U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her newly chosen vice presidential running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz react as they hold a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Penn. on Aug. 6.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
It was not long after Josh Shapiro took the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday, before it should have become clear to anyone unfamiliar with the Pennsylvania Governor, why Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris defied the pundits by not tapping him as her running mate, and instead introduced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her pick at the same rally.
As his warm-up speech showed, Mr. Shapiro oozes political ambition so profusely and excels at performance politics so effortlessly that he would have been sure to upstage Ms. Harris on the campaign trail had she chosen him as her vice-presidential nominee. VPs are not supposed to do that.
Democrats had ridiculed Republican vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance for recently comparing – and not in a good way – Mr. Shapiro’s speaking style to that of former president Barack Obama. On Tuesday, the whole world got to see what Mr. Vance meant.
Even the Democratic commentators on CNN remarked on the “Obamaesque cadences” of Mr. Shapiro’s oratory. He sounded a lot more like a Southern preacher than a Jewish guy from the upper-income Philly suburbs and said “y’all” a lot, just like Mr. Obama did when he wowed the crowds in 2008.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Mr. Shapiro clearly worships the 44th president. But his Obama-like strut does raise authenticity issues. For that reason, Ms. Harris was probably right not to choose him.
Besides, the progressive Democratic base had made it clear that Mr. Shapiro’s nomination would not have its blessing. Teachers’ unions railed against his support for school vouchers. Environmentalists pointed to his support for fracking and Pennsylvania’s status as the second-largest natural gas-producing state after Texas.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks before Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during a campaign event in Philadelphia, Aug. 6.Joe Lamberti/The Associated Press
Then there was Mr. Shapiro’s strong support for Israel – a mainstream position within the broader U.S. political class, but a clear non-starter for progressives. One writer for The New Republic called Mr. Shapiro “egregiously bad on Palestine” and said he had “done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights.”
Had she gone with Mr. Shapiro, Ms. Harris risked shattering the remarkable display of unity that has befallen Democrats since President Joe Biden announced his exit from the presidential race and endorsed his Vice-President, despite all but ignoring her for the past three and a half years.
Yet, despite all the knocks against him, Mr. Shapiro is still very popular in Pennsylvania. And Ms. Harris’s decision not to choose him as her running mate will not help her chances of winning the must-win state in November. Statistician Nate Silver figures that Pennsylvania has a greater probability of tipping the election than any other state. In other words, whoever wins Pennsylvania is almost certain to win the White House.
By Mr. Silver’s estimation, reliably blue Minnesota has zero chance of tipping the election. But in picking Mr. Walz as her running mate, Ms. Harris did signal how she might govern.
Though he spent more than a decade as a moderate Democratic member of Congress, representing a Republican-leaning district, Mr. Walz has been a staunch progressive since becoming Minnesota’s Governor in 2019. His record on abortion rights, unionization, social welfare and gun control had most progressives rooting for him in the days and hours leading up to Ms. Harris’s official announcement on Tuesday.
Yet, Mr. Walz also remains a virtual unknown outside his home state. His star rose when he called Mr. Vance “weird” after the Republican veep nominee’s 2021 comments about the ascendancy of “childless cat ladies” in the Democratic Party resurfaced recently. But the “weird” label is likely to get tired before long. Republicans do not have a monopoly on weird, especially as most non-coastal Americans define the term.
It is not clear Mr. Walz, or “Coach Walz” as Ms. Harris calls the former high-school teacher, can help her attract white working-class voters to the Democratic ticket. At least not more than Mr. Vance, a self-described “hillbilly” who graduated from Yale Law School and last year walked the picket line with striking auto workers in his home state of Ohio, can help consolidate Republican nominee Donald Trump’s support among white working-class voters in the Rust Belt swing states that will decide the election.
Then there is this: Mr. Walz last month quipped that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighbourliness.” Republicans will not let him, or Americans, forget it. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Walz a “communist” and “probably about the same as Bernie Sanders,” who was a card-carrying socialist before he became a U.S. Senator and two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In the end, just as Mr. Trump picked his ideological double to be his running mate, Ms. Harris has chosen a progressive soulmate as hers. The choice for Americans could not be more stark.