The joyful Minnesota governor is a valuable spokesperson for Harris whose background and personality can help the Democratic ticket undermine Trump’s efforts to woo America’s men.
Tim Walz’s first official speech on the Democratic ticket displayed all the reasons that Kamala Harris has been lauded for picking the Minnesota governor as her running mate. Personally, I think one outshines all the rest.
Walz’s military background and his work as a high school teacher and football coach, along with his palpable joy and open expressions of compassion for people in need, offer America a vision of what manhood can look like — he’s a “joyful warrior” offering a vision in contrast with what’s being offered by Donald Trump’s bravado-driven campaign.
And he’s clearly willing to challenge Team Trump on that front. He displayed that even before he received the call to join Harris’ campaign, using public appearances to refer to Trump and his allies as “bullies” who are truly weak at heart and by mocking the GOP ticket for “running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something.”
I agree with everything you’ve said, the optics and the “feels” are at an all time high.
That said, a lot of reporting is saying that the choice of VP doesn’t have a significant impact on election day.
IDK how that can really be true though. For the next several months Walz will be shaping the public’s opinion of Kamala. Obviously on election day people will vote for Kamala or Trump, but Walz can convince people to vote for Kamala.
yeah historically that’s the case, but trump also literally picked a candidate willing to overthrow democracy as well. I think it matters more this time, because historically VP picks are almost always swing state candidates, because they generally have a lot of pull in either direction. In this case, it breaks that norm, and i think as long as it influences voters enough now, and they continue campaigning together up until the election, it should help to energize voters quite a bit.
Walz is a really good public speaker, and so is kamala, having them play off of each other is only going to further improve things IMO.
Usually true that they don’t have much of an impact. But there are outliers. At one time in my youth there were two Republicans that I respected. Colin Powell and John McCain. I lost that respect for Powell when he went on TV and lied to get us into Iraq war 2.
But to the point, I lost my respect for John McCain when he took Sarah Palin as his running mate. We’ll never know but it very well could have cost him the election.