When Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, Democrats talked themselives into believing that they have found the perfect duo: the multiracial liberal lawyer from California who’s the daughter of elite professors and the working class white midwesterner from the tundra.
The New York Times noted that “in selecting Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris has picked a partner who is many things she is not: a product of small-town America. A union member known to campaign in a T-shirt and camo hat. A white guy who exudes Midwestern dad energy.
And, perhaps most important, a politician who has had to rely on the support of independent, or even Republican, voters to win elections.
Their pairing is somewhat predictable; a cardinal rule of vice-presidential selection is to construct the ticket with political balance in mind. But it is also a statement about what many Democrats believe is one of Ms. Harris’s key vulnerabilities: that she is perceived as too liberal, putting even the small slice of rural, working-class and moderate voters that she needs across Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan out of her reach.
Ms. Harris, a California Democrat, has never won an election as a solo candidate outside the liberal bastion of California, where races often hinge not on winning swing voters but on successfully navigating intraparty fights. That has left her with limited experience acquiring a political skill Mr. Walz honed over his nearly two decades in politics: talking to conservatives.”
Although Walz has made campaign stops horsing around in hunting camo and portraying himself as “blue collar,” The Daily Caller writes that many political strategists believe that the Minnesota governor’s form of identity politics isn’t going to appeal to the white, rural voters it’s intended to.
To coin a phrase from James Carville: It’s the policies stupid.
“If you look at Walz and the media around him, he’s working on his car, he’s working on his farm, he’s holding a rifle with his bird dog with him,” Jon McHenry, GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the DCNF. “That imagery looks like it appeals to Midwestern, non-college working class voters. But when you look at his votes on the southern border and him being very accepting of illegal immigrants in Minnesota, those kinds of issues are going to be a hard sell for working class voters in the Midwest.”
Walz signed a bill into law in March 2023 that allowed illegal immigrants to obtain drivers licenses in the state. He also approved legislation that provided taxpayer funded healthcare and tuition for illegal immigrants, and in 2018 he announced support for “sanctuary” policies.
The Harris-Walz campaign has plastered their social media accounts with Walz’s comments knocking Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio for how he talks about his upbringing in rural Appalachia, saying he “profited off it” and “gutted middle America.” The campaign also released camouflage merch, and Walz has repeatedly talked about his background with firearms, both in the military and for hunting.
“It’s an interesting strategy,” McHenry told the DCNF. “Usually you think you would try to balance the ticket a little bit more ideologically, but that’s not where the heart of the Democratic Party is right now.”
The Trump-Vance campaign has accused Kamala Harris of epitomizing woke politics that completely relies on identity rather than ideas. “Kamala Harris pretends to be something different depending on which audience she’s speaking to,” J.D. Vance said earlier in the week. “She has been able to hide this a little bit because for the past couple of weeks, she only speaks in front of a teleprompter, she never gives unscripted remarks, and she’s hidden from the American media and from the American people.”
Steve Kornacki, MSNBC’s elections guru, recently explained that Walz, despite his background, has been losing ground in thr white, rural areas of his own state and instead relied on liberal bastions like Minneapolis to hold on to power.
All of the “Walz is the guy who will bring back rural voters” and he “reads moderate” are wish-casting. There’s no data to support it. Just the opposite. Don’t take my word for it. Steve Kornacki lays it out.
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) August 8, 2024
Making Walz out to be a guy who has to speak to Republicans in order to win his statewide seat was always a dubious proposition. Minnesota hasn’t voted Republican for president was 1972.
