Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest developments in the 2024 election \u2014 now with more \u201cyou betcha,\u201d \u201cuff da,\u201d hot dish and walleye.<\/p>\n
(Make sure you are subscribed to this newsletter here. You can also hear my analysis weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.)<\/p>\n
The two-week sprint to become the new Democratic vice-presidential pick concluded Tuesday with a winner few had predicted at the outset: Tim Walz. The formerly somewhat obscure \u2014 at least on the national stage \u2014 Minnesota governor now joins Vice President Harris for a three-month race to the presidential election.<\/p>\n
And if Republicans weren\u2019t prepared for the sudden shift at the top of the Democratic ticket from President Biden to Harris, they were loaded for bear this time, with a more focused message. They blanketed inboxes and social media with attacks on Walz. The prevailing talking point: that a \u201cdangerously liberal\u201d presidential candidate just picked a \u201cdangerously liberal\u201d running mate.<\/p>\n
\u201cRNC Statement on Dangerously Liberal Harris-Walz Ticket,\u201d read the Republican National Committee\u2019s press release.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven worse than Dangerously Liberal and Crooked Kamala Harris,\u201d Republican nominee Donald Trump\u2019s campaign said in a fundraising email.<\/p>\n
\u201cKamala Harris and Tim Walz: Weak, Failed, Dangerously Liberal,\u201d the Trump campaign said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo Weird. Too Radical,\u201d concluded an ad from the pro-Trump Make America Great Again super PAC.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s indeed an extension of the GOP playbook against Harris. As for how it will play?<\/p>\n
There is no question that, among the reported finalists for the job, Walz is probably the most pleasing to liberals. But that\u2019s in large part a reflection of the competition; the reported alternatives hailed from swing and even red-leaning states that require a more moderate approach and where the balance of power isn\u2019t as conducive to the Democratic agenda.<\/p>\n
Walz, by contrast, has been able to push through left-leaning policies in Minnesota with narrow Democratic majorities \u2014 a remarkable success story, the merits of the policies aside.<\/p>\n
Among the pieces of legislation signed into law: universal school lunches; universal gun background checks and a \u201cred flag\u201d law; abortion rights; paid family and medical leave; rights to gender-affirming care (the legislation the PAC ad focused on); restoring the rights of felons to vote; legalizing recreational marijuana; and allowing undocumented Minnesotans to apply for driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n
Republicans have also signaled they intend to criticize Walz for pandemic-era restrictions, including a mask mandate, as well as his response to the riots that followed George Floyd\u2019s 2020 murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police. (Some have criticized Walz for not more quickly dispatching the National Guard.)<\/p>\n
Democrats argue that while Democratic governors in more divided states haven\u2019t gotten such policies enacted, that is more a reflection of the internal political obstacles they faced rather than the popularity of the proposals. The concepts behind the gun bills, for instance, have overwhelming support in polls. Abortion rights are increasingly popular. Mask mandates have fallen in popularity, but they were once quite popular, and even red states had them.<\/p>\n
If there are potential liabilities with swing voters, you might see them in such things as the \u201ctrans refuge\u201d bill that Walz signed to protect those seeking gender-affirming care (a divisive topic), the driver\u2019s license law (a subject of previous GOP focus that could be pitched as being soft on the border crisis), and the riots (which could feed into GOP claims that Democrats are soft on crime).<\/p>\n
But in politics, a lot depends on the messenger and how they sell their record. And on a personal level, Walz certainly doesn\u2019t project \u201craging liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n
His roots are about as far from the East and West Coasts as is possible, literally; he was born in a small Nebraska town and came of political age in southern Minnesota. He embodies a Midwestern style that Harris\u2019s campaign hopes will attract voters in such must-win states as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He\u2019s a veteran who focused heavily on veterans issues in Congress, and he is a former longtime teacher and football coach. He has talked about how he\u2019s a gun owner and was featured in Guns & Ammo magazine in 2016. And, at one point, he said he didn\u2019t think Nancy Pelosi should be House speaker.<\/p>\n
Before he was a governor, Walz was a member of Congress representing a Republican-leaning, somewhat rural southern Minnesota district; he won reelection in 2016 even as Trump was carrying it by 15 points.<\/p>\n
Walz\u2019s 2022 gubernatorial reelection win was a bit less resounding, basically matching Biden\u2019s seven-point margin from two years prior. But that 2016 campaign would seem to suggest that Walz knows how to navigate a difficult political environment and appeal to swing voters.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll do it now with more of an established record, oodles more scrutiny and on a much bigger stage \u2014 a stage that as recently as mid-July few foresaw Tim Walz being on.<\/p>\n
44 percent<\/p>\n
That is the percentage of registered voters in a CBS News-YouGov poll released Sunday that described Harris as \u201cvery liberal.\u201d That\u2019s notably higher than the percentage who called Trump \u201cvery conservative\u201d (37 percent).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something of a carryover from the race between Trump and Biden; a June Gallup poll showed 56 percent viewed Biden as \u201ctoo liberal,\u201d while 44 percent viewed Trump as \u201ctoo conservative.\u201d (That\u2019s a slightly different question, but it\u2019s unlikely that swing voters view being \u201cvery liberal\u201d as an asset.)<\/p>\n
That reinforces how much of an issue Harris\u2019s perceived ideology could be \u2014 along with the balancing act she faced in selecting a running mate.<\/p>\n
Many of the GOP attacks on Harris stem from positions she staked out in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, when she was focused on appealing to the left. They included banning fracking and offshore drilling, as well as a mandatory gun buyback program and supporting the Green New Deal. Harris has walked back some of those positions of late.<\/p>\n
\u201cTim Walz\u2019s journey from high school football coach to VP candidate\u201d (Washington Post)<\/span> Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest developments in the 2024 election \u2014 now with more \u201cyou betcha,\u201d \u201cuff da,\u201d hot dish and walleye. (Make sure you are subscribed to this newsletter here. You can also hear my analysis weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.) The big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cWhere Tim Walz stands on key issues: Abortion, climate, marijuana and more\u201d (Washington Post)<\/span>
\n\u201cIn two weeks, Harris\u2019s campaign has reset the electoral map\u201d (Washington Post)<\/span>
\n\u201c$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt\u201d (Washington Post)<\/span>
\n\u201cThe presidential race shifts \u2014 modestly, so far \u2014 toward Harris\u201d (Washington Post)<\/span>
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s shaping up as tension points between Harris and the left\u201d (Politico)<\/span><\/p>\n