When Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz, the largely unknown Minnesota governor, there was an unmistakable pattern to the coverage.
Not to mention an element of surprise, since everyone thought Josh Shapiro was the odds-on favorite, given the importance of the governor’s state of Pennsylvania.
For the journalists and commentators who applauded Walz as the running mate, which is most of the media, they lauded his persona. A former football coach, a pheasant hunter, the epitome of rural America, unpretentious, funny, a guy who had to warn the campaign he’d never read a speech off a teleprompter.
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In fact, Harris introduced Walz as a husband, dad, teacher and avatar of old-fashioned values, and kept calling him Coach.
For those who slammed the choice, they attacked him on the issues, the very liberal policies he’s put into place in Minnesota. And that enables the Trump campaign to cast the new ticket as the most left-wing in American history.
Politics, of course, is about both policy and personality, and the latter may carry the day. Just consider the fierce devotion that MAGA voters have for Trump.
But I think Harris may have had a blind spot for just how liberal her new partner is. Rather than nod toward the center with a more moderate pick, she doubled down with someone even more to the left than she is.
If the VP winds up losing Pennsylvania, and with it the election, there will be plenty of second-guessing about bypassing Shapiro. Not that he could "deliver" a state, but even 10,000 votes might have made the difference.
But now lots of folks are scrambling aboard the Walz-wagon.
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CNN Senior White House Correspondent M.J. Lee said in Walz "we have somebody who sort of embodies the proud, the resilient, the hard-working patriotic middle of the country."
MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire: "This is what they billed him as. He’s got that folksy Midwestern charm. I think it’s right to spend time on his biography. It’s very impressive."
Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast, on the same network: "He ice fishes, he’s a hunter. He does butter carving. … He really is kind of a rural American success story."
Walz does have a great personal story, including 24 years in the National Guard. Both he and Harris gave rousing speeches at their Philadelphia kickoff.
But critics see him very differently.
Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway: "Tim Walz really is not known for being anything other than a pretty hardline progressive leftist."
FOX’s Jesse Watters: "This guy’s not Minnesota Nice, he’s Minnesota Nuts. … Sanctuary cities. Driver’s license for illegals. Sanctuary cities for sex changes for children."
One dissenting voice on CNN was conservative Scott Jennings, who said, "Is it normal to let your biggest city in your state burn while you're the governor for four days, destroying thousands of businesses, hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, while you do nothing?"
That is a reference to the Minneapolis riots after George Floyd was murdered, and investigators found that Walz had mishandled the violence by waiting days to call out the National Guard.
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Walz recently gained some street cred with the Kamala folks in his TV hits by branding the opposition as "weird," which became a signature line for the Dems.
Trump, for his part, said of Harris and Walz on "Fox & Friends" yesterday: "Nobody knew how radical left she was. But he's a smarter version of her, if you want to know the truth."
And he posted: "What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination…"
There is no question that a concerted campaign by the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party helped knock Shapiro out of the running. His pro-Israel stance isn’t really different than many others in the party, but he is, of course, Jewish.
Yet there are other factors as well. According to reports in Politico and elsewhere, Harris’ Sunday interview with Shapiro didn’t go that well, and he sent word that he was having a hard time deciding whether to leave the governorship. Shapiro also annoyed the campaign with too many questions about how much authority he would have.
Harris, who had her own strains with Joe Biden, felt much more comfortable with Walz; he said he’d be happy to play a secondary role and had no ambitions beyond being VP.
JD Vance, who held a news conference in Wisconsin yesterday, told reporters that Harris "should be ashamed of herself" for not having done a single interview. On Tuesday, the vice president did briefly speak to reporters off the record, her standard form of communication.
Walz has done many interviews, including on Fox. Will he be allowed to continue to do such sessions with journalists? If he does, he’ll have to answer plenty of questions about why her past positions have sharply changed and why she’s avoiding the press – a complaint constantly leveled against Biden but on which journalists have largely given Harris a pass.
