Phew!
If you listened closely last week as tension built in the lead-up to Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s announcing which leftist party honk would join her on the 2024 ticket, many Republicans, myself included, were worried that the San Francisco DEI champion would experience a sudden dose of common sense and decide to go with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for her number two.
Shapiro, as most politics watchers acknowledged, represented many qualities that Donald J. Trump, J.D. Vance and a slew of down-ballot GOP candidates would have wished to avoid running against. It’s not that the Pennsylvanian would have been unbeatable as a Kamala sidekick – he wouldn’t have been. After all, Kamala is still the top name on the Democrat ticket and, as everyone knows, nearly every American voter chooses the presidential candidate they like best.
Besides, the running mate designee always fades to the background before election day. In past election cycles, the vice president’s debate between the running mates typically elicits keen interest and its fair share of excitement, but when the program ends and the candidates return to their respective campaign trails, everyone focuses on the big names once again.
On another note, have you heard anything about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lately? Now that Democrats successfully pulled their candidate switcheroo, the legacy independent candidate has all-but disappeared from the national conversation. RFK Jr. could be the biggest loser of all in this season’s back-and-forth and crazy happenings.
Speculation has wavered the past few days as to why Pennsylvania’s Shapiro didn’t make the final cut. A lot of people argued that cackling Kamala was terrified that Josh’s Jewish religious connection would infuriate her increasingly numerous and boisterous Hamas-loving Muslim Democrat voting bloc, leaving her out in the cold in electorally crucial Michigan and Minnesota.
Others implied that Shapiro himself didn’t want the job, having reportedly told sources that his final one-on-one with Kamala didn’t go well. Or that he figured that running with a dolt like Harris and losing would permanently taint his future presidential prospects. After all, who, in their right mind, would want to tie their political legacy to Kamala Harris?
She’s got the mind of a rabbit, which could be seen as an insult to the bunnies eating my flowers in the front yard at this very moment.
So, when news leaked that cackling Kamala opted to ask ultra-leftist Bernie Sanders-like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to run with her instead, many Republicans could hardly contain their relief – and elation. The bald Minnesotan is barely known to most Americans, yet there’s an awful lot there not to like about him.
Republicans saw it as a sign of good fortune. In an article titled “GOP anxieties ease with Walz as Harris’s VP choice”, Julia Manchester and Brett Samuels reported at The Hill:
“In the run-up to Harris’s decision, Republicans had expressed anxiety over the possibility of her choosing Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), pointing to his record of winning statewide in the critical battleground and moderate record as governor.
“But with Walz at the top of the ticket, Republicans are already targeting his progressive record and doubting he will be much help in appealing to swing voters in battleground states. ‘Tim Walz? What a relief,’ Kellyanne Conway, a former senior counselor to former President Trump, posted on the social X...
“[S]ome Republicans were particularly surprised Walz was the pick over Shapiro, the first-term governor of what is essentially a must-win state for the Harris campaign. ‘No one’s voting for the VP, but I don’t think there’s any question that Shapiro could help her in Pennsylvania, and that’s obviously a critical state,’ said Sean Spicer, who served as Trump’s White House press secretary. Spicer cited the condensed timeline and lack of a competitive primary as reasons Harris might be more affected than normal by her choice of running mate.”
It's true; with the American public still getting to know Kamala Harris’s record from her plethora of political positions – and her spotted personal history – it was critical for the new Democrat nominee to choose a head-turner for her running mate. She did select a head-turner alright, but from the opposite direction from which she should’ve gone.
Shapiro is a good-looking man from a big-prize swing state whose reputation and popularity preceded him. Walz is a bald white dude with a harsh-sounding voice and issue positions that will pound on him for everyday that he’s out there. For her part, Harris has a hard enough time explaining why voters should choose her. Throw Walz into the mix and “Tampon Tim” becomes very, very arduous to defend.
Are conservatives right to feel this way? If Republicans were indeed glad that Harris chose Walz instead of Shapiro – or someone else, like Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer – then the same could be said of Democrats exhaling freely after Trump went with J.D. Vance as his running mate a month ago.
Democrats likely figured that the establishment media would make mincemeat out of the under 40 Ohioan, another politician who isn’t really well-known in national politics circles.
“Oh yeah! I thought Trump was gonna take Nikki Haley or Tim Scott or [insert your establishment-approved candidate here]! Instead, he chose a fake redneck with a beard! Kamala Harris (the V.P. nominee at the time of Vance’s announcement) will eat him for lunch!”
I’ve never given Democrats much credit for sizing up the attributes of conservatives – particularly young and promising populists like Vance, but I still think their jubilation was premature. J.D. will get better and better as time goes on. But will Tim Walz have an upside?
Walz’s “Tampon Tim” nickname alone will be extremely difficult to shake. Sooner or later, the leftists will get bored trying to make hay out of Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark made over three years ago. There’s also a wealth of opposition research fodder on Walz’s COVID lockdown record, his unabashed advocacy for fringe LGBTQIA+++ (weird???) issues, radical abortion position and his library of comments made during the George Floyd riots.
Simply put, Walz almost single-handedly turned Minnesota into a punchline. Minneapolis still hasn’t recovered from the turmoil from four years ago and probably never will, since what business owner would want to invest in a city where the criminals are held in higher esteem than the law-abiding citizens?
Republicans had good reason to be overjoyed that Walz was cackling Kamala’s final choice. Watch them fade. It’ll be fun.
It won’t matter who Harris chose if Republicans don’t measure up in the ground game
How many times have we heard from football analysts and “experts” that the running game will be crucial to winning a particular contest or division?
Football fans and strategists sometimes overlook the ground game because running plays usually only net a few yards at a time, with most people preferring to study the passing playbook for big gains and scoring possibilities instead. Running quarterbacks used to be criticized because some onlookers adhered to the old saying, “Run for yards but pass for miles”.
The same rationale is often applied to politics, with high-priced consultants and numbers crunchers preferring to concentrate campaign resources on expensive advertising and high-dollar data targeting operations to get the most bang for their buck. Donald Trump’s 2016 strategy basically placed the candidate himself at the center of their operation, using Trump’s mass celebrity appeal to bring the people in so the staff could collect their information and then turn it into vote gold.
2020 demonstrated that it wasn’t enough simply to rely on Trump’s personal appeal to the base. With the rapid increase in COVID-driven mail-in voting, Democrats shifted their emphasis into ensuring that every ballot was filled out, collected – and counted. Also, according to reports, Democrats were well-prepared for legal challenges during the vote count… but Republicans hadn’t put enough effort into “lawyering up” to contest the multitude of issues that materialized in that crucial three-week period after Election Day.
Thankfully, according to the Trump campaign itself and affiliated super PACs, Republicans say they’re ready with the “ground game” that will allow them to compete with the Democrats this year. The Evil Party always seems to find a way and their fundraising will assure them plenty of resources to go around this fall.
As reported by The Washington Times’ Susan Ferrechio,
“The Harris team said they are far exceeding the get-out-the-vote efforts of the Trump campaign, which they claim has opened very few offices in swing states.
“’This battleground advantage will almost certainly be decisive in a race likely to be decided by just tens of thousands of votes,’ a Harris campaign staffer told reporters.
“Trump campaign officials scoffed at the Harris team’s claim that they are doing little to get out the vote in the toss-up states and said they’ve had offices open and campaign staff working ‘for months.’”
I guess it comes down to who you believe. But common sense would indicate that there’s no way that Donald Trump would accept coming up short – again – because Republicans weren’t putting maximum effort into squeezing every ballot out of those inclined to vote for him… or against Kamala Harris’s terrible policy agenda.
If indeed she has one. Her campaign website is pretty tightlipped on her policies.
Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump was added to the leadership of the Republican National Committee specifically to address the gap in party fundraising and to do everything possible to guarantee that a 2020-scenario doesn’t happen again. Republicans must be set to watch the count and fight like heck if and when the Democrats try to cheat.
Ground game alone won’t determine November’s winner, but the Republicans put themselves in a bad spot if they don’t prepare the way they should have. It’s long past time to “wake up” and sound the alarm. Trump supporters must be doing their part to ensure a victory this year. Otherwise, even having a pair of Democrat idiots for opposition candidates could still result in an unacceptable outcome.
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