By Jim Geraghty
Friday, November 01, 2024
Hmm, that’s odd. All autumn long I’ve been arguing that
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro would have made a much better and stronger
running-mate choice for Kamala Harris. And I’ve heard from Democrats all autumn
long that Tim Walz is a great pick, everybody loves him (eh, not so much), and that Shapiro wouldn’t have made much
of a difference in Harris’s numbers in Pennsylvania, even though he’s literally
more popular than Taylor Swift in the Keystone State.
And now the Harris campaign has unveiled its final ad
that will be airing in Pennsylvania and it is . . . narrated by Josh Shapiro,
with him sitting next to Harris.
“I’m with Kamala – I’ve known her for two decades. . .
. Pennsylvania, let’s not go back.”
A tuned-out viewer might look at Shapiro and Harris and
think he’s her running mate. Tim Walz does not appear in the ad. Come to think
of it, Walz doesn’t appear in a lot of
the videos and commercials on Harris’s YouTube page.
Hey, remember when CNN headlines were declaring, “Walz could help Harris shore up the ‘blue wall’ on the way to
the White House”?
Is he?
I’ll take this ad as a quiet admission that when it comes
to winning Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, Shapiro is a far more useful
asset than Walz. And as we approach Election Day, it becomes increasingly clear
that Walz, self-described “knucklehead,’’ doesn’t bring as much to the table as
Democrats believed in those heady days of summer. As noted yesterday, polling indicates Harris is on pace to
win Minnesota by a slightly narrower margin than Joe Biden won the state in
2020. Never mind helping Harris in the critical blue-wall states; there’s not
much evidence that Walz has helped her at all in his home state.
(Despite the protests from Eric Holder, it is clear that the vetting
process he ran for Harris, digging into the background of her running mate
options, was nowhere near thorough enough.)
You could see it in the online discourse and the Saturday
Night Live sketch. Democrats were disappointed with Walz’s performance
in the debate with J. D. Vance. He doesn’t know what a venture capitalist does,
he thinks the First Amendment doesn’t cover hate speech, he goes rogue and
declares America has to get rid of the Electoral College . . . Walz isn’t a
strength you can put front and center in campaign ads, he’s a liability you try
to hide until Election Day.
The guy who was supposed to be this big help with rural
and blue-collar Americans is giving his closing message on The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert, the friendliest of urban metropolitan venues. Walz is campaigning in downtown Detroit today, and then Flint and
Traverse City.
Shortly after Harris made the pick, NBC News reported, “Ultimately, people close to Harris say,
it came down to trusting her ‘gut,’ with an aide comparing it to finding a
husband. No one was perfect, but Walz was seen as the best.” Maybe it was
Harris’s gut pushing for Walz over Shapiro. Or maybe that was just lunch
disagreeing with her.
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