The next vice president of the USA will be Tim Walz, currently the governor of Minnesota.
It’s a good choice, in part because I had reservations about him, which is OK because I’m not representative and I want this ticket to win. He was perfect for Minnesota because he was the pro hunting and fishing candidate (not my thing), but was also a former liberal school teacher (that’s my thing). I think he’ll be a solid complement to Harris and will get her a few more votes. He has accomplished a lot with narrow margins in the Minnesota congress.
After my initial misgivings, I’ve been happy with him as governor. I think you’ll all be happy with him as VP.
I always have reservations about Democratic leaders and choices. But I’ve come to peace with the reality that you can never have perfect nor can I get 100% of my way.
Especially in these times: When your house is on fire, you need to put out the fire before you unclog the toilet or tidy up the living room.
Buttigieg would have been better, but that’s probably too much for the American electorate right now, and Walz seems like a half-decent pick, and the best by far out of the people mentioned beforehead.
But you’re all still pretending that this is just a normal election, and may the best one win. In fact it’s coup 2.0, all these election fraud MAGA people are already in place, the Supreme Court is in on it and the DOJ is too compromized to act. If Trump goes through with this, it will be bloody murder come November. And Biden with his “trust the process” bullcrap is majorly to blame for it. I’m liking this “Republicans for Harris” thing however, that is actually a ray of hope.
The situation is very hopeful right now. Vance’s extensive baggage is not being overlooked, and Trump is spending time attacking Republicans who refused to lick his boots.
My partner was rooting for Mark Kelly, who was half decent…his better half perhaps being Gabby Gifford…but I figured they would go for a governor because the other big fight is over Congress. They can’t plunder a Congressional seat for a Veep. The margins are too slim and if the Dems don’t hang on to the Senate then problems will emerge almost immediately, perhaps even before the Electoral votes are counted. If they take both the House and the Senate, and Kamala wins, then things would be “okay”.
Plus, I believe Walz started the “weird” thing which has gained some transaction.
That’s excellent news! The alternative was apparently the uncritically Zionist Shapiro, who falsely claimed that Jewish students could not attend classes because of antisemitism among pro-Palestinian demonstrators (who of course included many Jews). Choosing him would have turned off many of Harris’s most enthusiastic young/progressive/minority supporters.
That really is a load of crap, rorschach. Go on, provide one quote from anyone posting here that supports that claim – if you can.
Nope. Heavily anti-union, and he applauded when war criminal Netanyahu claimed in his disgraceful address to Congress that pro-Paalestinian demonstrators were “Iran’s useful idiots”. He’d have been as bad a choice as Shapiro.
KG @6,
sorry I wasn’t talking about commenters here, but rather Democrats and media.
rorschach@8,
OK, thanks for the clarification!
Over at X, the rightards are ranting and raving Harris has been appointed without a single vote as presidential candidate. Of course she has gotten 2,200 pledges from Democratic delegates. But now it is on to the democratic Convention. Of course on the first ballot the super delegates cannot vote so if by some miracle she could not get 50% + these super delegates will support her overwhelmingly. Their next gripe is she has not given us voters a program. After the convention, we will surely get one. Stay tuned.
KG — I’m not a big Kelly fan, and I gather my partner’s main thing about him is that he’s married to Gifford who for good reason is a gun control advocate. As for Netanyahu, he shouldn’t have been there in the first place…probably in jail. I’m sure there was lots of applauding on both sides of the aisle for reprehensible ideas.
robro @11,
“I’m sure there was lots of applauding on both sides of the aisle for reprehensible ideas.”
Congress applauded genocide and the worst war crimes 58 times that day. Noone will forget.
Regarding the election… as Rachel Maddow has mentioned, the MAGA crowd have made sure to get many of theirs appointed as election officials.
No more “republicans who put election result over ideology” like Raffensberger.
It will take a big margin in the swing states to overcome the deliberate sabotages against getting the election result validated.
I like that Walz’s career in the military was as an enlisted man, not an officer. He worked for a living.
Comics for Kamala
I don’t know much about Walz’s policy positions, but he was terrific as the star of Disney’s Up.
Also Walz said this last week:
“How often in a hundred days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in a hundred days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” Walz asked. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass, sent him on the road?”
On second thought, however…
Didn’t Hillary pick this guy in 2016? It worked out so well then.
Oh shucks, darn.
@18
No, Hillary’s running mate was Tim Caine, a Senator from Virginia. I barely remember anything about him from that election, but Walz has already entered the National zeitgeist by calling out the weird and dangerous policies of the party of trump.
Think Walz is the correct choice. His retorts to right’s slander are simple and to the point. Talks on the level of an average person but with an elegance. Some Jews are pissed because she didn’t pick one of theirs, TS. The only other candidate would be Buttigieg but that would be asking too much from the American voters. So yes, I’m happy with Walz.
@19
I know it was Caine, not Walz, that was snark.
But I hope you’re right, and the differences and contrasts make a difference this time.
I probably should not have such a low opinion of the American voting public, but I can’t help it. I’m jaded beyond repair.
So, the younger brother of Christopher?
Convicted felon Donald Trump is attacking Walz for wanting to let convicted felons vote …
KG #7
Former Labor Secretary under Clinton Robert Reich is a Mark Kelly proponent despite that.
He comes off as a genuinely good guy. Is this “Minnesota Nice”?
One point in Walz favour which I haven’t seen posted here is that he’s pro-union, especially with the autoworkers. That could be a big difference on keeping and flipping some states for the Democrats.
Yes, that’s the thing known as Minnesota Nice. It has a passive aggressive dark-side, but Tim Walz is very much a typical Midwesterner with rural roots.
I’m enthusiastic to vote for that ticket, which is a very welcome change from the past.
Walz is an excellent choice. I’m surprised at how efficient and drama-free this all process has been. I expected disaster and I almost thought the VP pick might have been the part where the whirlwind of controversies, infighting and outright ugliness would finally start. Yet the Dems have been so damn smooth and lightning fast, and I’m actually stunned. Where is the Democratic self-immolation and disarray that I expected and even felt until recently? It’s like the Dems are aware of how bad things can get if we lose and actually hope to win rather than just rely on “well…I’m not Trump…” And throwing the rhetoric back to Republicans in their favorite game of name-calling and going on the offense for once is a breath of fresh air. News of the GOP and Trump trying to attack Walz is falling flat and looking desperate. Walz is a great counter. He’s the the type of person that debunks a bunch of stereotypes and caricatures the Right likes to ascribe to liberals or Democrats.
He seems ok, but they still seem to be falling for the bullshit that there MUST be an old white man on the ticket
But, but, but … a former high school football coach!!1!
What took her so long? I picked him 2 weeks ago and I know nothing! Obvious that the others would all be eliminated leaving him as last man standing, and yes, it did have to be a mature age white male.
mikeschmitz, he and Kamala were born months apart in 1964.
So, if he’s an old man, she is an old woman.
Right?
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Note that “mistake” does not necessarily mean “honest mistake.”
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Walz is the most left-wing of all the finalists under consideration, which isn’t particularly left-wing by the standards of other countries, but is a big deal given the break from the pattern Democratic presidential candidates have been stuck in for the last, oh, quarter century or more.
Republicans wasted no time in publishing Walz’s mug shot from his arrest for DUI 30 years ago for which he ended up paying a $200 fine after the charges were reduced to reckless driving. He felt so ashamed of that incident that he offered to resign his teaching post (it was refused) and gave up drinking completely as a result.
What a terrible shame for the Republican campaign that their candidate is a completely unrepentant convicted felon and proven rapist, and is still facing charges on inciting insurrection and the theft of classified documents.
The more they try to use his arrest to attack Walz, the more chance he will get to talk about how a real man deals faces his demons and right the wrongs he committed.
Harris’s choice of Walz indicates exactly the opposite political strategy to Clinton’s choice of Caine in a basically binary electoral contest. The latter exemplified “Reach out to the centre”, while the former is “Fire up the base”. I think (and of course hope) Harris’s choice was correct (in terms of maximising her chances of winning) in this case: picking Shapiro or Kelly (the “centrist” choices) would have alienated large parts of the coalition of enthusiastic Harris supporters, while despite his “leftist” leanings (in relative terms of course) Walz has enough of the superficial signifiers of traditional masculinity (veteran, hunter) to blunt attacks from Trump, Vance and the Trumpoids – in particular, he comes off well in any comparison with Vance. (Clinton’s most obvious “Fire up the base” choice would have been Sanders – would that have won her the election?)
Walz is a DEI hire! :-p
So you’re saying he faced it square on instead of trying to Walz around it?
(Okay, I going. Let me get my hat and coat.)