Short reactions from the entire Good Politics/Bad Politics gang on the big news of the day. Hope you enjoy! - Jonathan
[Starting with Julia]
Walz is the pick, and now I’m steeling myself for months of stupid takes about regional appeal. I do think Walz is a strategic electoral choice, but we need to think smarter about how this works. First, Walz has demonstrated campaign skill and mastery of the media moment. Because this has been done so quickly -and because of various (mostly unspoken) constraints around picking another Biden administration figure, another woman, another person of color – most of Harris’ reported short list were candidates who don’t have the national profile of, say someone who has run for the presidential nomination before. That’s a situation that induces media scrutiny. And Walz has demonstrated that he can generate positive news cycles and coverage, speak competently to the national news media about the issues of the election, and presumably has been vetted (we’ll find out).
Second, of the candidates who were being considered, Walz had the most for progressives. His record as Minnesota governor includes a number of highly progressive social and economic accomplishments, and some statements about an assertive use of a governing trifecta. As a presidential candidate, Harris will undoubtedly have to disappoint the progressive wing of the party – on Gaza, on immigration and probably on economic/social policy. Lincoln Project types and swing voters are essential to keeping the 2020 coalition together, plus there’s the general stickiness of 40-plus years of center-right priorities. The other candidates had liabilities in this area – with labor, or, as we’ve heard extensively, Josh Shapiro’s record on campus protests and statements on Gaza (fair or unfair, it’s a big issue in the Democratic coalition right now). Choosing the running mate who is most likely to appeal to progressives is a strategic choice.
Importantly, appeal is a verb. Just by existing, Walz is not going to deliver the upper Midwest to the Harris ticket. Walz’s lengthy and televised audition for the second slot showed promise for one of the key roles of the vice presidential candidate: the attack dog against the opponent. He was able to do this without being nasty or going back over character attacks on Trump that didn’t quite work to carry the electoral map in 2016. He has the potential to rally voters, especially progressive voters, in the upper Midwest, with this style of messaging and campaigning – without alienating the other side of the coalition balance sheet. And, to me, that seems like the equation for winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
[Here’s David]
“I am absolutely thrilled with Tim Walz,” Deb Kozikowski tells me.
Kozikowski is vice president of the Democratic National Committee’s Rural Council, which she co-founded in 2005. For more than 20 years she has importuned me with the Democrats’ need to focus more on rural voters. So I wanted to get her reaction to a running-mate from small-town Nebraska.
Democrats have not typically chosen such a person for the bottom of the ticket. Harris is most associated with Oakland; Biden with Scranton. John Edwards arguably had the background, but an image nevertheless of a city-slicker attorney. Liebermann, hardly. Gore? Maybe Lloyd Bentsen?
The rural vote “matters in this cycle,” Kozikowski says, “especially in swing states.” While Democratic strategy is typically to drive up turnout in urban strongholds, and secondarily to persuade well-educated white suburbanites, she argues that Republican-voting rural counties contain potential Democratic voters too. Walz is a “practical progressive,” she says, and “rural Americans understand that, because they know the results of not having progress.”
Walz “represented a very rural constituency in Congress,” Kozikowski says. As governor, she argues, he has shown a knack for building urban-rural partnerships. “Walz is able to transfer over from one group to the other, and balance the two populations.”
Crucially, she observes, Walz makes rural residents feel heard, in their resentments, disappointments, and desires.
Of course, that might be more difficult on the grand scale of a Presidential campaign, and in the subordinate role of Vice Presidential candidate. And, regardless of his personal background (and identity), Republicans are going to depict Walz as fitting squarely on the woke side of the great cultural divide. The immediate complaints in the right-wing marketplace to the Walz selection have been, in rough order: 1. he allowed BLM to burn Minneapolis in 2020; 2. he ordered tampons placed in boys’ bathrooms; 3. he shut the state down during COVID; 4. he’s a radical liberal or socialist; 5. he’s not anti-immigrant enough, especially concerning Muslims.
It will be difficult to counter that, especially while the campaign is still just getting started defining Harris to the country. But Kozikowski is optimistic. “He’s really smart,” she says of Walz. “People may not know how great he is, but they’re about to find out.”
[And Jonathan]
As Julia’s coauthor William Adler says:
The absolute first rule of choosing a VP is do no harm.
The second rule is, see the first rule.
Why? Because the evidence that running mates can do much good is very limited. At best, they help define the top of the ticket. And yes, it’s possible that they might make a small positive difference in their home states, but even that is contested in the political science literature.
Tim Walz is a do no harm selection. He’s not perfect on that score; as I’ve been saying for years, the safest choices are those who have been vetted by running a national campaign. This time around, that would have produced Pete Buttigieg, but while Secretary Mayor Pete survived his presidential campaign in reasonably good shape, he doesn’t really have the proper credentials to automatically be accepted as a viable in-case-of-emergency president. Walz, as a twice-elected governor, is therefore at least plausibly safer.
(The other parts of do no harm are to avoid those who the party can’t easily replace in their current jobs, and to avoid older candidates. Walz, at 60, is right at the top of the responsible age range; as Democrats learned recently, if they pick an old vice-president they might get stuck with a very old presidential candidate down the road.)
We’re in VP season now, which runs from when the nomination is wrapped up until the candidate’s big convention speech, after which he or she fades into the background for the rest of the campaign and (if successful) for most of the presidency. At least if the selection is any good; the ones who get a lot of attention after the convention are the duds. I think it’s unlikely Walz is a dud. That doesn’t mean running mates aren’t important; after all, lots of them eventually become presidents.
I do think it’s odd that Democrats have developed a habit of cultivating astronauts in swing states only to ignore them during veepstakes. But again, do no harm is the right standard, and Walz is as good a fit as they had.
Loved the "Rules for Choosing a VP"!