Okay, please forgive the cringey headline. The intern responsible has been fired.
In any event, Kamala Harris proved once again on Tuesday that picking a vice-presidential nominee because he or she can “deliver” a certain swing state is pretty overrated, and a strategy that isn’t used by presidential candidates nearly as often as the press seems to think it is. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, does not “deliver” Minnesota any more than Joe Biden “delivered” Delaware to Barack Obama, or Dick Cheney “delivered” Wyoming and its whopping three electoral votes to George W. Bush.
It looks to me that Harris, by picking Walz, is attempting to broaden her appeal across all 50 states. His candidacy for the VP slot was launched by his online virality, and that would seem to indicate that, at least in Harris’s eyes, Walz’s popularity extends well across state lines, as well as — significantly — across generational lines, even though he and Harris are almost exactly the same age (Walz is six months older).
It also doesn’t hurt that Walz served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, only stepping down when he took office as governor in 2019, so he should be able to serve as a liaison between a (theoretical) President Harris and the House, to an extent anyway.
Maybe the most important aspect of this VP pick, however, is that she made it. The ongoing drama over the “veepstakes” didn’t need to be drawn out any longer. One of the most important things voters seem to like about Harris, at least as I see it, is her “no drama” approach. She’s run her so-far brief campaign with stunning efficiency and calm. Who she would pick as her running mate was the closest thing to a controversy that she’s faced.
And now that’s over. She, and the rest of us, can move forward now.
The Last Walz: Why Harris is Bringing Minnesota's Governor to the Dance