire up her base.
Might a candidate have as much of a regional effect as a home-state effect? Empirically thin on both counts of recent, but the one that gets referenced most, the John Edwards effect on NC relative to the nationwide shift — it was the exact same change in vote share relative to national in SC, and even more pronounced in VA. So even if taking the assumption that Shapiro automatically delivers +1.7 in PA, do we know that other candidates from say traditional Big 10 country can't deliver 1%+ for states therein?
>a missed opportunity for Harris to either moderate her image or secure gains in a swing state<
She's a glamorous, childless, biracial, liberal lawyer from Berkeley whose parents were both academics and who grew up in a French-speaking social democracy.
He's a gun-owning, football coach from the Midwest who attended Chadron State College and did a long spell in the National Guard. He doesn't look like a guy who owns a $7,000 training bicycle or spends $200 on a haircut. Wouldn't even be surprised if he's familiar with the charms of a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast.
If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn David Shor created Walz in a laboratory.
Walz moderates Harris's image in exactly the way she needs to have it moderated.
Great clip of him on the campaign trail holding up a $7 car part he bought at Napa Auto and describing how to install it...
He's a big supporter of "right to repair" laws and signed such legislation into law, I'm told. Policy-wise, he's great on economic stuff. Basically a YIMBY, pro-growth, pro-market, pro infrastructure, pro nuclear power dude who also happens to be properly skeptical of letting big firms rig the game. And he also wants to plow the gains from growth into programs to support working families.
Basically a neoliberal who likes to hunt, and shops at Target.
To me, his image right now seems to be that of a liberal governor who rubber-stamped a progressive wish list in liberal Minnesota and has become a champion of the left in recent weeks. Not really the vibe you want if Harris is trying to moderate her image.
Weirdos like us know that.
Normal people will see a DNC speech where he talks about winning football games, getting kids free lunches, and protecting abortion rights. Also, a lot of the stuff people here are worried about doesn't matter that much to voters in 2024.
As a former normal person and as someone who's friends and family are basically all normal people of all kinds of political ideologies and views, I feel pretty confident in my assessment of how normal people will perceive Walz. Very few are going to watch a DNC speech or know the specifics of his biography or know policy specifics from his governor tenure.
Right now, it appears that progressives and liberals and Walz himself are touting all the progressive legislation he signed, meanwhile Trump and the GOP are using that to call him a "liberal extremist" and that's the information most will use when assessing Walz and whether it changes their perception of how Kamala would govern as POTUS.
There is still plenty of time of course for Walz to pivot towards the center and start talking like he did when he was representing his rural Minnesota district a decade ago, but I'm not entirely confident that he will do that.
> Very few are going to watch a DNC speech or know the specifics of his biography or know policy specifics from his governor tenure.
I don't think that's true, but we'll go with it
> Right now, it appears that progressives and liberals and Walz himself are touting all the progressive legislation he signed
Hang, no one is going to watch the DNC speech, but they *will* know what "progressives and liberals" are saying about Walz? I don't buy that even a little.
The DNC and RNC each averaged ~20 million viewers per night, but more than 150 million votes in the election. How else do you think the vast majority of people who didn't watch them formed opinions?
Exactly.
The task is to consolidate as close to 100% of Dem votes as possible, then get as many normie, non-hate-filled independents as possible. Nobody is going for obsessive anti-trans or pro-coal votes here.
And who says he can even do the first part? There are lots of people who were previously reliably Dem votes in the past who have been wavering in recent years in part because they feel the party has gone too far to the left. Walz lost his former district in 2022, which he had consistently won for over decade prior to the election.
"Dad, turkey is still meat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S233kqP0ak8
"He doesn't look like a guy who owns a $7,000 training bicycle or spends $200 on a haircut."
Please tell me this a based on a real person? Newsom?
no way Newsom only spends $200 on his haircuts
My amusing anecdote is that according to usual accounting funyuns about P/E ratio blah blah blah, my boss is worth well in excess of $10M. As an adult, he has never had a haircut from anyone but his (now)-wife. "She's the only one I have to impress".
Engineers.
Gavin Newsom, however, also likes to impress the wives of his campaign managers.
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/gavin-newsom-is-gross-and-embarrassing
We use the same hair stylist, so I can say that's about right. He has more hair and gets it cut more often, so he might get a rate...
Weird flex, but OK. 😂
The whole subthread is weird, I agree. Just trying to accurately price Marin County haircuts.
I was going to write "$300" but I didn't think that would sound plausible. But you're probably right!
A mashup of Kerry and Edwards, although in 2024 I reckon the former's bike would be a lot more. Well over 15 grand. They both must have had super pricey hair stylists, though.
Underrated liability of Walz no one is talking about: Being a Minnesotan, and presumably Vikings fan puts him in direct contention with Packers and Lions fans, hurting him in the two critical swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Alternatively, Shapiro can claim either Eagle or Steeler allegiance, alienating DC, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland sports fans - states that are far less likely to be lost on the margins to gridiron enjoyers.
I'm half joking, I know my Minnesota relatives don't like Wisconsin and I'm sure there are equally agitated cheese heads. Proximity doesn't naturally mean kindred political identification.
Upvoted just for the fun pointing out of sports rivalries, always a good discussion to be had.
My Grandma's rule for rooting for sports teams could probably be codified as: 1. Exact geographic closeness to her house, 2. Minnesota, her home state, above any team not within 50 miles, 3. Wisconsin teams always root against, can't stand Wisconsin!
That doesn't work for me because I'm in a massive void with professional sports, and I didn't attend either BSU or U of I on the collegiate level. So I just got to pick my own pro teams, and don't have a college team.
The campaign better have a good strategy for September 29th, when the Packers host the Vikings. /s
This is the only criticism of Walz that makes any sense.
Great point. So much for a careful vetting process.
MattY, I mean this is the nicest way. Go touch corn. It’s a type of grass. It tastes great when boiled. Walz will moderate Harris’s image. He is the anti-elite.
This is funny, but it happened to me in 2022.
How many ears of corn are on a stalk?
And grill that shit, you heathen.
Not all of us have the luxury of owning a charcoal grill.
It's corn. You grill it wrapped in aluminum foil with butter or in the husk rather than exposing the kernels directly to the gases and particulates from the grill. Seems like the heat is all that matters rather than its manner of generation.
As you say, the foil is unnecessary. You don't need to husk it or anything. Just lay that little baby on the grill and you're on an express route to flavortown.
There are other types of grills.
Now that is heresy
I'll take my wood pellet grill over charcoal every day.
Get behind me, Satan!
Also the number ears depends on the height and if the weather has been good you might have two or three ears coming out of each point (per Winston Peterson.)
I can neither confirm nor deny >1, but it's not the, like, twelve that clipart would have me believe.
Agreed. The dismissive attitude in this post is *exactly* why Walz has a moderating effect on a ticket that would otherwise be two coastal liberals with elite law degrees.
What have people got against elite?!
I like elite surgeons, navy seals, crime detectives, mathematicians, classical pianists, computer programmers ... and political leaders :)
When economic gains for the past 40 years have accrued to people with college degrees who happen to be geographically concentrated, acting like the large segments of society don't deserve any acknowledgement does not win you votes with that segment of society.
Elitism means that the policy discussion gets focused on status competitions between elites rather than material concerns.
I present to you, a native of Hyde Park, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, a scion of the Delano and Roosevelt families, four time President with 60% of the popular vote and up to 99% of the electoral college vote :)
Guess which scion of the Delano and Roosevelt families frequently lambasted the country's elites in speeches?
It would be gauche for him to say otherwise.
But I think people like competence, and value expertise. It's to the credit of the American system that talented, competent people choose public service. In many countries it's literally "random name in the phone book" or based on connections or wealth or bloodlines. Don't take Obama or Bill Clinton or John Kennedy for granted!
As Ezra Klein said, "People don't want to like politicians. They want politicians to like them."
Coming off as elitist may or may not matter substantively, but it does fit in with the heuristic of, "Does this candidate understand and care about my concerns?"
This seems like a choice dominated by risk aversion.
1. Straight white guy.
2. Midwestern.
3. Long career means he's well vetted.
4. Uncontroversial. Moderates and liberals are unlikely to have strong feelings about him.
5. Not obviously gunning for the top spot at some point in the future.
The choice gets a resounding "meh" from me and that seems to be by design.
Tim Kaine was a similar choice - this is a different situation, but still makes me a bit uneasy.
Tim Kaine + Rizz = Tim Walz
It's okay. When Democratic women pick "safe choice" guys named Tim to help them beat Donald Trump, it always works out!
Kaine was a zero from a charisma standpoint. People seem to legitimately like Walz.
I feel like the extreme derision for Kaine is kind of a retcon. I don't recall him having problems with likability or mockability at the time.
I don't remember any significant problems, but I also don't remember any outpouring of positivity toward him like I'm seeing on the TL today.
I wonder if the difference is that the Democratic party in 2016 was peevish, whereas in 2024 it's desperate.
Obama also had Kaine on his short list. Wonder how his career would have gone being part of a way more successful campaign
As witnessed by the fact that Walz already came up with the biggest line of attack of the whole campaign, and it's perfectly calibrated.
TOO SOON
This pick could give them the leeway w/ base to moderate platform where needed for the general, unlike 2016 and 2020 where they didn't quite do that and Trump rallied in the polls.
Tim Kaine brought exactly zero to the table in 2016 apart from being a quasi-well-known white man.
Honestly I’m amazed that Virginia keeps electing him to the senate. When spanberger completes her term as governor that seat may as well have her name on it.
#5 was supposed to be Biden’s rationale as Obama’s VP.
I think #6 and #7 are off-base. Klobuchar's not nearly as good with media as Kamala is, and two overly-nasal voices on a ticket might be too much -- and her recent resume's too thin. Whitmer is probably needed to defend the EC vote in Michigan if Trump attacks on EC day; her resume's decent, but she hasn't passed as much legislation (especially YIMBY!) as Walz. Pete is a good communicator who hasn't been elected to enough offices -- he needs at least one more cabinet-level position under his belt to be considered outside of just fantasy politics.
The point is, there were good reasons to skip all of those candidates besides identity.
Compared to donald trump in 2016, Mayor Pete looks as experienced as George H. W. Bush was in 1988.
"That is faint praise, but both the selection of J.D. Vance and the selection of Kamala Harris failed to clear that bar, and in crucial respects, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden based on confusion about his future presidential ambitions also failed to clear that bar."
Matt's love for Palin confirmed
She was probably the right choice for a campaign that was clearly starting from behind!
Yes but downside risks included changing the Republican Party into a group of crazies led by someone who refuses to countenance a naval ship named after you.
I feel whelmed
No whelm, no whelm, you are whelm!
I had never head of Tim Walz before last week, but I saw this quote from him in an interview with Ezra Klein:
> The thing is, we have to get them away from what he’s trying to sell because that’s not who they are. Just picture in your mind Donald Trump coming home after a day of work and picking up a Frisbee and throwing it. And his dog catches it, and the dog runs over, and he gives him a good belly rub because he’s a good boy. That’s what I do. And that’s what those rallygoers do. That is exactly who they are, and they’re going through the same things all of our families are.
I think that is just masterful messaging. I cannot get the image of Trump playing frisbee with his dog out of my head because it is so incongruous with Trump's essence. And it perfectly captures the cognitive dissonance of otherwise perfectly ordinary people supporting Trump and throwing in with the very online MAGA crowd precisely because it is otherwise such a totally ordinary thing for any other person to do.
If Walz is always this good at talking, then I fully endorse and understand picking him as VP. When tent cities and dumb slogans take over Columbia next month, stick Walz in front of the cameras and have him drop some school-teacher wisdom while Harris barnstorms the swing states and stays above the fray.
Unfortunately, ChatGPT refuses to draw a picture of Donald Trump playing frisbee with his dog. It also refused to draw a picture of Angela Merkel playing frisbee with her dog, but was happy to draw a picture of Pete Buttigieg playing frisbee with his dog. Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload that picture to Substack, and imgur won't let me upload that file type either.
That messaging seems fine to me, but unless you are a swing voter yourself, I don't think you have a very good ability to assess what kind of messaging would be most effective at reaching swing voters. In other words, I am concerned that Walz is an educated urban progressive's idea of what a rural or working-class swing voter finds appealing, not necessarily what the latter actually finds appealing.
If Walz is really so great at reaching those voters, then that should show up in his past electoral data. But it really doesn't show up in his gubernatorial elections. As Matt points out, there is some evidence of this ability from his old House races, but it's unclear to me whether that data is still reliable. Things were less polarized back then, and his district was still ancestrally Democratic.
His district wasn't that ancestrally Democratic - it had elected a Republican for 37 years of the prior 47 before he won office, with the only Democrat (Tim Penny) being so moderate he eventually left the party, ran for governor as an independent, and eventually supported John McCain in 2008. I understand district boundaries change but Minnesota doesn't do much gerrymandering so the district should have been mostly the same over that time. This was an ancestrally Republican district if anything.
Interesting.
This isn't an attack at all, I'm just curious - where did you get the info that he's from an ancestrally Democratic district? I'm wondering if the media is being lazy again, or if it's just an assumption because rural Midwesterner
I don't remember lol. Probably read it on Twitter and/or confused it with a different MN district.
If Harris wants to moderate her image (she should) a popular governor who is also a retired Master Sergeant (but not retired as a CSM for reasons I'm not sure I follow) gives her all the opening she needs to do that. So suggesting Walz has a limited upside feels wrong. I think he has a higher upside potential than yet another private college/'almost Ivy"-educated lawyer, no matter what his potential EV impact is.
Walz is a huntin', finshin', God-fearin', retired Army NCO, and a popular governor of a state that as recently as 2 weeks ago looked like it was (at risk of?) slipping away. His background gives him an in to reach out to the voters the Democrats need in the swing states. Having been in the Army myself, I think it would be exceedingly difficult to paint a former CSM as a radical left-winger, and provides a pretty good opening for Harris to moderate her positions/image as she feels she needs to.
If you take Wikipedia for granted, Walz received his promotion to CSM but didn't go to some kind of command school that would be required to actually take on the billet.
Dunno, not military, only stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Sounds like a totally normal situation. Some Army schools run almost continuously - multiple classes per year. The Sergeant Major Academy is almost a year long, so even if you’re otherwise qualified it can be a long wait. Not sure how it operates for National Guard and Reserve soldiers, but some of the longer schools let you break it up over multiple years.
I appreciate the context! I don't know anything about anything... I spent a week at Navy's summer session, and that's all she wrote.
I'm glad some people are hearing his argument, but even if you don't like Freddie, he has a point.
All reports have Shapiro basically didn't mesh well with Kamala, and this is actually important - one could argue part of the worries over Kamala being the nominee was the frosty Biden/Harris team relationship and look into the odd things John Edwards did to become the VP candidate that made Kerry weary of him.
It's one thing to have two ambitious young pols on a ticket when they know and work well together, as Clinton/Gore seemed to be, or possibly something like Kamala/Beshear could've been. But, if you're Kamala and more importantly. Kamala's team, do you want the guy much of the Democratic centrist pundit class wanted as the nominee instead of you?
Plus, Shapiro had real non-Israel downsides _and_ Walz is a do no harm pick that has upside.
More importantly, as I said in the Substack chat, as somebody whose been using Kamala/Walz as a 2028 stand-in that can win before there were even whispers of Biden stepping down, I have to support this choice.
Yeah that's where people are getting it wrong about him not being a threat. Sure he wouldn't have tried to stage a coup. But the real "threat" is him not getting along well with Kamala and marching to his own beat. We need unity on the ticket.