Not a hedge-run tech bro or real-estate nepo baby.
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A disproportionate part of the Democratic veepstakes debate — which just ended with Kamala Harris picking Tim Walz as her running mate — involved the highly disputed premise that a running mate could have a tangible impact on the outcome of the race in the Electoral College. If you accepted that premise (and most political scientists more or less reject it), then Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was a bit of a no-brainer, given the essential position of his state in the easiest path to victory for Harris. Arizona senator Mark Kelly also made sense as an electoral-vote magnet. Tim Walz? Not so much, since any scenario where his state of Minnesota was in play was one in which Democrats were already losing nationally.
There is a vague sense that Walz could help regionally, as he’s from an upper Midwest state that borders two battleground states (Michigan and Wisconsin). But Walz’s main asset may be that he does not have the overtly moderate ideological image that made Shapiro and Kelly the favorites of those concerned about Harris’s alleged vulnerability as “too liberal.” Progressives unhappy with Shapiro’s position on school vouchers and Gaza or Kelly’s weak labor record stampeded into Walz’s camp as speculation reached a frenzy during the last week.
So we are now hearing complaints that in choosing the Minnesotan Harris has thrown away a potential ticket-balancing option. The counter-argument, as my Shapiro-favoring colleague Jonathan Chait conceded, is that Walz is super-normie and a bit hard to square with the standard image of a “radical leftist:”
A somewhat modified version of the left’s belief that moving left can increase political viability is that personal style can make up for a deficit in substance. Rather than move to the center on policy, they hope nominating candidates with a reassuring personal affect and personal biography can reassure moderate voters.
Walz generates so much enthusiasm on the left in part because he represents the apotheosis of this strategy. He is jolly, fun, a rural veteran and former football coach with a personal comfort with white rural voters.
There is probably something to this theory. If Harris had nominated a pink-haired professor from Brooklyn with a centrist voting record, that candidate probably would not provide a huge political heft.
There is no doubt that Republicans will nonetheless try to depict Walz as a sort of heartland Trojan horse who conceals a grim anti-American devotion to Marxism beneath his jovial exterior (just as they would have smeared Shapiro or Kelly, truth be told). But before assuming that tactic will work, as Chait fears, let’s look a bit more closely at Walz’s “personal affect and personal biography” and their possible impact.
Walz is authentically a product of the rural and small-town Midwest. He was born in West Point, Nebraska, a small town in the northeast segment of that famously agricultural state, and raised in Valentine, Nebraska, an even smaller town in north-central Nebraska, then in Butte, Nebraska, a tiny village not far from there. Far from the Ivy League campuses at which Donald Trump and J.D. Vance received degrees, Walz got his undergraduate education at an open-admissions teachers college in northwest Nebraska (Chadron State College). After he launched a public-school teaching career and got married to another teacher, he earned a master’s degree from Mankato State College in his wife’s home state, where he was indeed a football coach and also adviser to his school’s gay-straight student alliance. He eventually ran for Congress in the largely rural and relatively conservative First Congressional District, winning reelection there five times. There’s just no whiff of elitism or radicalism in his background.
His military service, moreover, isn’t just a line on a résumé or a brief engagement prior to a real adult career. He spent 24 years in the Army National Guard, beginning right after high school, and ultimately obtained the highest rank available to an enlisted person. He was named Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year in 1989. Walz was never deployed in a combat role, but neither was Marine public-affairs officer J.D. Vance or the draft-evading Donald Trump. In Congress and as governor, Walz has made veterans affairs an emphasis. No one, and certainly not the keyboard warriors of the online right, will be able to malign Walz’s patriotism or respect for the flag and the uniform.
Yes, as governor of Minnesota, Walz was able to compile a progressive record, particularly after his party won a trifecta in 2022. But as his remarkably successful quasi-candidacy for veep has illustrated, he hasn’t lost his folksy manner or cracker-barrel sense of humor. He isn’t just normie; he’s super-normie and will present a constant contrast to the distinctly radical intellectualism of Vance — which you might even call weird. Walz may or may not be able to help Harris gain votes in some tangible way, but he adds toil and trouble to every Republican effort to depict Democrats as a party in the grip of un-American forces (one example of a problem he presents is that both of his children were conceived via IVF treatments, which the anti-abortion lobby has frowned upon). And unlike the last Democratic veep chosen to offset fears about a female president, Tim Walz (so far) does not come across as boring.
Should both Harris and Walz do everything possible to rebut allegations of radicalism and strengthen their reputation as sensible centrists, as Chait recommends? Absolutely. But in Walz, Kamala Harris has given herself a running mate who won’t look out of character campaigning among rural or small-town Americans, or among military veterans, or among people who’ve worked real and relatable jobs instead of managing real-estate fortunes or hanging out with Silicon Valley’s tech bros. His appeal should extend well beyond the Midwest to voters all over the country who share elements of his life trajectory. And it’s a good start for the short sprint to Election Day for the Democrats’ new presidential nominee.
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