Tim Walz is a great choice for VP. He’s also ultimately a bit of an unexpected pick. Josh Shapiro was the pundit-class pick, ranging from Nate Silver to Chris Cilizza. And I think that tells us a bit about how the Harris campaign is approaching this election.
TL;DR version: they chose the guy who best amplifies the story they are telling nationwide over the guy who would help at the margins in a likely tipping point state.
The argument for Josh Shapiro is simple and standard: Shapiro is the popular governor of a state that Harris needs to win in November.
That’s effectively the whole strategic argument. You pick Shapiro because he helps you win a close, important state. There are a couple secondary conditions — Shapiro is nationally-unknown, but all indications are that he is a terrifically talented politician. (Basically every governor is nationally-unknown. Governors only develop national profiles by pulling foolish Desantis-style national stunts.) He also has some leftwing critics, and frustrating the progressive wing of the party fits into the “pivot to the center” that many pundits expect from successful general election campaigns — but those are just rounding errors. The theory of the Shapiro VP pick is to maximize your shot in Pennsylvania, since Pennsylvania is a likely tipping-point state in the Electoral College.
The argument for Tim Walz is also simple. The vibes… they are immaculate! The entire party loves the guy. He is a perfect foil to JD Vance, and he keeps the Democrats playing offense on this campaign, rather than mending fences within the party coalition.
Walz’s biography reads like a character ripped from the Aaron Sorkin extended universe. Small town boy from Nebraska, couple decades of military service, high school history teacher, part-time high school football coach who took the team to the state championship… went on to serve five terms in Congress as a Democrat in a conservative district, then became Governor and, with a small Democratic majority in the statehouse, signed a huge slate of progressive initiatives into law.
But he doesn’t talk like a safe, scripted centrist. The guy has spent the past few weeks pitching a comms perfect-game. Every media interview has been clipped and shared on social media. He rolled out the “Trump and Vance are just plain weird” attack line. Listen to the guy on Ezra Klein’s podcast: he manufactures aww shucks midwestern-dad energy and converts it into body blows against his opponents.
This is one of the interesting points about social media this election cycle. Twitter and Facebook aren’t anything like they once were. TikTok is mostly for young people, but the other social networks are still trying to emulate TikTok. Which means, effectively, that we’ve circled back around to short-form video being the dominant communications strategy. Tim Walz gives fantastic soundbites. And fantastic soundbites are what fuel viral media right now.
You don’t pick Walz to shore up Minnesota’s ten electoral votes. You pick Walz to keep the entire Democratic Party whipped up and united and thrilled about kicking the absolute shit out of the Trump/Vance ticket.
Nate Silver describes the pick as “Minnesota nice.” He thinks its a conservative decision, and that Shapiro would’ve been higher-risk, higher-reward. That seems… completely backwards to me. The safe, standard approach is to pick a VP who helps you in the swingiest swing state (useful rule of thumb: if you’re agreeing with Chris Cilizza, you aren’t advocating anything risky).
What the Tim Walz pick represents is a Harris campaign determined to running and winning a nationwide campaign. They aren’t trying to survive Trump’s assault by eking out the narrowest win. They want to make the stakes of this election clear, play offense, keep their opponents off-balance, and absolutely bury Trumpism.
To which I can only say: Good.
One of the main points I’ve been making in my political writing for the past few years is that only the Republican Party can fix the Republican Party. The current version of the Republican Party has no room for politicians who accept the basic premise that (as Adam Przeworski puts it) “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” The elected Republicans who stood up to Trump after January 6th were kicked out of the party. Project 2025 is both a fever dream and a to-do list for a party that doesn’t want elections to have consequences any longer.
At some point in my lifetime, a Republican will win the Presidency again. It is unlikely that we’ll have eight years of Harris followed by eight years of Walz followed by eight years of AOC, Buttigieg, Shapiro, etc.
It is vitally important that the fever breaks within the Repubican Party network before that happens. Elections should not be quite so existential as they are right now.
And, to summarize a longer argument I’ve made elsewhere , parties only tend to change their leadership after repeated, embarrassing losses relative to expectations. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council rose to power within the Democratic party network after Mondale was crushed by Reagan in 1984. The DLC lost power after Kerry was defeated by Bush in 2004.
If Trump barely loses in 2024, his party is going to deny the results of the election. They’ll try to overturn it. There will be violence again. They’ll try to carve a path through the courts. And I’d rather not bank on this Supreme Court standing up for institutional legitimacy when all the chips are down.
But if Trumpism is soundly rejected in 2024? If the narrative of the 2024 election is that the Republican Party is run by weird creeps who don’t know how to talk to normal folks and only represent the interests of their plutocrat backers? That’s going to lead to a post-election reckoning within the Republican Party.
Because they may hate Democrats, but they surely hate losing even more.
What the Walz pick tells me is that the Harris campaign isn’t heeding the advice of the pundit-class and trying to play it safe. They are aiming to tell a clear story about the stakes of this election — about who they are, what their opponents represent, and where we are headed as a country.
Shapiro would’ve been a fine pick, but he also would’ve been the more conservative choice. They would’ve sacrificed a bit of national message clarity in favor of buffering some critical electoral votes.
Walz has the entire party (except the columnist-types who, a few weeks ago, thought a contested nomination sounded fun) howling with glee. He built that level of excitement by showing how effectively he could draw the contrast with Trump/Vance. It’s 91 days until Election Day. With the Harris/Walz ticket, Democrats have a whole lot to look forward to.