Every single person I asked about the vice-presidential pick expressed at least a personal preference for Tim Walz. Some thought that maybe a different candidate would be better on the narrow but obviously tantamount issue of winning, but in my circle of friends and associates, Walz was unanimously the sentimental choice. And I guess I fit into that category as well. I didn’t think Walz would lock down a key state for Harris, which both Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro had the potential to do, and I wasn’t sure he was the smartest choice for that reason. But the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea of the Minnesota governor being on the ticket. In the end, it was what I was rooting for.
The risk seems really minimal, which is something I just couldn’t say about Shapiro. I think there’s some joyful warrior synergy between Harris and Walz. He’s a really likable guy, and I foresee a lot of smiling and laughter coming out of the campaign which will really contract with Trump and Vance’s doomsday message.
Walz’s record as governor is very strong from a progressive point of view, which is why progressives preferred him to the alternatives. But he got his national profile started by winning a very swingy purple district in the U.S. House of Representatives. The way he communicates and comports himself works very well in those competitive political spaces where this upcoming election will be won and lost.
I like that he has extensive executive experience as the head of a sizable state because I think that’s better preparation for being both a president and an effective vice-president than serving in the U.S. Senate. Looking back, the Democrats almost always choose a senator for a veep candidate, and I’m glad they went in a different direction here.
I’m not worried that Walz will be painted as a radical leftist because he doesn’t act like one and his legislative accomplishments are actually as popular as they are extensive. The more Republicans complain about Walz’s record, the more that outstanding record will reach the American voters’ consciousness, and that’s like free advertising.
I can’t point to one state where Walz will help specifically, but I suspect he will help in all 50 of them to one degree or another. Unlike J.D. Vance, who is an albatross.
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Just finished listening to the speech by Governor Walz. Don’t want to get high on my own supply, but this feels like a team that can win this damn thing. I know I’m ready to start knocking doors for them in my strong pro-Trump area. I feel like I’ve got my activist mojo back right now. Much like Obama’s speech in 2004 planted seeds in me, this ticket motivates this now much older white guy to put on his walking shoes and start staring Trump voters in the face at their front doors and telling them why they should vote for these Democrats. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way. I flash back to the only diary I ever posted on Booman Tribune, the night before the election in 2012. It was a diary about leaving it all on the field. I had walked and knocked hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of doors, had trained people to canvass, had teamed with people to get them through their nervousness about knocking doors, and had finished that last week canvassing huge neighborhoods in a very cold rain. I’d had the honor of sitting in on organizing calls with President Obama, and I had the opportunity to meet and talk, at some length, with Vice President Joe Biden. I sat down that night and wrote that diary just to put into words all the feelings I had about everything I had done in the lead-up to that next day, the election. I was exhausted, yet exhilarated, and knew that I was just a microscopically small piece in a very large group, but that if we were successful that next day, I had played a part in that winning effort. Now, in 2024, I want to be a part of this. I want to know I helped, in some small way, to send Trump packing. Everyone is an individual and reacts to stuff like this in different ways but I feel, very viscerally, how much of a threat we are under with the Trump/Vance ticket. I am compelled to be a part of driving the stake into the heart of the most dangerous threat we have had to face as a country since the Civil War. I imagine there could well be many others like me across the country who feel resurrected in some way tonight. I really wondered if I could ever recapture the enthusiasm I felt those many years ago, but tonight, I feel that same energy. The stakes are pretty obvious. There’s not much left to say. It’s tough when you live in a place that loves Trumpism. But I now have a realistic sense of hope, and that is something I have been desperately seeking for a very long time. Time to put myself on line again. There is no other option.
I live in a slightly purple part of Los Angeles greater metro area. Some of my neighbors are probably Trump supporters, but not overtly so. I participate in Democratic GOTV efforts, mostly by mail and sometimes by phone banking.
The problem I see is that what Trump unleashed is not going away in 2024, or anytime soon. From JD Vance once having compared him to Hitler, to his now groveling obsequiousness; from debasement of Lindsey, Ted, Marco, and many others – the whole Republican party has drunk the KoolAid.What of the Christian nationalist right? They will long outlive Trump.
What I saw of the Tea Party, unleashed by McCain and his campaign – it will take at least a whole decade after Trump’s passing away for this fever to break. In the meantime, we will have many many wannabes to swat away before the Republic is steered into the right direction. It’s not the same world as of Lincoln – there are many external exigencies and examples that will continue their malignant influence over the world at large, and US in particular. Feels almost like the dark ages in modern times.
Thanks for your comment. Just to add some perspective, if you go back and read what people were saying and writing in LIncoln’s day (or in Coolidge’s, or Nixon’s, etc.), they perceived lots of malign and evil influences unleashed in the world, and problems that would long outlive them.
In short, all ages are “dark” ages. And all ages have signs of hope. There is no end to politics and political struggle in this world. It’s in the nature of who we are as humans. If Harris and Walz win in November, that’s a victory worth celebrating, not despite but because of the fact that there will still be hard times ahead.
MassCommons did an excellent job of framing this fight in their comment, but I would like to also respond with my thoughts/feelings. There are really no people I know who are involved in grassroots politics around here who believe that defeating Trump in November is a permanent solution. I have told people, at every single opportunity, that this is not the final conflict we are fighting right now, this is just another battle in a war that has been continually waged, in some manner, since the first days of our country’s existence. The forces that Trump helped unleash have been around in our country since the ink was still wet on the Constitution. He simply opened a wide and new conduit from which all the historic, pent up rage and hatred was once again able to flow. He breathed new life into an American monster that has been forever present, yet we have often been able to keep it subdued, in the closet, and out of our larger political environment for most of the last 200-plus years. However, for the last 9 years the monster has run rampant in a very public way, and has inspired a significant percentage of our fellow citizens to embrace the monster’s message and step forward in an effort to carry out its orders and directions, mostly in very undemocratic and often violent ways.
I’m turning 65 years old next month, and honestly, I don’t expect to see a resolution to this battle in what remains of my life. This will continue for probably at least another generation or two before one side or the other wins out, and some sense of equilibrium is established, either for good or for ill. The sad part is that even if the fascist/authoritarian monster is vanquished, and slithers off once again into quiet anonymity, it will never really be mortally wounded. As history has shown us, it will always be lurking just below the surface of our existence, waiting for a new catalyst of circumstances that opens the door once again to its message. As we have found out the hard way, our rights and freedoms are never safe. They require continual vigilance and a perpetual 24-7 watch for those little shoots that appear which foretell a coming threat, one that might take decades to fully blossom. In the last couple of decades we have become complacent. We thought the hard fought victories which had been won were permanent. We found out, in a very humbling and frightening way, that they are not. I hope we have learned some lessons from this awful period, and that we never again think that The Great American Experiment is guaranteed its success. Lets never again allow our hubris to cloud our vision to the threats which will always be with us. Our system is fragile, in that it requires a mutual understanding and good faith agreement between adversarial points of view that we will settle our differences at the ballot box, and honor and respect those results. Once one side abdicates that agreement, the system quickly crumbles. It was created by human beings, and can just as easily be destroyed by those same human beings. Our system enjoys no special dispensation, beyond what we ourselves attach to it.
I am 66+, but perhaps less steeped in US political history.
Who would you compare Trump to in a former dark era?
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Well said, thanks. I view Walz as the “do no harm” pick from the short list that included Kelly and Shapiro. Labor has issues with Kelly. Gaza/student protest supporters have issues with Shapiro. No major Democratic constituency (as best I can tell) has issues with Walz. The fact that Harris went with the “do no harm” candidate speaks well for her political judgment.
No vice-presidential nominee, with the *possible* exception of LBJ (who was at the time the Senate majority leader and the most powerful political figure in Texas), has ever swung their home state in a US presidential election. Either Kelly or Shapiro probably would have been fine picks, but I strongly doubt either of them would bring any electoral college votes to Harris’ column (neither will Walz).
The centrist pundits who are “warning” Shapiro or Kelly would have been a better pick because online progressives are excited about Walz are (imho) badly missing the point. Free school lunch and patients making health care decisions with their doctors are things a large majority of voters across the country support. The fact that online progressives support them too doesn’t make Walz a wild-eyed socialist. In fact, part of the support for Walz from progressives comes precisely from the fact that he’s a gun-owning, pheasant-shooting, ice-fishing, car-repairing football coach from small-town Minnesota…who also supports free school lunch for all kids.
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