Not sure why Nate continues to ignore what I personally assume were the actual reasons they didn't go with Shapiro: his coverup of the sexual harassment scandal in his office and the PA Supreme Court's reopening of the Ellen Greenberg case. Popular in his own state or not, the dude's scandal-prone, and you better bet the GOP would've hammered that relentlessly.
Yeah, for someone who is normally critical of the blob, Nate seems awfully willing to parrot their narrative that Shapiro opposition is solely related to Gaza. The drip of new revelations re the sexual harassment thing seems bad and the fact that not just the left, but folks like Fetterman were against him was concerning. I expect we’ll learn at some point that some stuff came up in the vetting
No one should be surprised that Fetterman was against him. They are political rivals fighting for oxygen in the same constituencies. They have very similar ambitions. Their paths have crossed before and likely will again now that Shapiro got passed over. Fetterman is probably very glad that he was able to keep Shapiro from lapping him.
Fair enough, but my point is that opposition to Shapiro was broad. His critics included a pro-Israel senator who has been tacking to the center (and who, as you note, may have had other motivations), teachers' unions, and labor, among others.
Of course, had Fetterman not have that stroke, I think he’d have been in the conversation for VP. His appeal to a LOT of groups not normally Democratic voters, while himself being pretty progressive on economic issues, and the fact that his wife was undocumented might let him be the “only Nixon could go to China” story on immigration reform.
Fetterman would come with the same Senate seat problem as Kelly though. Sure Shapiro would pick his replacement but then I believe that person would have to run in the 2026 midterms as an unelected member of the presidents’ party, which would be much harder to win than Fetterman will probably have in 2028. If you’re a Dem with VP ambitions, being a Senator from a swing state is probably not the best way to get there right now. Honestly, governor from a swing state hurts too if you’re not in your last term anyway. Can’t afford to make holding onto the veto power in a swing state if there’s a chance a GOP legislature would change state election laws or create a partisan gerrymander of their house seats. Not with this Supreme Court that seems inclined to let state legislatures get away with any shenanigans that aren’t explicitly forbidden in the constitution or federal law.
My disagreement with Nate is less about what specific allegations he brought up or didn't and more about his larger analysis. The following is all he had to say about Shapiro's downside in this piece: "And also, the reasons for not picking Shapiro aren’t great. Democrats in the political bubble overstate the salience of the Gaza issue and understate the benefits of moderation, and that’s before getting into the issue of Shapiro’s Jewishness."
Aside from the sexual harassment and murder case scandals, a wide range of constituencies of varying ideological stripes had concerns with Shapiro. As I noted earlier, his critics included a pro-Israel senator who has been tacking to the center (and who, admittedly, may have had other motivations), teachers' unions, and labor, among others. Nate's two sentences above are an unfair representation of the case against Shapiro IMO
Yeah, Nate is blind on this one. You can’t be the campaign of Women’s Rights and Progress for Women when your VP-pick has a PR nightmare waiting to torpedo everything you stand for with a sexual harassment cover-up for a political advisor/friend. Rs would eat that alive. The race is about KH and DJT and having side controversies for the KH campaign would tamp down the momentum and raise a dark cloud over the convention.
This, this is exactly it. Sources now saying Kamala just didn't "get a good feeling" from her meeting with Shapiro, and that his Boosters that obnoxiously (and without advance notice!) turned a rally for Kamala into a 'Josh for VP' party a week or so ago were the tipping points. There was just something off. I don't think right now is the time to be scrounging for fractional +EV when I don't think all of the information about Shapiro is on the table - variance and knowledge too low to use that approach IMO.
Yeah it doesn't fit into the online Left vs Moderate culture war, but the Greenberg thing especially struck me as a huge liability that also had the potential to keep springing new surprises before the election. The case just got re-opened, no wants an October Surprise destroying their news cycle.
The online Left vs Moderate culture war is ridiculous. We are in an election where the old categories are irrelevant.
The only category that matters this time is Pro-democracy (Harris/Walz) vs anti-democracy (trump/Vance).
Pick your side. When Harris and Walz win (if the pro- democracy coalition stays united), other differences can be sorted out. And there will be another presidential election in 2028.
I also don't understand why Nate hasn't addressed it. Especially with Trump's felony convictions related to Stormy Daniels, Shapiro's involvement in a hush money case related to sexual harassment would be a clear jumping off point for Trump's campaign to push a claim of political persecution while his opponent was involved in the same thing. A Shapiro VP pick would undermine one of the key character arguments against Trump which seems way more consequential than "Minnesota mannerisms may not translate outside the state," whatever that means.
Nate’s stance on Gaza being unimportant is simply wrong. The midwestern states have a high number of muslim voters which makes the issue have higher importance in the states that happen to be swing states.
Biden won PA by ~80k votes and there are ~150k muslims in PA.
Biden won MI by ~150k votes and there are ~250k muslims in MI.
Even though most of the country (myself included) don’t care about this issue, it’s actually worth considering for the midwest strategy.
I'm someone to whom the issue matters a lot, but I also get that we're a loud minority (personally speaking, pretty much every one of Shapiro's issues was singularly disqualifying for me). But even with that said, the notion that Shapiro would simultaneously deliver PA but *not* negatively impact the vote in MI just seems silly to me.
I'm another someone to whom the issue matters greatly, and run in several circles where that sentiment is strong. Many in those circles are younger, casual voters who will absolutely stay home if they're not excited by the ticket. Nate seems to be completely/willfully ignoring the impact of potentially reduced turnout for those turned off by taking the wrong side of the issue.
I think we can sum it up like this: Shapiro's "attack surface" had way too many points/aspects and would give Trump and Republicans too many targets to choose from and I'm guessing the thinking is that Kamala wants to draw all the fire to herself because she thinks she can handle it (and thus far, that has been the case). Reading what Trump and Republicans are saying to today, it's all "he is just like her!" which is another way of saying "eh, we got nothing on this guy". I mean, you are not going to steal too many headlines with "this Democrat is a Democrat!" Kamala is the star of this ticket, and she definitely should remain the main topic going forward.
Sure he would. Democrats are traditionally very incompetent and absolutely would've let him get this far (and usually would've let him win, but they seem to have wisened up the last few weeks).
Swing voters don't really care about whether someone used an NDA in a sexual harassment settlement. And regardless, Republicans couldn't attack Shapiro on the NDA without reminding voters of Trump's numerous and severe sexual harassment and assault issues.
I'm sure Republicans would have tried to stir up conspiracy theories about the Greenberg case, but Shapiro was so tangentially involved that I don't think that would have been a particularly effective line of attack.
One thing swing voters DO care most about is crime. Republicans are going to have a field day making ads with footage of Minneapolis's third precinct burning. The Walz pick will make one of their most effective lines of attack even more potent.
Republicans specialize in attacking their enemies on their perceived strengths. Sure they can. The point they will make is that Democrats are hypocrites. The attack has the advantage of being accurate.
But virtually all of the people who care whether a candidate has committed (or in Shapiro's case, had an aide who committed) sexual harassment are voting for Harris anyway. At worst, you maybe cause a couple hundred swing state voters to stay home over the harassment settlement.
Hundreds of thousands of moderate swing voters are highly susceptible to the "Democrats are soft on crime" attack. The Walz pick hands them the video footage to hammer home that message. It doesn't matter that Walz had minimal ability to stop the arson and vandalism. Republicans will play that footage constantly and talk about how long it took Walz to call in the national guard. That is going to be very compelling to thousands of centrist voters in swing states.
Because of the progressive obsession with fairness to the exclusion of other virtues (see Haidt), charges of hypocrisy--even fallacious tu quoques--hit the Dems different and harder.
Agreed. I am personally a vocally pro-Palestine leftist, but I objectively saw the Ellen Greenberg case as the biggest liability. I don’t believe Shapiro personally did anything nefarious, but the narrative would have been that he covered up a murder somehow
If Walz was in on it then maybe he should have been charged. Regardless that article isn't about the guy that got killed by the cop, it's about the riots that followed.
The way he's spent the 24 hours since the Walz announcement retweeting bluntly disingenuous nonsense designed to vindicate him and make Walz look like a bad pick (an anonymous Trump staffer claiming without evidence that they had conducted a whisper campaign to sour Dems on Shapiro; an out-of-context MSNBC clip that makes it sound like Walz is anti-free speech) makes me considerably less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
I don't follow. If anything, that implies it's even more likely that he doesn't know, and is just going off of his own priors thoughts on Shapiro. And Twitter is definitely where a lot of the "Gaza argument" buzz is, so that would also probably help explain his focus on that.
Again, not saying the other stuff isn't important, but I don't think it's particularly common knowledge.
I mean, I don't know, I figure if he's engaged enough to draft two whole articles about it to one of the largest audiences on Substack then he has an obligation to know all the basic angles--and yeah, the sexual harassment and Ellen Greenberg stuff has admittedly been buried by mainstream press in favor of Shapiro's positioning on Gaza, but I don't consider myself all that plugged into lefty discourse and I knew about it. So to me either he's being disingenuous (which is my assumption) or he's being plain ignorant (which might be worse).
Right. The lack of Ivy degrees on the Dem side is an interesting counterpoint to the R ticket, with two Ivy League "elite" grads trying to appeal to the non-college educated white demographic.
Harris doesn’t have an Ivy League degree and the university of California university system is elite among public institutions while Howard is elite among HBCUs - but fair point
I think Walz is pretty bland and invisible, which makes sense if you don't want to rock the boat. Look at JD Vance.
On the other hand when I think of the Walz pick the term that springs to mind is "politics as usual". That's fine for a normal cycle but given what's happening in France, the UK, Germany, Argentina, the Netherlands, etc. the Dems had better hope that what's sloshing around in Europe doesn't wash up on these shores.
Exactly, watching that speech, especially back to back with Shapiro, I can see exactly what she saw.
Not that Shapiro wasn’t on fire himself, but it was a very different…tone? Walz oozes “authentically grounded”.
He reaches towards Obama-Trump voters that are actually very down with populous progressive economic policies (that Trump/Vance are aping), but hang up on the Culture War stuff.
Trying to paint this guy as “West Coast elite/liberal” isn’t going to stick.
I was referring to middle America as in the geographic area, not the middle class. But really I should have specified midwest. And yes, that includes blue collar workers. He grew up in a small town, he's a former teacher, high school football coach, army national guard vet. That's a super relatable and admirable guy to any midwesterner, including blue collar. Great speaker, funny, energetic. If he can defend his handling of 2020 protests/riots which is where they're hitting him most (I think he can), he'll be a great asset.
Which is why they need to get him speaking in front of as many people as possible fast. They can paint him how they want, but the way he talks about those issues (freedom and mind your own business), together with his regular guy vibe, will likely go a long way to reaching at least some blue collar Obama/Trump voters. Of course they need be exposed to him to have that effect. What those voters resent the most, aside from specific policies, are costal elites, and he is far from that.
They split the vote with Nigel Farage's Reform party. If you ignore actual vote totals you could make the same argument about France where a far left coalition held of Le Pen with tactical voting.
This is a good point. If you weren’t going pick based on geography, I would have gone with Mayor Pete, as I think he’s probably the smartest and deftest in conversation politician I’ve seen in my lifetime. But his McKinsey association and (let’s face it) his being gay are impediments to some folks who are ambivalent about the elites having similar backgrounds. Knowing that he was an NCO tells me that he’s no silver spoon guy.
If Walz is the safe pick then Vance is just the opposite. At the Atlanta rally he told a story about praying that his mother would wake up after she OD'd. Quite the contrast.
For those not in the know, 20 years is the normal retirement age. It is completely expected that anyone staying past 20 is liable to to take their retirement and run whenever they no longer have an active service commitment. Unless he made some kind of explicit promise that he'd extend, this is a complete nothing burger.
Maybe don't make assumptions. I did read the article and all it says in this regard is that Walz, "allegedly assur[ed] his fellow troops he would join them." Even if you take this at face value, this could simply be a case of misinterpreting his words; saying something as innocuous as "When we deploy," could be understood as him saying he was planning to join them, when perhaps all he intended was to speak for the unit as a whole. Now, it's possible he did make an explicit promise that he broke and that would definitely be shitty, but that's not necessarily what happened based on the limited reporting in the article
In a letter posted to Facebook in 2018 as he first ran for governor, retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr said Walz retired from his 24-year tenure in the National Guard after learning that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq, despite allegedly assuring his fellow troops he would join them.
“On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war,” Behrends and Herr wrote.
"...the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far." I feel like this is an odd take. Walz is the bold choice because he isn't ideologically moderate. He isn't from the tipping point state. Does that make him a worse pick? Maybe. But, he is the bold pick.
I also wouldn't undervalue reporting that Walz was the favorite of both Pelosi and Sanders. As a Walzpiller, I think it's more that his messaging style meets the moment. Shapiro is Obama-esque. Walz sounds more like Sanders on the stump. And that is a better counter to Trumpism.
I agree, choosing Shapiro would've screamed "we're cold and calculating", which is the image democrats typically project. Walz is a bolder, more energizing choice.
Walz is definitely more in the "affable & smart grandpa" category than he is in the "power hungry person bidding their time until they can take over" category.
Harris needs to show boldness by moving to the center because her biggest problem is that most people think of her as too far left. Also frankly the fact that progressives have all decided that swing voters will love Walz makes me deeply skeptical that swing voters will love him, because progressives are generally garbage at figuring out what will actually appeal to swing voters.
I doubt he'll do much harm, but I saw someone on Twitter say something like "Walz is a white-collar person's idea of who will appeal to blue collar people," and I have a strong hunch this is true. Admittedly, it's just a hunch, but I think Shapiro was clearly the higher-upside pick.
I guess, I struggle to buy that progressives don't do well with Obama-Trump style swing voters. Walz won MN-1 in 2016 by a hair where Clinton lost 38-53. I think that moderates overvalue the salience of Clinton-Obama politics in a world where Democrats need more grassroots [read pro-worker, pro-union] appeal in the Midwest.
Pelosi is also an interesting point here. Her political instincts have always been good, and her support of Walz is also an important signal that there may be more going on with Shapiro's vetting. Shapiro looked good on paper, but represents a backwards-looking vision of the Democratic party.
Walz's track record in MN-1 is a feather in his cap, sure, but statewide elections are more relevant for a Presidential race he's done so-so there - basically about as well as you'd expect for a generic Democrat in Minnesota.
I think Pelosi's instincts are great on the level of inside-baseball politics (and it's possible there was some inside-baseball reason to pick Walz over Shapiro, though I'm inclined to think they should have gone with Beshear or Kelly if there was an issue with Shapiro specifically) but electorally...she's only ever won elections in *San Francisco.* Pelosi's role in getting Biden to drop out illustrates this; she was great at all the maneuvering and cajoling necessary to get him to step aside but she was hardly ahead of the curve there.
(I don't mean this as a knock on Pelosi, by the way; inside-baseball politics is a legitimate skill and one that we could probably use more of. It's just largely orthogonal to being able to win elections, especially national elections.)
As for Walz....Idunno. I'm not super familiar with him and this is all just a hunch. But Twitter progressives have been going on about how normie swing voters are gonna love him because he's a football coach and seems like a nice guy and blahblahblah for weeks, and, like....Twitter progressives are total morons when it comes to this stuff. So it just makes me skeptical. But I will admit that that is a different constituency than the kind of pro-union, pro-worker types you are talking about, so maybe Walz does actually have that kind of appeal. And that could appeal to swing voters, I guess. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I think Walz has done a lot better than a generic Democrat in MN. Sometimes people don't realize how competitive statewide races often are in MN because it has voted D for president so consistently. Of the last five MN governors, only 2 were Democrats (Walz & Dayton), and Walz's margins of victory (+11 & +7) were a lot better than Dayton's (+5 & +0.5). Walz also outperformed Tina Smith's Senate election (+5) and Al Franken (+0.1 and +10). Klobuchar has outperformed Walz, but I wouldn't call Klobuchar a generic Democrat.
Yeah, Twitter progressives tendency to fixate on Gaza misses the boat IMO. Vouchers and corporate tax cuts are the knocks on Shapiro from a policy standpoint.
Who knows, maybe Shapiro would have been the better pick, but he's the sort of candidate that plays well with a consolidating Dem primary electorate (like Obama, Clinton, and Biden). He feels very beltway-adjacent. Trump is at his most comfortable attacking that kind of politics.
The thing that a lot of lefties (including, but not limited to, Twitter progressives) do not realize is that pissing them off is good politics for Democrats at the national level. The reason for this is simple - we live in a country that is 40% moderate, 40% conservative, and 20% liberal. Therefore, the left-of-center party needs win a bunch of moderates, and they need to loudly and publicly embrace moderation to win national elections.
Josh Shapiro pisses off the left. Picking him would have been (correctly) seen as picking a fight with the left and - here's what lefties don't want to hear - *this would be a net positive for the Harris campaign.* And it doesn't really matter why Josh Shapiro pisses off the left; the salient fact is that he does.
Harris has, thus far, embraced more moderate messaging and quietly tacked to the center on a number of issues. But she has not loudly and publicly picked any fights with the left. She certainly *could* do this with Walz as her VP candidate, but the fact that she chose him could be - though may not be - an indicator that she will shy away from doing this in the manner that Biden did. And to the extent that it is an indicator of that, it's very, very bad sign if you actually want Harris to win (which I do).
This to me is waaaay too 5d chess. Even Manchin called Walz a good pick. At the end of the day, picking Walz was an exercise in approval voting. Shapiro-stans didn't have an objection to Walz, so she picked the least disliked option.
Pissing off your own voters isn't good political strategy even if you believe in the median voter theorem. There were valid reasons to pick Shapiro (as Nate pointed out), but this isn't one of them.
40% "moderate" also includes a whole lot of voters who are disaffected. Undecided voters aren't paying attention to pissed off Twitter lefties. Own the libs is a base play by Trump, not an outreach play.
My hunch isn't really so much about Gaza (which, I agree, is a bad fixation of Twitter progressives), and more about Walz's personality, or - to use the parlance of the times - his vibes.
Sarah Palin is an interesting analogy here. I think Sarah Palin was the kind of woman that right-wingers thought would appeal to moderate suburban moms. And it kind of worked, briefly, until it really, really, didn't. Because intensely political right-wingers exist in a weird little bubble and don't actually know what would appeal to moderate suburban moms.
I don't think Walz is likely to be as disastrous as Palin and his failure mode would certainly be different; he's got a longer track record and doesn't seem like an idiot. But I have a strong hunch that there is something or some things in Walz's track record and/or personality that progressives literally *cannot* see - maybe something about what he did during the Floyd riots, maybe something with trans issues, maybe something he's said or even just the way he talks - that turns off swing voters, or at least limits his appeal to them. I will readily admit this is just a hunch, and I'm just some guy on the internet - make of it what you will.
Of course, hovering above all this is the fact that historically VP picks don't matter much. Although in this instance it's a gauge of Kamala Harris' decisionmaking and the results, while not disastrous, do raise some questions.
Walz campaigned as a moderate in that election and Clinton did not campaign as a moderate.....So exactly the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
That's a reductive (and inaccurate) take. He ran on an economically progressive platform on things like education, labor, and healthcare. The main attack line from Hagedorn was on spending. Go back and watch their debate if you'd care to see it. Clinton ran to the right of him on several of these things (remember the TPP).
There's a way to market progressive policies to undecideds and disaffecteds.
Fair enough and my mistake and error. I'm not going to watch the video right now but I will take your word for it. I'm only learning about Tim Walz now that he's VP, so thank you for the information and help on that. So he's actually been progressive throughout his career making it even more absurd that Nate calls him moderate.
He's definitely trended left on some issues, especially on guns. But he also has Sanders style authenticity on things like LGBTQ rights and a commitment to public education. I just think there's a big distinction between moderate as a rhetorical style, and moderate as taking centrist political stances.
EDIT: Worth conceding, he also moved left on the border. Which is probably a mistake given the cycle.
Let's not conflate bold with good strategy. Moving to the center is what Democrats normally do, there's nothing bold about it. We can debate whether it would have been a smart strategy or not, but it would certainly not have been bold.
Splitting hairs a bit here, but to me the word "bold" in this context means something like "doing surprising things that cut against public perceptions of you," which in Harris' case means moving to the center.
I guess it depends on if you mean bold with resepact to Harris herself or bold with respect to peoples perceptions of the Democratic Party as a whole. Harris has been bold with respect to peoples perceptions of the Democratic Party, and this choice fits that pattern.
What's not suburban reassurance about a teacher/coach/father with two IVF kids/man dedicated to service?
Forget the policy for a minute. (Although what's scary and non-reassuring about not letting kids go hungry or get shot when they go to school?) Or signing abortion protection into law?
(of a person, action, or idea) showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous.
Nothing about tacking to the center screams taking risks, being confident or courageous. It's the safe move.
Not saying Kamala shouldn't tack to the center.
Voters respond to narratives more than policy. Democrats have lost plenty of elections tacking to the center and there are plenty examples of extremists winning.
I don't think that's as strong an indicator as the charisma and appeal of the candidates.
Judging by the crowds, and listening to the speeches, Walz is delivering just fine on personality. More than fine really.
He's likeable, down to earth, the fun he's having is contagious.
Republicans don't have an answer to that.. They are used to people being horrified and scared. Harris and Walz aren't playing into that and they are getting great results
You assert that Harris' "biggest problem is that most people think of her as too far left." Do you have any evidence to support that claim? Polling hasn't even reached the semblance of a steady state yet in this race, but it seems to me that the biggest headwinds for Harris would likely be voter perceptions of the economy and immigration: https://news.gallup.com/poll/642887/inflation-immigration-rank-among-top-issue-concerns.aspx
I was referring to Harris' specific issues as a candidate as opposed secular issues in the election which would hurt any Democrat. Although being perceived as too far left could pose problems when it intersects with those issues, especially immigration.
I don't have an specific polls to link to at the moment. But I believe there is polling showing that voters think of Harris as being quite far left. That said, the race is in flux right now; this could change.
Also just ex ante a woman of colour will always start off with a perception that she is more left wing than she really is. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing - it can allow the candidate to take more moderate positions than a white man would get away with.
Thought the same until I heard his speech. He will definitely connect with blue collar voters. He's got the story, and he's got the speaking style to do so.
So? That's only an issue if he wants to run for President. Once he and Harris were in the WH she would have the advantage of incumbency for her re-election bid and he could have retired.
It kind of cuts against the whole "we're not gonna have a bunch of super-old people in there anymore" message. And lots of VPs do wind up being President for some reason or other, as Nate has discussed.
Look, while I personally have no objection (other than age, maybe) to the idea of Vice President Joe Manchin, it was never on the table, the idea that he's gonna get elected VP and then abruptly retire is preposterous, and I suspect you know that.
He would have stuck it through the first term. Regardless the argument is that Harris' VP was supposed to represent an attempt to capture blue collar voters. Who does a better job at that? Manchin or Walz?
Joe Manchin barely appeals to the blue collar voters in his own state; he knows this which contributed to his a) not running for reelection and b) switching to Independent for the remainder of his term.
Joe Manchin has managed to navigate shark-invested political waters and to an appreciable extent represent his constituency in WV and shore up Dems at critical times in the Senate, especially during these last 2 years.
Politically if not always substantively, an astute, shrewd operator. What I wouldn't give to be in the room w Pelosi & him in discussion.
Yea I’m from WV and your first statement is dead wrong. The fact that he was re-elected in literally the second Trumpiest state in the union as a Democrat (and honestly had a low but not insignificant chance of doing it again) speaks to his INCREDIBLE appeal to swing and Trump-reluctant voters.
My statement was in regards to blue collar voters, not "swing or Trump-reluctant voters." There may be overlap but these are not the same constituencies.
Regarding Manchin's appeal to swing & Trump-reluctant voters... In WV, Manchin was trusted enough by electorate because he was a governor then a senator to win 2 full senate terms. But even he could see that was not going to hold, hence his decision not to run for re-election.
On the national stage, though, he is not trusted by either party so support (i.e. money, organization, money & money) would be lukewarm at best.
That would have been the true “bold” move. Would have radically pissed off 80%+ of democrats and helped hugely with swing voters. I just can’t imagine Kamala being willing to tick off “her people” in that way (which is why she’s not an ideal candidate).
Harris still hasn't held a press conference, which is odd given that politicians are narcissists that love the spotlight. "Bold" doesn't seem to apply given that.
It's almost as if reworking a campaign takes time and effort (not to mention the DNC). Biden dropped out less than a month ago. Much like branding yesterday's stock market correction a "Kamala Krash", this talking point is premature on the part of Trumpworld.
Maybe she'll be bad off script. She's had word salads in the past. But, coming from Trump (a walking word salad bar), I struggle to see how this lands barring a bad debate performance.
She's turning down free publicity. I think the closest analog is when Biden turned down the Superbowl interview, a move that raised eyebrows because, again, he was turning down a free opportunity to get his message out, talk to voters, etc.
The obvious question is whether the Democrats are considering trying to run a basement campaign again as they did in 2020, and whether that will work in the present day.
Shapiro can continue to campaign and will be a good cabinet pick. I do believe we would have lost the newly gained young voters if she had chosen him. Walz will have more credibility with heartlanders than Vance.
Agree. Silver underestimates the headwinds Shapiro would have brought to Harris with regard to college age voters. Genocide Josh would have been a thing.
Nate did make a great point before though that the left leaning voters who are genuinely willing to risk a second Trump administration (and all the setbacks to their favorite causes that would inevitably bring) — just to make a point on one particular issue — will always find a new way to move the goal posts and make something else a sticking point. People willing to shoot themselves in the foot the foot like that will always put their identity as an ideological purist above actually winning.
Like, this is obviously anecdotal, but as an example of this concept:
I distinctly remember discussing the Biden administration (which, by most quantitative measures, at least attempted to be the most progressive administration post Cold War) with a Wellesley College grad who told me that it had been (not even a month into its existence, mind you) a complete and total disaster for progressivism and that she regretted voting for Biden.
I would think that those left-leaning voters who would vote for Harris either way are the same who were planning to vote for Biden despite his obvious decline. Given Biden's low polling followed by the current surge, doesn't that suggest there is actually a sizable and important segment of Democratic and/or swing voters (including younger people) who may stay home if turned off by someone like Shapiro, but who could be critical to a Democratic win.
I’m not sure. I will say that Nate Silver is somebody who’s looking at polling and demographic cross tabs all day long, and he at least seemed to think the evidence suggested Shapiro maximized her chances of an EV victory. I can only hope Harris had a bunch of people like Nate who are also well versed in the data in her ear, who were also privy to behind-the-scenes info from the vetting process that Nate is not.
You're talking about around 15-20m voters or potential voters here. Some of them won't vote for Harris no matter what. Some of them will vote for her no matter what. Probably most of them might vote for her, depending on what she runs on.
Your goal is to get as many of those voters to come out and vote for Harris. Maybe there's a few million in there that will keep moving the goalposts indefinitely, but they are a minority of a minority, and not worth giving up the whole 15-20m voter group for.
Young voters are not that big of a group and the median young voter is a moderate who does not care that much about Gaza.
I do think there is a case to be made that Gaza isn't a great issue to triangulate on because it is very low-salience for most people to the right of AOC. But we live in a moderate-conservative country, in general pissing off the left is a good electoral strategy for Democrats.
GenZ is a larger population than Boomers, and "median young voter" is not that relevant.
This election is a GOTV election, and there's a lot more votes to be had by not pissing off the progressive left than there is about enticing moderate-conservative voters to show up on Election Day and vote for Harris.
The Boomers are a (very slightly) larger cohort than Gen Z, and about half of Gen Z is not old enough to vote. (Unfortunately, the graphic doesn't list a source, though.) That said, generational cohort population differences are tiny.
I used a different source, but it was only slightly the other way. Even with half of GenZ unable to vote - an excellent point yes - the younger millennials certainly can. I’m old enough to lump “in their twenties” together, even though they split generations.
Anyway - the median young voter doesn’t matter because this is a GOTV election.
There’s many more Harris votes to be found in the “blah blah Gaza blah blah” side than the “blah blah MAGA blah blah” side. So a mathematical median between the two doesn’t matter.
If you’re saying centrist voters could also be Harris voters, fine, but they’d be Harris-Walz voters just as much as Harris-Shapiro.
Keep in mind though, any young voter that she gets out to vote who may otherwise stayed home is a +1 in net margin in her favor. Any legitimate swing voter who she loses to Trump is effectively a -2 in margin for her. So in addition to likelihood of turning out, you have to account for that as well.
Fair enough re: the young voters. I guess I just have a pretty strong prior that meaningful numbers of young voters aren't gonna sit out the election or vote for Trump to protest a war that the US isn't even directly involved in. I mean, in an electorate that has long not cared a whit about foreign policy, *this* is the thing that moves it? Really? It just makes no sense to me.
So I tend to think its a lot of noise on the internet and on college campuses but not a lot of actual votes. Certainly not enough to offset the number of votes Harris could gain by tacking hard to the center. But I'm an old millennial; maybe I'm wrong about this.
Also, there is BS' point below about the relative value of adding a vote from Harris vs. taking one from Trump, and the fact that the half point or so that Shapiro could've added in PA could well be extremely important in this election.
With all that said, I'm gradually making my peace with Walz. I have concerns, but he's not a *terrible* pick. Most important thing is what the campaign does from here.
And how many of them are likely to a) vote and b) be single-issue Gaza voters?
(Kind of a moot point with Walz on the ticket, and I do think there is a good argument that Gaza is the wrong thing for Dems to triangulate on. But, I mean, Arab-Americans care about stuff other than Gaza.)
Axiomatic! Still, he will not be giving up a governorship to join the cabinet. That is not a good trade. Generally the cabinet is for governors who have already served their full complement of terms and failed to become a Senator. Cabinet officers are an irrelevance these days where the priorities and all sub-apppintments are set by donors and activists and WH staff. The party elders who selected Harris know what they want done - there is no scope for a cabinet officer with their own ambitions.
doubt he takes a cabinet slot, he'd be better off cruising to a 2nd term in PA. If Harris somehow blows this he'd be poised as a 2028 contender anyway.
I’m really hoping, praying that the pollsters have finally over-corrected attempting to capture the Trump voter non-response and this time the polling error will actually be in favor of Harris. Polling error in Trump’s direction similar to the last past 2 elections would mean she still has quite a bit of ground to make up in the EC.
I said on Twitter that I think there are lots of "vibes" reasons to pick Walz, and what I mean by that is that I think he does a better job of off-setting a lot of the "vibes" of Harris herself. Harris is associated with SF, a graduate of an 'elite' HBCU, and emanates ambition. Nothing wrong with that on my end, but I think that Shapiro gives off these same vibes, and might have made the Harris/Shapiro ticket feel a classic "elite, striving, technocratic Democrat" ticket. Hell, Shapiro's CV almost exactly matches Harris'.
Walz's bio is significantly different, and his persona is much more 'everyman'. That's simplistic, obviously, but I think it will make a difference in every swing state. I don't think it make sense to boil VP candidates down to what state they're from.
I also don't think it's totally reasonable to judge their political skills on their Gubernatorial elections either. Too many factors go into those outcomes to draw a clear conclusion based on a brief review of the outcome. Walz's ability to guide his state's party through a VERY productive legislative period goes a long ways with me. The fact that he was the one who identified what has proven to be a very successful line of attack against the GOP doesn't hurt either.
Anyway, I wouldn't have been upset with Shapiro at all, but I'm on the opposite side. I think picking Walz shows good judgment and I think, and hope, it will serve her well.
"a step back toward the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far."
I'm curious about this sentence. I would call the Shapiro pick a lot of things, some positive and some negative, but it honestly would have been the Tim Kaine like pick to me. It would have essentially been the playbook Hillary Clinton ran in 2016. Let's put two moderates on the ticket with no appeal to a huge wing of the party and hope that doesn't bite us in the ass.
I would challenge the concept that Walz is "not particularly left-wing". As a member of congress, staked out a centrist view and acted in that manner. But, since joining the executive ranks, he has driven solidly on the far left of issues, backing out of his earlier moderation as a congressmen.
He has supported every example of left policy on guns, gender affirming care, immigration, school lunches and abortion. He is much more aligned with Harris on left issues than he is a centrist at the moment. He has even quoted himself as saying he embraces the progressive handle.
I think this was an unforced error by the Harris Campaign. There is nothing in this choice that represents a centrist coalition and it was to bring back the MN "uncommitted" vote. We will have to see if the vote balance was worth it.
Walz may not have governed as a moderate, but he's a 60 year old white guy from rural Minnesota that was in the military and used to be a football coach. That is all a large swath of the electorate will see, and they will assume he's moderate.
He also knows how to present progressive policies in a relatable way. Listen to his first speech. He sounds nothing like coastal elites when talking about abortion for example. I think she made the right pick.
I think the "uncommitted" vote extends beyond MN. Especially in GA, AZ, and NV. Labor wasn't a fan of Shapiro, and Trump is courting service workers' union endorsements hard (no taxes on tips).
I'm also not convinced that a VP pick is evaluated on policy stances as much as they are on public appearances and vibes. Why else does Manchin, for example, say that Harris is too far-left but that Walz is a sensible pick?
Even if the VP nominee's policy stances prove relevant, I'd say with the exception of his handling of the George Floyd protests, there's very little that opens him up to attack lines that don't also apply to Harris. Economically progressive stances including free school lunches and paid family leave are broadly popular with the electorate. Why is the undecided = centrist narrative so strong? Very few people, even on the right, want more neocon/neolib economic policies. Ryan and Romney are pariahs for a reason.
I can’t see that being the reason. Her camp would have to know that any scenario where she’s on defense in MN means that she’s probably lost some combination of “the blue wall” of PA, MI, and WI. And Walz isn’t the candidate that’s somehow going to turn the sunbelt swing states bluer than those in the rust belt. If she’s going to win, she needs to be on offense in purple states with more red than MN. If she were going to make her decision based on a subset of voters in one particular state she would’ve picked Shapiro or maybe Whitmer. She has to think he maximizes her overall chances to pick him.
Agreed. I’m just not sure what Walz brings to the game. Seems like he is an enthusiasm win for the Democrats. Which is very important for them to maintain the energy through the election. If anyone digs too deep into this ticket, they are going to realize it is too left for America. That’s why you’ve seen Kamala walk back almost every one of her progressive views. If this wasn’t so bizarre to switch horses and such favorable MSM support, Kamala would be backed into a corner with her real views.
But people will not dig deep and swallow this new version…
I also wonder if there was any “we can’t afford to lose him in his current role” factor with Shapiro, as there likely was with Kelly. Befitting of its status as the most important swing state, PA’s state government teeters right on the fence of control between the two parties. Some among the PA state GOP have signaled a willingness to entertain “the big lie.” Given midterms are usually bad for the President’s party, it’s not hard to foresee a scenario in 2026 where the GOP takes both branches of PA state legislature, but Shapiro would probably still be favored to win a second term as governor. If he’d left for the VP role though, the Dems could’ve been looking a situation where the GOP had full control of the state government of “the most important swing state”, and a willingness to change state election laws to benefit their own party, potentially tipping the balance in the EC in 2028 and beyond.
I disagree with Nate on this because I think this is the bolder choice. We have already seen that Trump is saying “Walz will unleash hell on earth.” That kind of overreaction to a dude whose most popular images on google are being hugged by kids after signing a school lunch bill and holding corn dog socks is ridiculous. This shows a vision of change that people want from Trump. Not necessarily a left right thing but a “let’s move on from the hate.” I was a Shapiro guy until last night but I think this was the right choice. Walz isn’t a mover and shaker and he doesn’t seem like an operator and I think that is why it’ll work out.
I grew up with and still know people who harbor seething resentment toward those who went to elite colleges and advanced to prestigious and lucrative careers. This resentment does not usually extend to the billionaire class, but more to those with life arcs like Harris’s and Shapiro’s, that pair of former AGs. Ticket balancing may require consideration of factors other than region, ethnicity, or ideological positioning. Walz, with his farm to enlistment to teacher-coach to Congress experience, genuinely represents a path to high office that is rare today. My intuition, and it’s no more than that, is that he may get through to a population we Democrats have lost or are losing for whom Shapiro is just another suit. I think Shapiro is great and would be happy with him too, but my old, midwestern, white-guy sense is that there are millions out there that Walz has a unique chance of reaching.
My thought/hope is that Walz is similar to Fetterman in the sense that progressives think he's progressive but ends up being somewhat moderate or at least not as progressive
He signed a bill allowing sex reassignment surgeries and treatment for minors. He equates socialism with "neighborliness". He's endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He's a progressive through and through.
You honestly believe the median voter thinks it's ok for parents to give their kids hormone treatments that will sterilize them or cut off healthy body parts?
I didn't ask what you thought about the law. I asked what you honestly think the median voter would think.
But now that you put it out there: do you think it's ok for parents to have any medical procedure done on their kids? Would you be ok with conversion therapy? I'm thinking not...and if I'm right, you aren't actually stating a principle. You're just using parental rights as a weapon for your own political preferences.
I think the question of gender identity at any age, but especially for a minor, is complicated and difficult (I have friends who have gone through this with both young and adult children). Since it’s complicated and personal, I believe—and I expect many voters believe—that it’s a good choice for government to take itself as far out of the conversation as possible.
Hmmm why retreat to speaking euphemistically about this? The law allows specific procedures to take place. Do you think the median voters would be ok with allowing parents to give their kids life altering hormone treatments and surgeries?
Is it though? The nuts and bolts of government while he has been in charge have been quite poor. Though I guess that is sort of the progressive brand. Nice ideas that don't actually work well.
Also he has been pretty left on culture war issues while governor, and basically done what the activists/lobbyists and Party wanted.
While he has been in charge the DoT and transit system has been a mess, the COVID response was poor and was leftist twitter's wet dream as well as beset by fraud, and the state environmental apparatus can't seem to approve mining projects which meet all their rules because it makes suburbanite idiots have vague nonsense fears. The university system and public schools continue their spiral into dysfunction and cost disease.
IDK I don't think the state has been particularly well run or focused on vital issues.
It has not been terrible, but I wouldn't describe him as some nuts and bolts roll of the sleeves guy at all. What is his signature achievement? The state being really out front on trans stuff? That is hardly winning the affection of normies.
He’s linked to a few things like school lunches. Progressives love that, but that’s the sort of thing that’s at worst innocuous policy to anyone in reachable range of a Democratic candidate
One fear I do have with him is that, since the narrative around why Harris didn’t pick Shapiro is inevitably going to be Gaza, it may become easy for the GOP to hammer the narrative that Walz was the pick of all those “ivory tower liberal college students” protesting on campuses… despite the fact that he’s not actually all that of a leftist himself. As Nate has pointed out, most of the country still tends to side with Israel on this issue. And if Trump is able to paint the narrative that Walz is “pro-hamas”, then it may force he and Harris to come out more vocally that they still support Israel, causing them to lose those “newly gained young voters” you speak of anyway.
He wasn't a leftist while a congressmen, but has been one more or less as governor. About the only thing he has done that the far left in MN didn't like was call in the National Guard after dragging his feet about it for 2 days, while the mayor let the city burn.
Do you really still have doubts about what Trump and this version of the GOP can get your average American to believe. The people the Dems need to worry about thinking that are not on sites like this, they probably never heard of Walz before today if they live in Minnesota. If it’s shouted loud enough, some swing voters will believe it, whatever it is. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
Not sure why Nate continues to ignore what I personally assume were the actual reasons they didn't go with Shapiro: his coverup of the sexual harassment scandal in his office and the PA Supreme Court's reopening of the Ellen Greenberg case. Popular in his own state or not, the dude's scandal-prone, and you better bet the GOP would've hammered that relentlessly.
Yeah, for someone who is normally critical of the blob, Nate seems awfully willing to parrot their narrative that Shapiro opposition is solely related to Gaza. The drip of new revelations re the sexual harassment thing seems bad and the fact that not just the left, but folks like Fetterman were against him was concerning. I expect we’ll learn at some point that some stuff came up in the vetting
No one should be surprised that Fetterman was against him. They are political rivals fighting for oxygen in the same constituencies. They have very similar ambitions. Their paths have crossed before and likely will again now that Shapiro got passed over. Fetterman is probably very glad that he was able to keep Shapiro from lapping him.
Fair enough, but my point is that opposition to Shapiro was broad. His critics included a pro-Israel senator who has been tacking to the center (and who, as you note, may have had other motivations), teachers' unions, and labor, among others.
Of course, had Fetterman not have that stroke, I think he’d have been in the conversation for VP. His appeal to a LOT of groups not normally Democratic voters, while himself being pretty progressive on economic issues, and the fact that his wife was undocumented might let him be the “only Nixon could go to China” story on immigration reform.
Fetterman would come with the same Senate seat problem as Kelly though. Sure Shapiro would pick his replacement but then I believe that person would have to run in the 2026 midterms as an unelected member of the presidents’ party, which would be much harder to win than Fetterman will probably have in 2028. If you’re a Dem with VP ambitions, being a Senator from a swing state is probably not the best way to get there right now. Honestly, governor from a swing state hurts too if you’re not in your last term anyway. Can’t afford to make holding onto the veto power in a swing state if there’s a chance a GOP legislature would change state election laws or create a partisan gerrymander of their house seats. Not with this Supreme Court that seems inclined to let state legislatures get away with any shenanigans that aren’t explicitly forbidden in the constitution or federal law.
In Nate’s defense, he did mention the possibility of a vetting issue. I can understand not wanting to be specific about particular allegations
My disagreement with Nate is less about what specific allegations he brought up or didn't and more about his larger analysis. The following is all he had to say about Shapiro's downside in this piece: "And also, the reasons for not picking Shapiro aren’t great. Democrats in the political bubble overstate the salience of the Gaza issue and understate the benefits of moderation, and that’s before getting into the issue of Shapiro’s Jewishness."
Aside from the sexual harassment and murder case scandals, a wide range of constituencies of varying ideological stripes had concerns with Shapiro. As I noted earlier, his critics included a pro-Israel senator who has been tacking to the center (and who, admittedly, may have had other motivations), teachers' unions, and labor, among others. Nate's two sentences above are an unfair representation of the case against Shapiro IMO
Yeah, Nate is blind on this one. You can’t be the campaign of Women’s Rights and Progress for Women when your VP-pick has a PR nightmare waiting to torpedo everything you stand for with a sexual harassment cover-up for a political advisor/friend. Rs would eat that alive. The race is about KH and DJT and having side controversies for the KH campaign would tamp down the momentum and raise a dark cloud over the convention.
Shapiro's apparent emulation of Obama's speech pattern is also kind of weird. To my admittedly untrained eye he just didn't come through as genuine.
This, this is exactly it. Sources now saying Kamala just didn't "get a good feeling" from her meeting with Shapiro, and that his Boosters that obnoxiously (and without advance notice!) turned a rally for Kamala into a 'Josh for VP' party a week or so ago were the tipping points. There was just something off. I don't think right now is the time to be scrounging for fractional +EV when I don't think all of the information about Shapiro is on the table - variance and knowledge too low to use that approach IMO.
I didn't like it. "White Obama" is a very easy label that will stick.
Yeah it doesn't fit into the online Left vs Moderate culture war, but the Greenberg thing especially struck me as a huge liability that also had the potential to keep springing new surprises before the election. The case just got re-opened, no wants an October Surprise destroying their news cycle.
The online Left vs Moderate culture war is ridiculous. We are in an election where the old categories are irrelevant.
The only category that matters this time is Pro-democracy (Harris/Walz) vs anti-democracy (trump/Vance).
Pick your side. When Harris and Walz win (if the pro- democracy coalition stays united), other differences can be sorted out. And there will be another presidential election in 2028.
I also don't understand why Nate hasn't addressed it. Especially with Trump's felony convictions related to Stormy Daniels, Shapiro's involvement in a hush money case related to sexual harassment would be a clear jumping off point for Trump's campaign to push a claim of political persecution while his opponent was involved in the same thing. A Shapiro VP pick would undermine one of the key character arguments against Trump which seems way more consequential than "Minnesota mannerisms may not translate outside the state," whatever that means.
Nate’s stance on Gaza being unimportant is simply wrong. The midwestern states have a high number of muslim voters which makes the issue have higher importance in the states that happen to be swing states.
Biden won PA by ~80k votes and there are ~150k muslims in PA.
Biden won MI by ~150k votes and there are ~250k muslims in MI.
Even though most of the country (myself included) don’t care about this issue, it’s actually worth considering for the midwest strategy.
I'm someone to whom the issue matters a lot, but I also get that we're a loud minority (personally speaking, pretty much every one of Shapiro's issues was singularly disqualifying for me). But even with that said, the notion that Shapiro would simultaneously deliver PA but *not* negatively impact the vote in MI just seems silly to me.
I'm another someone to whom the issue matters greatly, and run in several circles where that sentiment is strong. Many in those circles are younger, casual voters who will absolutely stay home if they're not excited by the ticket. Nate seems to be completely/willfully ignoring the impact of potentially reduced turnout for those turned off by taking the wrong side of the issue.
If those were the real reasons, he would have never made it to top 2.
Fair enough, but it's unthinkable to me that they weren't significant factors (especially since the PA Supreme Court decision is brand-new).
I would say if the choice had anything to do with Israel, he wouldn’t have made it to the top 2.
I think we can sum it up like this: Shapiro's "attack surface" had way too many points/aspects and would give Trump and Republicans too many targets to choose from and I'm guessing the thinking is that Kamala wants to draw all the fire to herself because she thinks she can handle it (and thus far, that has been the case). Reading what Trump and Republicans are saying to today, it's all "he is just like her!" which is another way of saying "eh, we got nothing on this guy". I mean, you are not going to steal too many headlines with "this Democrat is a Democrat!" Kamala is the star of this ticket, and she definitely should remain the main topic going forward.
I’m not convinced of that. The PA EC votes would make it very tempting to power through to final call, even if you know there’s moderate risk.
Sure he would. Democrats are traditionally very incompetent and absolutely would've let him get this far (and usually would've let him win, but they seem to have wisened up the last few weeks).
Swing voters don't really care about whether someone used an NDA in a sexual harassment settlement. And regardless, Republicans couldn't attack Shapiro on the NDA without reminding voters of Trump's numerous and severe sexual harassment and assault issues.
I'm sure Republicans would have tried to stir up conspiracy theories about the Greenberg case, but Shapiro was so tangentially involved that I don't think that would have been a particularly effective line of attack.
One thing swing voters DO care most about is crime. Republicans are going to have a field day making ads with footage of Minneapolis's third precinct burning. The Walz pick will make one of their most effective lines of attack even more potent.
Republicans specialize in attacking their enemies on their perceived strengths. Sure they can. The point they will make is that Democrats are hypocrites. The attack has the advantage of being accurate.
But virtually all of the people who care whether a candidate has committed (or in Shapiro's case, had an aide who committed) sexual harassment are voting for Harris anyway. At worst, you maybe cause a couple hundred swing state voters to stay home over the harassment settlement.
Hundreds of thousands of moderate swing voters are highly susceptible to the "Democrats are soft on crime" attack. The Walz pick hands them the video footage to hammer home that message. It doesn't matter that Walz had minimal ability to stop the arson and vandalism. Republicans will play that footage constantly and talk about how long it took Walz to call in the national guard. That is going to be very compelling to thousands of centrist voters in swing states.
Walz is a base pick, while Shapiro would be triangulating for moderates. We'll see.
We had people waving off Clinton's shenanigans and even offering to re-enact them themselves because they agreed with his politics.
NSFW: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2021/07/24/cringe-journalist-offered-oral-sex-bill-clinton-keep-abortion
That is really topical. Is Jay Leno available for this round table?
Because of the progressive obsession with fairness to the exclusion of other virtues (see Haidt), charges of hypocrisy--even fallacious tu quoques--hit the Dems different and harder.
Agreed. I am personally a vocally pro-Palestine leftist, but I objectively saw the Ellen Greenberg case as the biggest liability. I don’t believe Shapiro personally did anything nefarious, but the narrative would have been that he covered up a murder somehow
"scandal prone" and as you define it. See the other side?
Walz has his own baggage though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/us/tim-walz-george-floyd-criticism.html
Cops shouldn't murder people in the middle of the street. Walz was on it.
If Walz was in on it then maybe he should have been charged. Regardless that article isn't about the guy that got killed by the cop, it's about the riots that followed.
Maybe those two things are related?
Did you read that article?
I was alive when George Floyd was killed.
He's only 19 months into his term, so not a good sign.
Is it possible he just hasn't heard about that controversy? All I've heard w.r.t. Shapiro is people talking about Gaza.
The way he's spent the 24 hours since the Walz announcement retweeting bluntly disingenuous nonsense designed to vindicate him and make Walz look like a bad pick (an anonymous Trump staffer claiming without evidence that they had conducted a whisper campaign to sour Dems on Shapiro; an out-of-context MSNBC clip that makes it sound like Walz is anti-free speech) makes me considerably less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
I don't follow. If anything, that implies it's even more likely that he doesn't know, and is just going off of his own priors thoughts on Shapiro. And Twitter is definitely where a lot of the "Gaza argument" buzz is, so that would also probably help explain his focus on that.
Again, not saying the other stuff isn't important, but I don't think it's particularly common knowledge.
I mean, I don't know, I figure if he's engaged enough to draft two whole articles about it to one of the largest audiences on Substack then he has an obligation to know all the basic angles--and yeah, the sexual harassment and Ellen Greenberg stuff has admittedly been buried by mainstream press in favor of Shapiro's positioning on Gaza, but I don't consider myself all that plugged into lefty discourse and I knew about it. So to me either he's being disingenuous (which is my assumption) or he's being plain ignorant (which might be worse).
What did he cover up? The Ellen Greenberg case was 6 years before he became AG
For clarification purposes Walz was an NCO this + no law degree brings something to democratic national politics that should be acknowledged.
He also doesn’t have an elite university degree, which sets him apart from basically every major democrat (other than Biden)
Mankato State is joke to you...!?
(get outta here 'kato, nobody's going to call you Minnesota State)
He went to Chadron State in Nebraska…
And Harris?
Right. The lack of Ivy degrees on the Dem side is an interesting counterpoint to the R ticket, with two Ivy League "elite" grads trying to appeal to the non-college educated white demographic.
Harris doesn’t have an Ivy League degree and the university of California university system is elite among public institutions while Howard is elite among HBCUs - but fair point
Right. Harvard, Yale, Princeton... Howard.
...a CSM? Holy shit, I did not know that.
amusingly they made him retire at master sergeant because he didnt finish Sergeants Major Academy before leaving lol
A cop and a sergeant, I like it.
Sad!
I think Walz is pretty bland and invisible, which makes sense if you don't want to rock the boat. Look at JD Vance.
On the other hand when I think of the Walz pick the term that springs to mind is "politics as usual". That's fine for a normal cycle but given what's happening in France, the UK, Germany, Argentina, the Netherlands, etc. the Dems had better hope that what's sloshing around in Europe doesn't wash up on these shores.
I would have agreed till I heard his Philadelphia speech. The guy is a GREAT speaker and will definitely connect with moderate/middle America voters.
Exactly, watching that speech, especially back to back with Shapiro, I can see exactly what she saw.
Not that Shapiro wasn’t on fire himself, but it was a very different…tone? Walz oozes “authentically grounded”.
He reaches towards Obama-Trump voters that are actually very down with populous progressive economic policies (that Trump/Vance are aping), but hang up on the Culture War stuff.
Trying to paint this guy as “West Coast elite/liberal” isn’t going to stick.
I thought Harris was supposed to connect to middle American voters. Who's the blue collar magnet?
I was referring to middle America as in the geographic area, not the middle class. But really I should have specified midwest. And yes, that includes blue collar workers. He grew up in a small town, he's a former teacher, high school football coach, army national guard vet. That's a super relatable and admirable guy to any midwesterner, including blue collar. Great speaker, funny, energetic. If he can defend his handling of 2020 protests/riots which is where they're hitting him most (I think he can), he'll be a great asset.
He's already being painted by the opposition as a far left progressive who is way out of touch with thr middle on issues like sex changes for minors.
LOL
Which is why they need to get him speaking in front of as many people as possible fast. They can paint him how they want, but the way he talks about those issues (freedom and mind your own business), together with his regular guy vibe, will likely go a long way to reaching at least some blue collar Obama/Trump voters. Of course they need be exposed to him to have that effect. What those voters resent the most, aside from specific policies, are costal elites, and he is far from that.
UK conservatives just had a crushing defeat so not sure what your point is.
They split the vote with Nigel Farage's Reform party. If you ignore actual vote totals you could make the same argument about France where a far left coalition held of Le Pen with tactical voting.
Reform party got 5 seats while Labor got 411.
I'm not sure what your point is. Did you read my comment?
So Britain has a first past the post system....
Lib Dem voters strongly preferred Labour to the Conservatives. In a hypothetical instant runoff / preferential election, it looks like Labour would still have won easily. Poll data on preferences: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_PartyRanking_240709_W.pdf
The conservatives were in power for over a decade and are presiding over a recession now.
Sure: their loss wasn't a great mystery. They weren't robbed, though.
The strongest supported conclusion from the data seems to be that it's generally a bad time for incumbents.
This is a good point. If you weren’t going pick based on geography, I would have gone with Mayor Pete, as I think he’s probably the smartest and deftest in conversation politician I’ve seen in my lifetime. But his McKinsey association and (let’s face it) his being gay are impediments to some folks who are ambivalent about the elites having similar backgrounds. Knowing that he was an NCO tells me that he’s no silver spoon guy.
I'd like to know his story about coming out to his parents as a McKinsey consultant.
LOL!
If Walz is the safe pick then Vance is just the opposite. At the Atlanta rally he told a story about praying that his mother would wake up after she OD'd. Quite the contrast.
This is out there too now.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/06/us-news/tim-walz-embellished-military-career-for-years-dropped-from-national-guard-unit-ahead-of-iraq-deployment/
That monster retired from the National Guard after only... 24 years.
For those not in the know, 20 years is the normal retirement age. It is completely expected that anyone staying past 20 is liable to to take their retirement and run whenever they no longer have an active service commitment. Unless he made some kind of explicit promise that he'd extend, this is a complete nothing burger.
Maybe read the article before you comment.
Maybe don't make assumptions. I did read the article and all it says in this regard is that Walz, "allegedly assur[ed] his fellow troops he would join them." Even if you take this at face value, this could simply be a case of misinterpreting his words; saying something as innocuous as "When we deploy," could be understood as him saying he was planning to join them, when perhaps all he intended was to speak for the unit as a whole. Now, it's possible he did make an explicit promise that he broke and that would definitely be shitty, but that's not necessarily what happened based on the limited reporting in the article
In a letter posted to Facebook in 2018 as he first ran for governor, retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr said Walz retired from his 24-year tenure in the National Guard after learning that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq, despite allegedly assuring his fellow troops he would join them.
“On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war,” Behrends and Herr wrote.
To be fair the allegation is that he bailed right before they were deployed to combat.
To be fair he already served in Afghanistan. Did you?
Did you read that article?
Are you aware that he could have retired with full pension 4 years earlier?
Scott Walker in nearby Wisconsin wasn't a college grad at all, if memory serves.
"...the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far." I feel like this is an odd take. Walz is the bold choice because he isn't ideologically moderate. He isn't from the tipping point state. Does that make him a worse pick? Maybe. But, he is the bold pick.
I also wouldn't undervalue reporting that Walz was the favorite of both Pelosi and Sanders. As a Walzpiller, I think it's more that his messaging style meets the moment. Shapiro is Obama-esque. Walz sounds more like Sanders on the stump. And that is a better counter to Trumpism.
I agree, choosing Shapiro would've screamed "we're cold and calculating", which is the image democrats typically project. Walz is a bolder, more energizing choice.
Walz is definitely more in the "affable & smart grandpa" category than he is in the "power hungry person bidding their time until they can take over" category.
I sure hope Tim Walz's version of affable is better than Larry David's!
Harris needs to show boldness by moving to the center because her biggest problem is that most people think of her as too far left. Also frankly the fact that progressives have all decided that swing voters will love Walz makes me deeply skeptical that swing voters will love him, because progressives are generally garbage at figuring out what will actually appeal to swing voters.
I doubt he'll do much harm, but I saw someone on Twitter say something like "Walz is a white-collar person's idea of who will appeal to blue collar people," and I have a strong hunch this is true. Admittedly, it's just a hunch, but I think Shapiro was clearly the higher-upside pick.
I guess, I struggle to buy that progressives don't do well with Obama-Trump style swing voters. Walz won MN-1 in 2016 by a hair where Clinton lost 38-53. I think that moderates overvalue the salience of Clinton-Obama politics in a world where Democrats need more grassroots [read pro-worker, pro-union] appeal in the Midwest.
Pelosi is also an interesting point here. Her political instincts have always been good, and her support of Walz is also an important signal that there may be more going on with Shapiro's vetting. Shapiro looked good on paper, but represents a backwards-looking vision of the Democratic party.
Walz's track record in MN-1 is a feather in his cap, sure, but statewide elections are more relevant for a Presidential race he's done so-so there - basically about as well as you'd expect for a generic Democrat in Minnesota.
I think Pelosi's instincts are great on the level of inside-baseball politics (and it's possible there was some inside-baseball reason to pick Walz over Shapiro, though I'm inclined to think they should have gone with Beshear or Kelly if there was an issue with Shapiro specifically) but electorally...she's only ever won elections in *San Francisco.* Pelosi's role in getting Biden to drop out illustrates this; she was great at all the maneuvering and cajoling necessary to get him to step aside but she was hardly ahead of the curve there.
(I don't mean this as a knock on Pelosi, by the way; inside-baseball politics is a legitimate skill and one that we could probably use more of. It's just largely orthogonal to being able to win elections, especially national elections.)
As for Walz....Idunno. I'm not super familiar with him and this is all just a hunch. But Twitter progressives have been going on about how normie swing voters are gonna love him because he's a football coach and seems like a nice guy and blahblahblah for weeks, and, like....Twitter progressives are total morons when it comes to this stuff. So it just makes me skeptical. But I will admit that that is a different constituency than the kind of pro-union, pro-worker types you are talking about, so maybe Walz does actually have that kind of appeal. And that could appeal to swing voters, I guess. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I think Walz has done a lot better than a generic Democrat in MN. Sometimes people don't realize how competitive statewide races often are in MN because it has voted D for president so consistently. Of the last five MN governors, only 2 were Democrats (Walz & Dayton), and Walz's margins of victory (+11 & +7) were a lot better than Dayton's (+5 & +0.5). Walz also outperformed Tina Smith's Senate election (+5) and Al Franken (+0.1 and +10). Klobuchar has outperformed Walz, but I wouldn't call Klobuchar a generic Democrat.
Fair enough - that's good to hear!
Yeah, Twitter progressives tendency to fixate on Gaza misses the boat IMO. Vouchers and corporate tax cuts are the knocks on Shapiro from a policy standpoint.
Who knows, maybe Shapiro would have been the better pick, but he's the sort of candidate that plays well with a consolidating Dem primary electorate (like Obama, Clinton, and Biden). He feels very beltway-adjacent. Trump is at his most comfortable attacking that kind of politics.
A further, perhaps clarifying, thought:
The thing that a lot of lefties (including, but not limited to, Twitter progressives) do not realize is that pissing them off is good politics for Democrats at the national level. The reason for this is simple - we live in a country that is 40% moderate, 40% conservative, and 20% liberal. Therefore, the left-of-center party needs win a bunch of moderates, and they need to loudly and publicly embrace moderation to win national elections.
Josh Shapiro pisses off the left. Picking him would have been (correctly) seen as picking a fight with the left and - here's what lefties don't want to hear - *this would be a net positive for the Harris campaign.* And it doesn't really matter why Josh Shapiro pisses off the left; the salient fact is that he does.
Harris has, thus far, embraced more moderate messaging and quietly tacked to the center on a number of issues. But she has not loudly and publicly picked any fights with the left. She certainly *could* do this with Walz as her VP candidate, but the fact that she chose him could be - though may not be - an indicator that she will shy away from doing this in the manner that Biden did. And to the extent that it is an indicator of that, it's very, very bad sign if you actually want Harris to win (which I do).
This to me is waaaay too 5d chess. Even Manchin called Walz a good pick. At the end of the day, picking Walz was an exercise in approval voting. Shapiro-stans didn't have an objection to Walz, so she picked the least disliked option.
Pissing off your own voters isn't good political strategy even if you believe in the median voter theorem. There were valid reasons to pick Shapiro (as Nate pointed out), but this isn't one of them.
40% "moderate" also includes a whole lot of voters who are disaffected. Undecided voters aren't paying attention to pissed off Twitter lefties. Own the libs is a base play by Trump, not an outreach play.
Well if left-of-center doesn’t vote that’s still a lot of people potentially.
My hunch isn't really so much about Gaza (which, I agree, is a bad fixation of Twitter progressives), and more about Walz's personality, or - to use the parlance of the times - his vibes.
Sarah Palin is an interesting analogy here. I think Sarah Palin was the kind of woman that right-wingers thought would appeal to moderate suburban moms. And it kind of worked, briefly, until it really, really, didn't. Because intensely political right-wingers exist in a weird little bubble and don't actually know what would appeal to moderate suburban moms.
I don't think Walz is likely to be as disastrous as Palin and his failure mode would certainly be different; he's got a longer track record and doesn't seem like an idiot. But I have a strong hunch that there is something or some things in Walz's track record and/or personality that progressives literally *cannot* see - maybe something about what he did during the Floyd riots, maybe something with trans issues, maybe something he's said or even just the way he talks - that turns off swing voters, or at least limits his appeal to them. I will readily admit this is just a hunch, and I'm just some guy on the internet - make of it what you will.
Of course, hovering above all this is the fact that historically VP picks don't matter much. Although in this instance it's a gauge of Kamala Harris' decisionmaking and the results, while not disastrous, do raise some questions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/us/tim-walz-george-floyd-criticism.html
Walz campaigned as a moderate in that election and Clinton did not campaign as a moderate.....So exactly the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
That's a reductive (and inaccurate) take. He ran on an economically progressive platform on things like education, labor, and healthcare. The main attack line from Hagedorn was on spending. Go back and watch their debate if you'd care to see it. Clinton ran to the right of him on several of these things (remember the TPP).
There's a way to market progressive policies to undecideds and disaffecteds.
https://www.mankatofreepress.com/news/elections/video-tim-walz-and-jim-hagedorn-debate/html_c64aa176-519a-11e4-adee-072fd28da9ba.html
Fair enough and my mistake and error. I'm not going to watch the video right now but I will take your word for it. I'm only learning about Tim Walz now that he's VP, so thank you for the information and help on that. So he's actually been progressive throughout his career making it even more absurd that Nate calls him moderate.
He's definitely trended left on some issues, especially on guns. But he also has Sanders style authenticity on things like LGBTQ rights and a commitment to public education. I just think there's a big distinction between moderate as a rhetorical style, and moderate as taking centrist political stances.
EDIT: Worth conceding, he also moved left on the border. Which is probably a mistake given the cycle.
Let's not conflate bold with good strategy. Moving to the center is what Democrats normally do, there's nothing bold about it. We can debate whether it would have been a smart strategy or not, but it would certainly not have been bold.
Splitting hairs a bit here, but to me the word "bold" in this context means something like "doing surprising things that cut against public perceptions of you," which in Harris' case means moving to the center.
I guess it depends on if you mean bold with resepact to Harris herself or bold with respect to peoples perceptions of the Democratic Party as a whole. Harris has been bold with respect to peoples perceptions of the Democratic Party, and this choice fits that pattern.
Harris is all the bold the ticket needs. The ticket needed “no harm” and “suburban reassurance”
What's not suburban reassurance about a teacher/coach/father with two IVF kids/man dedicated to service?
Forget the policy for a minute. (Although what's scary and non-reassuring about not letting kids go hungry or get shot when they go to school?) Or signing abortion protection into law?
He's a suburban mom's dream come true!
Bold: 1.
(of a person, action, or idea) showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous.
Nothing about tacking to the center screams taking risks, being confident or courageous. It's the safe move.
Not saying Kamala shouldn't tack to the center.
Voters respond to narratives more than policy. Democrats have lost plenty of elections tacking to the center and there are plenty examples of extremists winning.
I don't think that's as strong an indicator as the charisma and appeal of the candidates.
Judging by the crowds, and listening to the speeches, Walz is delivering just fine on personality. More than fine really.
He's likeable, down to earth, the fun he's having is contagious.
Republicans don't have an answer to that.. They are used to people being horrified and scared. Harris and Walz aren't playing into that and they are getting great results
You assert that Harris' "biggest problem is that most people think of her as too far left." Do you have any evidence to support that claim? Polling hasn't even reached the semblance of a steady state yet in this race, but it seems to me that the biggest headwinds for Harris would likely be voter perceptions of the economy and immigration: https://news.gallup.com/poll/642887/inflation-immigration-rank-among-top-issue-concerns.aspx
I was referring to Harris' specific issues as a candidate as opposed secular issues in the election which would hurt any Democrat. Although being perceived as too far left could pose problems when it intersects with those issues, especially immigration.
I don't have an specific polls to link to at the moment. But I believe there is polling showing that voters think of Harris as being quite far left. That said, the race is in flux right now; this could change.
Also just ex ante a woman of colour will always start off with a perception that she is more left wing than she really is. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing - it can allow the candidate to take more moderate positions than a white man would get away with.
Thought the same until I heard his speech. He will definitely connect with blue collar voters. He's got the story, and he's got the speaking style to do so.
If the goal was to pick up blue collar voters why not go with Joe Manchin?
Joe Manchin is 76 years old.
So? That's only an issue if he wants to run for President. Once he and Harris were in the WH she would have the advantage of incumbency for her re-election bid and he could have retired.
It kind of cuts against the whole "we're not gonna have a bunch of super-old people in there anymore" message. And lots of VPs do wind up being President for some reason or other, as Nate has discussed.
Look, while I personally have no objection (other than age, maybe) to the idea of Vice President Joe Manchin, it was never on the table, the idea that he's gonna get elected VP and then abruptly retire is preposterous, and I suspect you know that.
He would have stuck it through the first term. Regardless the argument is that Harris' VP was supposed to represent an attempt to capture blue collar voters. Who does a better job at that? Manchin or Walz?
The VPs only important job is to be president if Harris dies in office.
Does anybody think Manchin's age is a serious impediment to that?
Joe Manchin barely appeals to the blue collar voters in his own state; he knows this which contributed to his a) not running for reelection and b) switching to Independent for the remainder of his term.
Joe Manchin has managed to navigate shark-invested political waters and to an appreciable extent represent his constituency in WV and shore up Dems at critical times in the Senate, especially during these last 2 years.
Politically if not always substantively, an astute, shrewd operator. What I wouldn't give to be in the room w Pelosi & him in discussion.
Yea I’m from WV and your first statement is dead wrong. The fact that he was re-elected in literally the second Trumpiest state in the union as a Democrat (and honestly had a low but not insignificant chance of doing it again) speaks to his INCREDIBLE appeal to swing and Trump-reluctant voters.
My statement was in regards to blue collar voters, not "swing or Trump-reluctant voters." There may be overlap but these are not the same constituencies.
Regarding Manchin's appeal to swing & Trump-reluctant voters... In WV, Manchin was trusted enough by electorate because he was a governor then a senator to win 2 full senate terms. But even he could see that was not going to hold, hence his decision not to run for re-election.
On the national stage, though, he is not trusted by either party so support (i.e. money, organization, money & money) would be lukewarm at best.
Manchin's issues in W. Virginia are probably due to blue collar voters, not swing voter suburbanites.
West Virginia has less than 1 percent of the US population.
How many times did Manchin win re-election in the reddest of red states?
Won in 2010 to fill last 2 yrs of Sen Byrd's term after Byrd's death, then won re-election in 2012 & 2018.
That would have been the true “bold” move. Would have radically pissed off 80%+ of democrats and helped hugely with swing voters. I just can’t imagine Kamala being willing to tick off “her people” in that way (which is why she’s not an ideal candidate).
Harris still hasn't held a press conference, which is odd given that politicians are narcissists that love the spotlight. "Bold" doesn't seem to apply given that.
It's almost as if reworking a campaign takes time and effort (not to mention the DNC). Biden dropped out less than a month ago. Much like branding yesterday's stock market correction a "Kamala Krash", this talking point is premature on the part of Trumpworld.
Maybe she'll be bad off script. She's had word salads in the past. But, coming from Trump (a walking word salad bar), I struggle to see how this lands barring a bad debate performance.
She's turning down free publicity. I think the closest analog is when Biden turned down the Superbowl interview, a move that raised eyebrows because, again, he was turning down a free opportunity to get his message out, talk to voters, etc.
The obvious question is whether the Democrats are considering trying to run a basement campaign again as they did in 2020, and whether that will work in the present day.
I'm just saying I think it's too early to declare this a basement campaign
This does seem like triangulation to me, I don't get it.
I agree it's triangulation. I disagree that it's not bold. Shapiro felt like an analyst's pick, Walz feels like the confident/bold pick.
Yeah Shapiro pick is trying to eek out the closest possible election. Walz is a governance pick.
Shapiro can continue to campaign and will be a good cabinet pick. I do believe we would have lost the newly gained young voters if she had chosen him. Walz will have more credibility with heartlanders than Vance.
Agree. Silver underestimates the headwinds Shapiro would have brought to Harris with regard to college age voters. Genocide Josh would have been a thing.
Nate did make a great point before though that the left leaning voters who are genuinely willing to risk a second Trump administration (and all the setbacks to their favorite causes that would inevitably bring) — just to make a point on one particular issue — will always find a new way to move the goal posts and make something else a sticking point. People willing to shoot themselves in the foot the foot like that will always put their identity as an ideological purist above actually winning.
Like, this is obviously anecdotal, but as an example of this concept:
I distinctly remember discussing the Biden administration (which, by most quantitative measures, at least attempted to be the most progressive administration post Cold War) with a Wellesley College grad who told me that it had been (not even a month into its existence, mind you) a complete and total disaster for progressivism and that she regretted voting for Biden.
Alas, you can't fix dumb.
I would think that those left-leaning voters who would vote for Harris either way are the same who were planning to vote for Biden despite his obvious decline. Given Biden's low polling followed by the current surge, doesn't that suggest there is actually a sizable and important segment of Democratic and/or swing voters (including younger people) who may stay home if turned off by someone like Shapiro, but who could be critical to a Democratic win.
I’m not sure. I will say that Nate Silver is somebody who’s looking at polling and demographic cross tabs all day long, and he at least seemed to think the evidence suggested Shapiro maximized her chances of an EV victory. I can only hope Harris had a bunch of people like Nate who are also well versed in the data in her ear, who were also privy to behind-the-scenes info from the vetting process that Nate is not.
EC*
You're talking about around 15-20m voters or potential voters here. Some of them won't vote for Harris no matter what. Some of them will vote for her no matter what. Probably most of them might vote for her, depending on what she runs on.
Your goal is to get as many of those voters to come out and vote for Harris. Maybe there's a few million in there that will keep moving the goalposts indefinitely, but they are a minority of a minority, and not worth giving up the whole 15-20m voter group for.
Maybe that is not true of Arab American voters in Dearborn Michigan. They voted for Biden 2 to 1 last election.
Young voters are not that big of a group and the median young voter is a moderate who does not care that much about Gaza.
I do think there is a case to be made that Gaza isn't a great issue to triangulate on because it is very low-salience for most people to the right of AOC. But we live in a moderate-conservative country, in general pissing off the left is a good electoral strategy for Democrats.
GenZ is a larger population than Boomers, and "median young voter" is not that relevant.
This election is a GOTV election, and there's a lot more votes to be had by not pissing off the progressive left than there is about enticing moderate-conservative voters to show up on Election Day and vote for Harris.
"GenZ is a larger population than Boomers, and "median young voter" is not that relevant."
Huh? https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/
The Boomers are a (very slightly) larger cohort than Gen Z, and about half of Gen Z is not old enough to vote. (Unfortunately, the graphic doesn't list a source, though.) That said, generational cohort population differences are tiny.
Why is the median young voter not that relevant?
I used a different source, but it was only slightly the other way. Even with half of GenZ unable to vote - an excellent point yes - the younger millennials certainly can. I’m old enough to lump “in their twenties” together, even though they split generations.
Anyway - the median young voter doesn’t matter because this is a GOTV election.
There’s many more Harris votes to be found in the “blah blah Gaza blah blah” side than the “blah blah MAGA blah blah” side. So a mathematical median between the two doesn’t matter.
If you’re saying centrist voters could also be Harris voters, fine, but they’d be Harris-Walz voters just as much as Harris-Shapiro.
Keep in mind though, any young voter that she gets out to vote who may otherwise stayed home is a +1 in net margin in her favor. Any legitimate swing voter who she loses to Trump is effectively a -2 in margin for her. So in addition to likelihood of turning out, you have to account for that as well.
Fair enough re: the young voters. I guess I just have a pretty strong prior that meaningful numbers of young voters aren't gonna sit out the election or vote for Trump to protest a war that the US isn't even directly involved in. I mean, in an electorate that has long not cared a whit about foreign policy, *this* is the thing that moves it? Really? It just makes no sense to me.
So I tend to think its a lot of noise on the internet and on college campuses but not a lot of actual votes. Certainly not enough to offset the number of votes Harris could gain by tacking hard to the center. But I'm an old millennial; maybe I'm wrong about this.
Also, there is BS' point below about the relative value of adding a vote from Harris vs. taking one from Trump, and the fact that the half point or so that Shapiro could've added in PA could well be extremely important in this election.
With all that said, I'm gradually making my peace with Walz. I have concerns, but he's not a *terrible* pick. Most important thing is what the campaign does from here.
In Michigan something like 2.5 percent of all voters are Arab Americans though.
And how many of them are likely to a) vote and b) be single-issue Gaza voters?
(Kind of a moot point with Walz on the ticket, and I do think there is a good argument that Gaza is the wrong thing for Dems to triangulate on. But, I mean, Arab-Americans care about stuff other than Gaza.)
2.5 percent of the voters cast 2.5 percent of the votes.
OK, perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you meant 2.5 percent of registered voters. Still skeptical that most of them are single-issue, though.
He is not going to leave a governorship to become a cabinet member. Nor are Gretchen or Gavin. They all want to run in 2028 after a Trump term
Well if he has the opportunity to be a cabinet member that means there isn't a Trump term.
Axiomatic! Still, he will not be giving up a governorship to join the cabinet. That is not a good trade. Generally the cabinet is for governors who have already served their full complement of terms and failed to become a Senator. Cabinet officers are an irrelevance these days where the priorities and all sub-apppintments are set by donors and activists and WH staff. The party elders who selected Harris know what they want done - there is no scope for a cabinet officer with their own ambitions.
doubt he takes a cabinet slot, he'd be better off cruising to a 2nd term in PA. If Harris somehow blows this he'd be poised as a 2028 contender anyway.
He's also could run in 2032, or even 2036. He's like 50 or 51.
"If Harris somehow blows this" coinflip of an election??
But I agree, he should remain (for now) governor of this critical swing state.
She's got big mo.
I’m really hoping, praying that the pollsters have finally over-corrected attempting to capture the Trump voter non-response and this time the polling error will actually be in favor of Harris. Polling error in Trump’s direction similar to the last past 2 elections would mean she still has quite a bit of ground to make up in the EC.
Agree. And having 2 former Attorney Generals on a Dem ticket is a turn off to many in a criminal justice reform corner of the party.
Yes. A broader concern is if he would be a distraction, a la Vance.
Plus, Walz is really, really good at articulating policy and swatting away detractors.
I said on Twitter that I think there are lots of "vibes" reasons to pick Walz, and what I mean by that is that I think he does a better job of off-setting a lot of the "vibes" of Harris herself. Harris is associated with SF, a graduate of an 'elite' HBCU, and emanates ambition. Nothing wrong with that on my end, but I think that Shapiro gives off these same vibes, and might have made the Harris/Shapiro ticket feel a classic "elite, striving, technocratic Democrat" ticket. Hell, Shapiro's CV almost exactly matches Harris'.
Walz's bio is significantly different, and his persona is much more 'everyman'. That's simplistic, obviously, but I think it will make a difference in every swing state. I don't think it make sense to boil VP candidates down to what state they're from.
I also don't think it's totally reasonable to judge their political skills on their Gubernatorial elections either. Too many factors go into those outcomes to draw a clear conclusion based on a brief review of the outcome. Walz's ability to guide his state's party through a VERY productive legislative period goes a long ways with me. The fact that he was the one who identified what has proven to be a very successful line of attack against the GOP doesn't hurt either.
Anyway, I wouldn't have been upset with Shapiro at all, but I'm on the opposite side. I think picking Walz shows good judgment and I think, and hope, it will serve her well.
"a step back toward the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far."
I'm curious about this sentence. I would call the Shapiro pick a lot of things, some positive and some negative, but it honestly would have been the Tim Kaine like pick to me. It would have essentially been the playbook Hillary Clinton ran in 2016. Let's put two moderates on the ticket with no appeal to a huge wing of the party and hope that doesn't bite us in the ass.
Isnt Shapiro a way better politician and speaker than Kaine?
Totally but so is Walz. I was just talking about where they fall on the political spectrum.
I would challenge the concept that Walz is "not particularly left-wing". As a member of congress, staked out a centrist view and acted in that manner. But, since joining the executive ranks, he has driven solidly on the far left of issues, backing out of his earlier moderation as a congressmen.
He has supported every example of left policy on guns, gender affirming care, immigration, school lunches and abortion. He is much more aligned with Harris on left issues than he is a centrist at the moment. He has even quoted himself as saying he embraces the progressive handle.
I think this was an unforced error by the Harris Campaign. There is nothing in this choice that represents a centrist coalition and it was to bring back the MN "uncommitted" vote. We will have to see if the vote balance was worth it.
Walz may not have governed as a moderate, but he's a 60 year old white guy from rural Minnesota that was in the military and used to be a football coach. That is all a large swath of the electorate will see, and they will assume he's moderate.
He also knows how to present progressive policies in a relatable way. Listen to his first speech. He sounds nothing like coastal elites when talking about abortion for example. I think she made the right pick.
I think the "uncommitted" vote extends beyond MN. Especially in GA, AZ, and NV. Labor wasn't a fan of Shapiro, and Trump is courting service workers' union endorsements hard (no taxes on tips).
I'm also not convinced that a VP pick is evaluated on policy stances as much as they are on public appearances and vibes. Why else does Manchin, for example, say that Harris is too far-left but that Walz is a sensible pick?
Even if the VP nominee's policy stances prove relevant, I'd say with the exception of his handling of the George Floyd protests, there's very little that opens him up to attack lines that don't also apply to Harris. Economically progressive stances including free school lunches and paid family leave are broadly popular with the electorate. Why is the undecided = centrist narrative so strong? Very few people, even on the right, want more neocon/neolib economic policies. Ryan and Romney are pariahs for a reason.
I can’t see that being the reason. Her camp would have to know that any scenario where she’s on defense in MN means that she’s probably lost some combination of “the blue wall” of PA, MI, and WI. And Walz isn’t the candidate that’s somehow going to turn the sunbelt swing states bluer than those in the rust belt. If she’s going to win, she needs to be on offense in purple states with more red than MN. If she were going to make her decision based on a subset of voters in one particular state she would’ve picked Shapiro or maybe Whitmer. She has to think he maximizes her overall chances to pick him.
Agreed. I’m just not sure what Walz brings to the game. Seems like he is an enthusiasm win for the Democrats. Which is very important for them to maintain the energy through the election. If anyone digs too deep into this ticket, they are going to realize it is too left for America. That’s why you’ve seen Kamala walk back almost every one of her progressive views. If this wasn’t so bizarre to switch horses and such favorable MSM support, Kamala would be backed into a corner with her real views.
But people will not dig deep and swallow this new version…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/us/tim-walz-george-floyd-criticism.html
I also wonder if there was any “we can’t afford to lose him in his current role” factor with Shapiro, as there likely was with Kelly. Befitting of its status as the most important swing state, PA’s state government teeters right on the fence of control between the two parties. Some among the PA state GOP have signaled a willingness to entertain “the big lie.” Given midterms are usually bad for the President’s party, it’s not hard to foresee a scenario in 2026 where the GOP takes both branches of PA state legislature, but Shapiro would probably still be favored to win a second term as governor. If he’d left for the VP role though, the Dems could’ve been looking a situation where the GOP had full control of the state government of “the most important swing state”, and a willingness to change state election laws to benefit their own party, potentially tipping the balance in the EC in 2028 and beyond.
I disagree with Nate on this because I think this is the bolder choice. We have already seen that Trump is saying “Walz will unleash hell on earth.” That kind of overreaction to a dude whose most popular images on google are being hugged by kids after signing a school lunch bill and holding corn dog socks is ridiculous. This shows a vision of change that people want from Trump. Not necessarily a left right thing but a “let’s move on from the hate.” I was a Shapiro guy until last night but I think this was the right choice. Walz isn’t a mover and shaker and he doesn’t seem like an operator and I think that is why it’ll work out.
I grew up with and still know people who harbor seething resentment toward those who went to elite colleges and advanced to prestigious and lucrative careers. This resentment does not usually extend to the billionaire class, but more to those with life arcs like Harris’s and Shapiro’s, that pair of former AGs. Ticket balancing may require consideration of factors other than region, ethnicity, or ideological positioning. Walz, with his farm to enlistment to teacher-coach to Congress experience, genuinely represents a path to high office that is rare today. My intuition, and it’s no more than that, is that he may get through to a population we Democrats have lost or are losing for whom Shapiro is just another suit. I think Shapiro is great and would be happy with him too, but my old, midwestern, white-guy sense is that there are millions out there that Walz has a unique chance of reaching.
My thought/hope is that Walz is similar to Fetterman in the sense that progressives think he's progressive but ends up being somewhat moderate or at least not as progressive
I think that he’s very progressive on the nuts and bolts of government while being less so on culture war issues, which is a nice blend
He signed a bill allowing sex reassignment surgeries and treatment for minors. He equates socialism with "neighborliness". He's endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He's a progressive through and through.
Allowing families to make their own medical decisions with their doctors is not a weird stance.
You honestly believe the median voter thinks it's ok for parents to give their kids hormone treatments that will sterilize them or cut off healthy body parts?
I think parents and their doctors know better than some rando in the comments section.
I didn't ask what you thought about the law. I asked what you honestly think the median voter would think.
But now that you put it out there: do you think it's ok for parents to have any medical procedure done on their kids? Would you be ok with conversion therapy? I'm thinking not...and if I'm right, you aren't actually stating a principle. You're just using parental rights as a weapon for your own political preferences.
So he ‘allowed’ something that physicians have sanctioned as a sound and careful medical practice for decades? What a crazy thing.
Do you think your views are close to the median voter? Please honestly engage in the discussion.
I think the question of gender identity at any age, but especially for a minor, is complicated and difficult (I have friends who have gone through this with both young and adult children). Since it’s complicated and personal, I believe—and I expect many voters believe—that it’s a good choice for government to take itself as far out of the conversation as possible.
Hmmm why retreat to speaking euphemistically about this? The law allows specific procedures to take place. Do you think the median voters would be ok with allowing parents to give their kids life altering hormone treatments and surgeries?
Is it though? The nuts and bolts of government while he has been in charge have been quite poor. Though I guess that is sort of the progressive brand. Nice ideas that don't actually work well.
Also he has been pretty left on culture war issues while governor, and basically done what the activists/lobbyists and Party wanted.
We would have to agree to disagree on the “nuts and bolts” bit. :)
While he has been in charge the DoT and transit system has been a mess, the COVID response was poor and was leftist twitter's wet dream as well as beset by fraud, and the state environmental apparatus can't seem to approve mining projects which meet all their rules because it makes suburbanite idiots have vague nonsense fears. The university system and public schools continue their spiral into dysfunction and cost disease.
IDK I don't think the state has been particularly well run or focused on vital issues.
It has not been terrible, but I wouldn't describe him as some nuts and bolts roll of the sleeves guy at all. What is his signature achievement? The state being really out front on trans stuff? That is hardly winning the affection of normies.
He’s linked to a few things like school lunches. Progressives love that, but that’s the sort of thing that’s at worst innocuous policy to anyone in reachable range of a Democratic candidate
One fear I do have with him is that, since the narrative around why Harris didn’t pick Shapiro is inevitably going to be Gaza, it may become easy for the GOP to hammer the narrative that Walz was the pick of all those “ivory tower liberal college students” protesting on campuses… despite the fact that he’s not actually all that of a leftist himself. As Nate has pointed out, most of the country still tends to side with Israel on this issue. And if Trump is able to paint the narrative that Walz is “pro-hamas”, then it may force he and Harris to come out more vocally that they still support Israel, causing them to lose those “newly gained young voters” you speak of anyway.
He wasn't a leftist while a congressmen, but has been one more or less as governor. About the only thing he has done that the far left in MN didn't like was call in the National Guard after dragging his feet about it for 2 days, while the mayor let the city burn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/us/tim-walz-george-floyd-criticism.html
What does that say?
You can read it using this site: https://archive.ph
I believe the article isn't paywalled.
It is paywalled.
He looks like Santa Claus without a beard and spent over 20 years in the military, including in Afghanistan. Pro Hamas Tim Walz?
Do you really still have doubts about what Trump and this version of the GOP can get your average American to believe. The people the Dems need to worry about thinking that are not on sites like this, they probably never heard of Walz before today if they live in Minnesota. If it’s shouted loud enough, some swing voters will believe it, whatever it is. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.