I think Tim Walz was the smart choice for veep. This is a solid ticket. I’m almost looking forward to what most certainly will be a terribly messy election. But first, some humor. This is for you, gulag, wherever you are.
RFK Jr. should probably blame the brain worm for the bear episode.
Anyhoo — what I’m mostly seeing on social media is yay, Tim Walz, now let’s beat Trump. Most of the pundits are on board. But there are exceptions. Jonathan Chait is grumbling that Kamala Harris “doesn’t understand the assignment.” Tim Walz, a popular governor of bleeping Minnesota who has flipped formerly Republian districts, is too far Left, says Chait. He and Harris have to pivot to the middle immediately!
Um, no. And any political “pundit” who still thinks there’s a “middle” needs to retire.
A bunch of people at Politico explain why Harris chose Walz.
Harris appreciated Walz’s two terms as governor because he had accomplishments in Minnesota that Harris wants to replicate in her presidency — access to reproductive health, paid leave, child tax credits and gun safety.
Harris was also taken with Walz’s biography — a former high school teacher, a football coach and a veteran who flipped a Republican-leaning district in 2006 — which she believes will play well in all three of the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, including his win as a House member in a Republican district.
Oh, and see also Unions cheer Walz pick as Harris VP.
The Politico article goes on to say that the Harris camp felt that Josh Shapiro was a bit too much of a showboater, and also he didn’t “click” as well with Harris in their interview as did Tim Walz.
Chait thinks that Harris failed to win the nomination in 2000 because she catered too much to progressives, which is not what I remember. “The assignment, to be clear, is to win over voters who don’t like Donald Trump but worry Harris is too liberal,” writes Chait. Okay, so exactly how does she do that?
At no point in his column does Chait say which policies should be compromised to soothe squishy centrists. Where is the “middle” on reproductive rights? Where is the “middle” on gun safety? Where is the “middle” on health care these days? Does anyone know? When the Right is promising to end the Affordable Care Act, privatize Medicare, end Medicaid as we know it, and raise prescription drug prices, where is there a “middle” that would make anybody happy? The Extremism of the Trumpified Republican Party has tossed any idea of a “center” out the window. You’re either sane or you’re crazy.
David Graham writes at The Atlantic,
In 2023, with a Democratic trifecta in place, Walz launched a massive legislative campaign. The state codified abortion rights, implemented free lunch in schools, mandated universal background checks for guns, legalized cannabis, and required paid leave for workers, among other moves.
Donald Trump, in a fundraising appeal to supporters, said that Walz “would be the worst VP in history” and “unleash hell on earth.”
People who can be persuaded that free school lunches and paid leave for all workers amount to “hell on earth” are not people who can be reasoned with about anything. The assignment, it seems to me, is for the Democratic ticket to reassure voters that we are not crazy. We are normal people who just want to run a good government and provide some of these things (like background checks) that polls keep saying a majority want, but which we can’t have because somewhere there’s an arbitrary measure that has declared these things “too far Left.”
"You’re either sane or you’re crazy."
I have no problem with that continuum but that is not the only one.
Let's add the "You're either Law Abiding or Criminal" one too.
Totally true that there is no middle to bifurcative politics. Lots of grey that gets ignored though.
Thank you for helping pick a great VP.
The assignment, to be clear, is to win over voters who don’t like Donald Trump but worry Harris is too liberal. – Chait
I’d think the assignment would be to win over voters who are in that majority which polls left on issues (abortion, guns, orientation, taxing the rich, etc.) but who otherwise aren’t really much into the details of national politics.
But assuming he’s correct, would turnabout be fair play?
Trump does after all, tell his suckers and losers whatever it is they want to hear, to later proclaim “that plays well before the election but…” while pivoting towards his corrupt libertarian donor and evangelical fascism power bases. No walls get built, no swamps drained, nobody’s locked up. Even if he has both houses and the same in Texas (where the vast majority of illegals enter), no big beautiful Mexico-funded wall gets built, just a few nasty political stunts with no lasting impact on illegal immigration.
I’m not suggesting that Harris and Walz should freely peddle bullshit like Trump. He seems to own most of the suckers and losers already, not to mention, that would be wrong. But they could always sell to the center of the most viable polling, whatever most fills their big tent, and then pivot left afterwards.
Chait mentions socialism being “an extremely unpopular concept”. What about our current form of dysfunctional capitalism not even being close to the functional capitalism of the post New Deal years? Are those years now to be considered “socialism”?
Well, you just broke most pundit's AI programming.
Frankly, I think America is a little crazy, and this type of gobbledegook is why. There's no rational argument that "Harris is too liberal," unless you're listening to Republican operatives, who you know will say Harris is too liberal, because she's a Democrat. They won't call her "conservative" or "centrist" because neither of those will harm her reputation with the Democratic base.
So, that's not journalism – "we help out the whisper campaign" is exactly the opposite of political journalism. The political journalist's attitude should be "you want to campaign? Good – here's our listing of campaign ad prices. You want to be interviewed? Fine, but we'll supply context and fact checking to each of your statements."
Because that's what journalism is all about – to tell us when a candidate really is a complete, no-question-needed, stone-cold turd of a dictator-wannabe… even if you might lose readership. Choosing to lie, for money, is only ever okay, when you're an attorney, and you can't tell a version of the truth that doesn't damage your client.
Choosing to lie, for money, in journalism, is malpractice in the worst sense of the word. Political ads should be trivially easy to spot; political news stories shouldn't ever sound like an ad campaign, unless the facts are just that damning for the opponent.
Like in today's political environment.
Who are more pragmatic, liberals or conservatives? Who are more popular liberals or conservatives? Who favor the freedom most of us find important to our lives, liberals or conservatives? Who are more progressive…most would not agree with conservatives for an answer to this question but to the first three? I'd guess a near toss-up. This IMO is that the words meaning has been mangled to the point of ambiguous going on totally meaningless, except those liberals, according to right wing media, should have a bounty on them. They get to define who is a liberal of course and RINOS of course, but most conservatives consider their version of conservatism pure blasphemy.
Only some journalists do not seem to understand the terms are so vague anymore, talking about a middle ground is asinine. I agree.
Article on Gwen Walz, Tim’s wife. She’s a teacher, and talked her husband into moving back to her native Minnesota. She’s politically involved, and had an office in the MN capitol. I’m overjoyed by the dream ticket, and how the tables have been turned on the Republicans.
Speaking of RFK, Harris does one or two points better when RFK is included in polling. That's the conclusion with recent national polling. I expect Trump will try to make RFK an offer he can't refuse if he drops out. I'm not at all sure how detached from reality RFK is – will he take the money or is the lure of power so strong he'll continue under the hope that if Trump has a heart attack before November, RFK will inherit all Trump's supporters. I think the question who RFK hurts more has been answered.
Walz seems to be a strong pick. I identify with him being a HS teacher for two decades. My dad did that. You have to be pretty well grounded to survive. The accomplishments as governor are also impressive. The Trump camp seems to have released the generic complaint – he's more liberal than Marx. But it feels like they has that written and waiting no matter WHO Harris picked. His strong suit seems to be as a communicator – ideal for campaigning. This allows Harris/Walz to campaign in more places. If this week is an indication they are making appearances in as many venues in the swing states as they can. (HRC, at the end of the campaign was doing fundraisers with CEOs most of the time – there were no photo-ops of her pressing the flesh and hobnobbing with regular folks. I think that's the factor that tanked her.)
Trump is NOT out there this week (that I'm aware of.) Vance is but nobody likes him very much so putting him on the campaign trail underscores that Trump is MIA. We will see (I'm guessing) Trump phone it in with audio calls to Hannity and other venues where Trump will not be challenged. He's got those people – there's no votes to be had there.
The DNC convention starts on the 19th – expect Trump to try to counter-program as much as possible. I'm hoping the convention is entertaining – the idea is to get people to watch. We have a deep bench of celebrities who could introduce the political speakers. Trump had Hulk Hogan. Over four days, I'd like 20 to 30 people with star power endorse the ticket and attest to the critical importance of getting out the vote.
Chait is a moron and frankly not worth listening to. He adheres to the old school attitudes of people like James Carville, another idiot fossil who long past time to be put out to pasture.
These guys never learned to adapt to changing demographics or voter sentiment. They think they can still tell us how we're supposed to feel and what we're supposed to do.
Fuck the lot of 'em.
James Carville sucked when he was "popular". The guy came up with one lousy slogan and somehow turned it into a career of being almost always wrong about politics. I saw him and Rev Al (another toad) on Jen Psaki's show the other day and thought is this the best they can do, talk about irrelevant?
I watched the rollout speech, pretty good he's a bit awkward but comes across as a normal dude, the opposite of Stump and Vance! After the speech I watched some bobble-heads, one (I think it was CNN) showed a clip of Vance saying that Walz let Minnesota burn during the George Floyd protests. Bobble-head turns to democratic congress-critter (again not sure who) and critter goes on and on about how Walz provided this and that and was a very popular Governor. That's all well and good but when team Stump says something about a riot how the fuck can you not go directly to J6? I saw something similar last week when a democrat was asked to defend Harris's record as a prosecutor and again they never brought up the rape, 34 felony convictions, trying to steal the election or stealing classified documents? That's my issue with democrats they really don't know how to fight. We are never going to have a presidential opponent that is as crooked, damaged, compromised as Stump. If you can't go after the juggler now when will you? If I was the Harris campaign I would have that video of Stump and his pedophile friend Epstein partying together checking out the "chicks" on 24hr repeat. Can you imagine if the Stump campaign had video of Harris hanging out with a convicted pedophile, do you think they would use it?