On Sunday, elections analyst Nate Silver has now reportedly declared that Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris “blew” a big opportunity by failing to select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.
Harris ultimately selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who has served as a progressive leader in the Gopher State, over Shapiro, who was widely perceived as the more moderate candidate.
Silver argued in a blog post regarding a New York Times/Siena College poll that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has a slight national lead over Harris.
He contended that Harris’s advocacy of highly progressive positions during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary could ultimately prove detrimental.
Silver wrote in early August that Harris would be wise to select Shapiro, in part because Pennsylvania is deemed the state most likely to decide the election.
“Harris has flip-flopped on some of these positions, like on Medicare for All and decriminalizing border crossings, the flip-flopping may explain why Harris has been weirdly reluctant to do media hits or articulate policy specifics.” Silver said.
“This strategy may have worked well enough when she was riding high off the vibes of the Democrats’ candidate swap, but it’s causing her more problems now,” he continued.
“Still, Harris is limited by her own past progressive policy positions. So the strategic aim is probably to fight this liberal/conservative question to a draw, and then win on having considerably more favorable personal attributes than Trump. She is a more talented politician than she showed in 2019, and it’s shame that her campaign that year was run by people who seemingly thought Elizabeth Warren was a right-winger.” he added.
“But Harris also blew one big opportunity to tack to the center with her selection of Tim Walz rather than Josh Shapiro: that a tiny minority of progressives objected to Shapiro was an argument in Shapiro’s favor, if anything. I think Walz was a decent enough pick on his own merits, but given an opportunity to offer a tangible signal of the direction her presidency was headed, she reverted to 2019 mode.” he concluded.
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