Veepstakes
Well, all the cards are on the table now that Kamala Harris has chosen Governor Tim Walz of the great state of Minnesota as her running mate. As we all know, the final beauty contest occurred this weekend with visits to her by Walz, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. In theory, Shapiro and Kelly might have helped Harris in the key battleground swing states they are from, but who knows? When Trump says that the VP choice historically has no impact on the election, he clearly did it because J.D. Vance was getting crucified in the press over previous controversial comments he has made in the past. But then again, he is not entirely wrong. As people are writing today, the VP choice does more to give voters a window on the thinking and decision process of the new primary candidate. So they say it helps define the candidate for people. If that’s true, the J.D. Vance choice by Trump does a good job of defining Trump as a transactional leader who might well be easy to buy (it is rumored that Elon Musk promised $47 million/month in funding if he chose brother Vance.) and who certainly wants a sycophantic alter ego to do his bidding and not steal any of his spotlight (Vance has clearly proven that about himself).
As for Harris and Walz, what the choice says is really a little bit of this and that. His label as a rural midwesterner is certainly a good balancing point for Harris. That seems smart. He is said to be a good across the aisle compromiser who is well liked by colleagues. That has value. He has some executive chops from being a successful and well-liked governor. That’s always a governing plus. His chemistry seems non-combative and his politics are somewhere between liberal and progressive. That keeps it consistent with Harris’ policy stance even though it doesn’t help make her seem more moderate (which some believe she needs). And his state is only somewhat in play and its unclear that he will help much in the electoral college sweepstakes. I’m not so sure about that. I bet he helps more with undecideds in Pennsylvania than Shapiro would given that many of those borderline conservatives will relate better to the common man image of Tim Walz than another educated elite like Shapiro. In fact, that is what I like most about Walz, he is an ordinary Joe. That worked for Biden, it worked for George W and it might even be said that it worked for Obama since he knew how not to talk down to people.
Mostly, I like that Tim Walz is a salt-of-the-earth guy who was raised in a working class family, was an enlisted man in the military, went to local schools, became a school teacher and a football coach and paid his dues with 12 years in the House of Representatives and two terms as a governor. Compare that to J.D. Vance. He may have started life with a dysfunctional family mired in poverty and addiction and gone into the military to escape those bonds. But his smarts allowed him to bootstrap out of there first to Ohio State and then to Yale Law School, which gave him the platform to write Hillbilly Elegy and gain some notoriety. At that point he became a dilettante who spent a bit of time as a lawyer and an equally small amount as a venture capitalist. He dabbled and always saw himself as attaining a higher status somewhere and somehow, rather than putting in the hard work of accomplishing things (other than his book, obviously). He was thrust into the Ohio senatorial seat by Peter Thiel’s money and after a short 18 months of positioning (rather than legislative work) he found the Silicon Valley supporters to push him (again with lots of funding) onto the national stage to be the inheritor of the MAGA throne as its heir apparent, understudying Trump.
Walz is a “what-you-know and what-you’ve-done” kind of guy. J.D. Vance is nothing more than a “who-you-know” guy, which is a questionable credential. There is a 40-year age gap between Vance and Trump, so naturally people think of Vance a generational candidate. I’m not sure anyone really thinks that way about Walz. He was not one of the hopefuls making noise about running against Biden in the early days of this cycle. He even came on the Veep scene fairly late compared with the likes of Shapiro. He is 8 months older than Kamala and would be 68 (only Reagan, Trump and Biden were older when they became president), so I feel it is safe to say that he would be an unlikely candidate to run for the big seat in 2032, assuming Harris wins in 2024 and 2028.
So, now the real race begins with 90 days remaining until the election. It is amazing how out of the news cycle Donald Trump has been for the last 10 days since Harris ascended the stage. When he has been visible it has been at events like the NABJ conference where he gave such a pitiful performance and enough soundbites to seed the opposition Harris campaign for a week. The press has spent more time dredging up numerous J.D. Vance faux pas and then trying to trip him with it. When they have highlighted him contemporaneously, he has sounded more like mini-Trump than anything else. It remains to be seen how the Harris campaign will choose to use Walz on the campaign trail for the next 90 days, but it seems likely that he will have a very active schedule as she and he double-team the country trying to get the message of excitement and hope out to the most uncommitted of voters. I predict they will waste little of no time pumping themselves up with their solid base they way Trump does. It feels like Trump wants to win for all selfish reasons, the first among many being that it keeps him out of harms way legally. Vance is running for his image. But Harris and Walz seem to be in synch running for their country. They both seem strongly committed to the notion that it would be ruinous for the country to fall again into the hands of a man like Trump and maybe even worse to fall into the hands of J.D. Vance.
Trump has made it crystal clear that if he is elected, democracy as we know it will end in the United States. Usually that takes a lot of innuendo and stitching together of some bad random comments, but Trump has dropped all his facade about it and has repeatedly said that there will be no need to vote again if he is elected in 2024. It doesn’t get more clear than that. It we thought the stakes were high for this election, the Veepstakes have done nothing to lessen that concern, but have rather elevated the Veepstakes role into a major supporting actor on the political stage in the most contentious and portentous election of my life. Kim and I have taken the lead from our daughter Carolyn and ordered 800 postcards to mail to swing state voters in hopes of helping to sway their thinking about the importance of this election. We will do that and every else we can to to help the Harris/Walz ticket. Then its time to hold our breath as a nation for the next 90 days.