Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz for her running mate:
"Everyone said" she would pick Josh Shapiro. But that didn't happen. However Walz seems like he will work out fine.
Little known facts about Walz; though he has lived in Minnesota for many years, he was born in West Point, Nebraska, a town in northeast NE. He got his degree from Chadron, a college in the state system, in northwest Nebraska. He is a Lutheran, not too unusual for either Nebraska or Minnesota.
He is the same age as Harris, 60.
He gets a big "Ya, you betcha" from me, but not really a surprise. Guy's a great talker, thinks fast, doesn't fall for questions about whether he's "too liberal," has been in Congress, 24 years in the National Guard, and seems to be having fun without scaring people into thinking Mexico is sending us all their Hannibal Lechters. When asked about what he means by saying Trumpers are weird:
ReplyDelete“Who’s asking for this crazy stuff? Who’s asking to raise the price of insulin? Who’s asking to get rid of birth control? … Who’s sitting in a bar in Racine, Wisconsin, saying, ‘You know what we really need? We need to ban Animal Farm.' Nobody is!” Walz told MSNBC last month, later adding: “Yes, they’re weird.”
He had an entire career as a high school teacher and football coach (and Army National Guard sergeant) before running for Congress. He couldn't contrast more with hyper-ambitious high flyer JD Vance. He could be our president within the next 5 years.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how JD is a high-flyer, exactly. He has rubbed a lot of elbows with the super rich and powerful, and I assume he makes a good living.
DeleteBut Trump, as far as I know, has not made any remarks comparing Vance favorably to Walz. In fact, he doesn't mention Vance much at all, and says a VP pick is of no importance to a ticket
I suspect Vance is only ever gonna be a tag-along hillbilly boy to the super rich, useful as long as he makes the noises that make the religious rightwing happy.
They are trying to paint Walz as being left leaning. But I'm not really seeing it. Every one of the possible veep candidates had something that could be considered a disadvantage. Which I guess means that they're human.
ReplyDeleteI always love how the Republicans paint Democrats as leftist. It is a real laugh to real leftists. Bernie would be a centrist in Europe. I don't really want to kill capitalism myself. But I'd like to regulate the crap out of it and reinvigorate unions. And there's Wall Street. No foreign enemy of ours would ever bomb Wall Street. It's our greatest internal enemy.
DeleteThe GOP is just slinging empty epithets around. They're not specifically telling us what they object to in Walz's policies because they're not interested in policy.
DeleteWalz has pushed back raising questions about their definition of "socialism." Is any community project like a sanitary sewer or road paving "socialist"? Isn't that just neighbors agreeing to pool resources to develop something for the common good?
My guess is that Jim could provide a rational answer that I probably wouldn't agree with entirely, but it would be informed and clear. I can't get that from the current crop of Repubs.
I have donated to the Democratic Party in the past and I constantly get messages and emails from them. Nowadays, I send a direct reply to them. I tell them that I will vote for Harris if there is a ceasefire in Gaza and termination of military aid, especially high explosive bombs. Not verbiage, not phony gestures but a real move toward justice and peace. That is my deal. Billionaires get what they want and won't donate if they don't. They CAN get my vote and even financial support. It's that simple, and the Democrats can still gluteal smooch their rich donors and inch us toward nuclear oblivion in the Ukraine. But I need SOMETHING.
ReplyDeleteI hope you get your wish, Stanley!
DeleteHarris seemed to be less inclined toward Netanyahu than Biden. And Biden, in turn, is more critical than the Repubs who entertained Netanyahu at a joint session of Congress.
DeleteRealistically, the best you can hope for is a gradual cooling toward Israel, which may be best in the long term to restore long-term peace and to gradually force Israel to get serious about reining in its zealots.
The State Dept seems to be trying to avoid a regional conflagration via diplomatic channels, even as our aircraft carriers steam toward the Middle East.
My gut wants to turn those ships around and tell the Israelis that assistance is contingent on their getting rid of the super-Zionists in their government this afternoon and opening Gaza to massive humanitarian efforts.
But I'm not pinning my vote on that happening.
I’m with you, Jean. If trump is elected everything will be worse for everyone - including Palestinians.
DeleteHow embarrassing. I see that I left an "r" out of "surprise" for the title of this post. Fixed that.
ReplyDeleteYour resident grammar cop thanks you.
DeleteI have a theory about Walz: I think the policies he tends to support are the policies a mainline Protestant would tend to support. (As would some Catholics.) I understand he is Lutheran of the ELCA variety, doesn't trumpet his affiliation but doesn't soft-pedal it, either. He supports worker rights, the dignity of oppressed minorities, and has spent his life in public service. There are a lot of Lutherans around here like him .
ReplyDeleteSo I wonder how this will play out: we will have a Baptist and a Lutheran running against whatever Trump is, and a trad Catholic. My hope is that the bishops will sit this one out and let us figure it out for ourselves. There is nothing there for them to play Communion cop over.
ReplyDeleteYa, there is: abortion. Walz couches it in terms of personal choice, even if that personal choice isn't what some others might choose, ie, privacy. Harris wants to make a bigger issue out of it, ie, bodily autonomy for women.
DeleteWalz sounds pretty good to me. He’s part of the mainline Lutherans, not the conservative branch. Way better than Vance just as Harris is better than trump. She isn’t my perfect candidate but nobody is and trump is a nightmare.
ReplyDeleteHeather Cox Richardson has a good summary of Walz . It’s accessible to all on FB and on substack. You don’t have to give your email on substack to access the article.
ReplyDeletehttps://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-6-2024
That was a good article, thanks for linking it.
DeleteHer Aug 7 column is also interesting
DeleteThanks, Anne. Many of the enthusiastic opinion pieces I have read by women, including Richardson, are praising Walz's "tonic masculinity," the kind of helpful, protective, no-head-games, hands-on capability that Regular Midwest Guys apparently project. Monica Hesse in the WaPo was even a little swoony.
DeleteThe fact that left-tending educated women respond to him so positively says something about American left-tending women, I'm sure, but I'll ponder that another time.
Male opinionators point out Walz's love of "retail politics" honed over many election cycles.
I recognize a fellow teacher in his persona, shaped by years in the classroom, where you have to think fast, deal with all kinds of kids and their parents, challenge without belittling, and bring your auditors along with good info. He told one interviewer, "I was a teacher, and I saw a lot of things. And these guys [Trump and Vance] are just weird."
Hence the rally chants when Trump or Vance is mentioned, "HE'S A WEIRD-O!" My guess is that Trump finds that more devastating than "Lock him up." You can appeal a conviction. There's no appeal for weird.
I'm trying to listen more to issues than insults, and Walz manages to be blunt without being ugly (except for a reference to Vance's Couch Encounter, which has been debunked). Hopefully he will be adept at communicating policy points.
Meantime, I'm trying to find an audio of "he's a weird-o" to use as my ring tone.
Yeah, I hope they just drop the junior-high couch jokes.
DeleteI want to hear actual policy points.