KAMALA HARRIS CAN WIN WITH TIM WALZ

 


©Wendell Griffen, 2024

August 6, 2024

 

By the time you read these words Vice President Kamala Harris probably will have chosen her running mate for the Democratic presidential nomination. The leading candidates appear to be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Governor Shapiro is popular in Pennsylvania. With its 19 Electoral College ballots, Pennsylvania is an obvious battleground state for getting 270 Electoral College votes. Pennsylvania neighbors to Ohio, with 10 Electoral College ballots. But because Ohio is home to Republican Senator and VP nominee J.D. Vance, Shapiro’s impact on Ohio voters is questionable.

Governor Walz is popular in Minnesota, an upper Midwest state with a sizeable rural population along with the Minneapolis-Saint Paul urban community. His roots as a public educator in Nebraska and Minnesota and his ties to rural and urban working people are strengths that serve Walz well in his work as governor and on the campaign stump.

Like you, I don’t know who VP Harris will select as her running mate. I hope she selects Tim Walz for one reason: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be impossible for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to defeat.

Kamala Harris was the District Attorney for San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and United States Senator for California before she became Vice President of the United States. She outshines Donald Trump without trying. Trump’s bigotry, vicious idiocy, and pathological dishonesty are political negatives that cannot be ignored or cured.

Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were public educators. He taught social science and coached high school teams in rural Minnesota and is also a retired Command Sergeant Major of the Minnesota Army National Guard. His work with parents and children - as Governor and as an educator - has touched thousands of families in Minnesota. Walz is an engaging politician whose commitment to working people has earned high praise in Minnesota and elsewhere. Also, Walz is a masterful political campaigner whose description of Trump-Vance MAGA policies as “weird” quickly resonated with political pundits and voters.

Josh Shapiro will be an effective Harris supporter as Pennsylvania Governor. But he lacks the winsome history and Midwestern appeal that is the hallmark of Tim Walz’s political effectiveness. Given the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the recent decision of the International Court of Justice that declared Israel responsible for condoning or participating in land theft, mineral theft, and Israeli settler colonialism, and settler violence against Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank since 1967, Shapiro’s past writings critical of Palestinian liberation and self-determination make him a distracting running mate for Harris.

For these reasons, I hope Kamala Harris announces that Tim Walz is her running mate. If that happens, Harris and Walz will begin to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

 

 

 

  

 

 

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