Learning to Walz Won’t Save Kamala
7th August 2024
Safe yet shrewd is how Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz as her running mate has been described. An energetic, disciplined communicator who can appeal to moderates and progressives, the Minnesota Governor is likely to boost the ticket’s momentum heading into the Democratic National Convention. But his selection is also revealing in terms of how the Harris campaign views its strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, while initial reports suggest Harris picked Walz due to her “comfort level” and their political compatibility, Walz telegraphs what Harris has so far been unable to do: a clear sense of how she aims to win in November.
An avuncular and sharp-witted persona, Walz ticks the right boxes when it comes to winning the Electoral College. He is a popular Democratic governor from the upper Midwest, a crucial battleground region, and has received ringing endorsements from the AFL-CIO, UAW and other trade union organisations. He is also a muscular surrogate who has already put Republicans on defence over J.D. Vance’s “weird” cultural views.
Perhaps most important, Walz is a white old-school liberal who speaks to the “kitchen table” concerns of working-class voters anxious over living costs and now the possibility of a recession. Though reliably progressive on issues such as abortion rights and LGBT equality, Walz seems to bask most in common-sense reforms like free school meals and paid family and medical leave that he and Minnesota’s Democratic state legislature passed into law. Well before he was a contender for the vice-presidential nomination, progressives of various stripes looked to him as an example of how Democrats should rebuild their brand outside the coasts