There are two ways of looking at Kamala Harris’s choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate ahead of the US Presidential Election in November.
The first way of looking at it will I suspect be the way many readers see it: That she has picked a hard-left (by American standards) radical liberal with a governing record that is ripe for deconstruction by the Trump campaign. That Walz is on the left of the left wing of the Democratic Party can be demonstrated by a quick examination of his record: He signed a law allowing legal abortion in Minnesota until literal minutes before birth. He signed a law mandating that tampons be placed in the boys toilets at schools. When Black Lives Matter rioters trashed Minneapolis, the capitol of his state, he publicly appeared to side with the rioters and not his own police force.
All of these things, and much more, a competent Trump campaign will make hay with. In that sense, it is a very risky choice.
Yet there’s a second way of looking at it, which some may have overlooked.
The alternative selection – and the man seen as the favourite for the job until late on Tuesday – was Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a very polished and very moderate Democrat who happens to be the popular Governor of probably the single most important state in the election, Pennsylvania. The knock on Shapiro was that as a Jewish man who volunteered for the Israeli defence forces in his youth, his nomination might have opened a wound in the Democratic Party between Harris and the distinctly anti-Israeli elements of her base. This too, obviously, gives the Trump campaign material to work with when it comes to Jewish voters who may be key in some states, not least Pennsylvania itself.
The other problem with Shapiro is this: That traditionally, Presidential tickets are supposed to “balance” – that is to say the Vice Presidential nominee should offset some of the weaknesses at the top of the ticket. In 2016, for example, Mike Pence’s selection as a Christian Conservative with an impeccable private life were obviously designed to reassure any lingering concern in the Republican base that a thrice divorced New York playboy might not be of the correct moral character to lead a country. That, it’s fair to say, worked.
The conventional wisdom on Shapiro was that he would offset Harris’s liberalism: That she could point to the moderate Governor of Pennsylvania as evidence that her administration would not be radically left-wing. So why then pick Walz, a man even more left-wing than herself?
The obvious answer, I think, is that Harris is preparing to move to the center, and needs Walz to cover her left flank.
To some extent, this move to the center has already begun. In recent weeks, the Harris campaign has let it be known that she no longer supports “medicare for all” – long a cherished left wing goal in healthcare policy. Indeed, with Walz, she can probably reinvent herself as a tough on crime prosecutor, who supports fracking (another key issue in Pennsylvania) and isn’t sold on the Green New Deal or other left wing hobbyhorses. She can (and will) move right on guns, transgenderism, and other hot button issues. Not, to be clear, out of sincerity but out of opportunity.
The other thing that Walz brings, obviously, is a little bit of common man “real America” vibes to the ticket: It becomes harder to attack Kamala Harris as an out of touch California liberal who sneers at real America when her running mate is an ex football coach and high school teacher who looks and talks like most people across the US Midwest. From the “vibes” perspective, he’s a better pick than the well educated elite-lawyer Governor of Pennsylvania.
I write all this not as endorsement, evidently, but by way of explanation for a pick that on first glance, looks to be a silly and avoidable mistake. When politicians do something, they’ve usually talked themselves into it using some kind of rationale. I suspect the foregoing is the rationale for Walz.
On balance, though, I’d still suggest that this pick is the best news that the Trump campaign has had in a few weeks: They now have an excuse to run a campaign that’s entirely fitted around themes they’d ideally liked to have raised anyway: For example, the riots in Minnesota (though they occurred on Trump’s watch) fit with the emergent theme on the right both in the US and the rest of the west that there’s a liberal double standard on policing and crime. The tampons in schools story is ripe for a “Tampon Tim” nickname to come right out of Trump’s mouth at the first opportunity.
With Shapiro, none of this would be the case. I think Harris has made an unforced error here, having talked herself into something that might seem clever the more you think about it, but really is as stupid as it first looks.