Tim Walz is ideally suited to expand Kamala Harris’ appeal across the ideological spectrum.
  • psmgx@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Dude got nominated like an hour ago. How are they putting out articles like this?

    Like the average person ain’t even got home from work on the east coast.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    0·
    3 months ago

    Headline suggests that the Democrats - who are currently more united than they’ve been since probably Kennedy - aren’t united.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        01·
        3 months ago

        You should read through the comments on that post.

        Almost NONE of Silvers subscribers are having it.

        This just a way off base miss of Silvers.

        Believe the numbers, doubt the pundit.

    • fukhueson@lemmy.worldOP
      01·
      3 months ago

      I think that’s a pretty simplistic take considering we just swapped our candidate less than 6 months before the election. I agree with the article’s take that Walz has potential to unify the differing democratic coalitions, and don’t see any evidence of your claim.

      Walz’s elevation earns the left a big victory. Yet because Walz himself isn’t of the left, the pick seems intended to serve a unifying purpose: a candidate who appeals to all different stripes of Democrats for different reasons. The fact that Democrats across the political spectrum seem thrilled by the pick — with effusive support coming from people ranging from Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) — seems to validate the theory.

      It’s important to be clear: The VP selection matters way less for elections than people think. It’s much more important to select a potential president than an optimal running mate.

      But you can see why Harris sees picking Walz as smart politics. It allows her to simultaneously hand the left a win without necessarily tacking left — potentially keeping her coalition united even as she works to win over the general election’s decisive centrists.

      I think its important to recognize the value this VP pick can bring, and I’ve not known vox to try to suggest something like that without reason.

      Edit: I’m also going to add that your reply is a disingenuous attempt to falsely turn this into a binary unified or not unified condition, not that the article is making such a claim. I entirely reject your statement.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world
    03·
    3 months ago

    They forgot quotes; by “left” and “progressive” they mean republican-lites.

    The left’s romance with Walz is deeply entwined with hostility to his chief rival for a spot on the ticket: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Harris’s decision on Shapiro, who has a history of hostility with the party’s pro-Palestinian faction, had become seen as a bellwether for whether she’d be meaningfully different from Biden on Gaza. Walz looked like the most progressive available anti-Shapiro, and so emerged as the left’s preferred alternative.

    The Minnesota Miracle reforms, enacted in a single legislative session, read like a progressive wishlist. They include paid family leave, free school meals, marijuana legalization, a 100 percent clean energy mandate by 2040, and a slew of protections for organized labor.

    But I use the word “progressive” and not its cousin “leftist” deliberately. The Minnesota Miracle policies are all squarely within the Democratic mainstream: none betray an ideological commitment to the party’s socialist or otherwise radical wings.

    But Walz’s position on Israel-Palestine is hardly left-wing. The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg has put together a list of Walz’s positions and actions that basically reflect the traditional pro-Israel consensus. Walz’s position on how to end the current Gaza war is virtually identical to Shapiro’s. The most important difference is less Middle East policy than domestic: Shapiro has been far harsher on pro-Palestine campus protests than Walz has.

    The strongest Trump attack on Harris, at least to date, is that she’s too far to the left. Scored by one (dubious) metric as the most liberal member of the Senate in 2019, she has drawn Republican flak for previous positions ranging from Medicare-for-all to banning fracking to decriminalizing border crossing.

    Moreover, his celebrity status on the left gives Harris crucial running room to keep up the strategic centrism. By handing her left flank a victory, she’s theoretically built major credibility that she can spend to defray a left-wing revolt over some of her more centrist stances.