Recently, there were many significant events that dominated the news. One story was about the hostage deal which brought home American hostages from Russia. Another was Trump’s appearance before a Black journalists’ organization that some called a dumpster fire, and Trump supporters thought that Trump was at his finest. However, I, like many, was fixated on whom Kamala Harris would select as her running mate.
I am disappointed - but not shocked - that Harris took Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. He came out of nowhere and become known as the person who used the word “weird” to describe both Trump and Vance. It was picked up by the Harris campaign as a way to attack Trump and Vance. I find the word “weird” to be bland and so broad in scope that it is meaningless. I can think of many other descriptive words to describe Trump and Vance.
The conventional wisdom is to take a safe pick for vice president. Harris must have seen what a disaster Senator J.D. Vance has been since Trump picked him for vice president, so she went the safe route. Trump is correct that normally a vice president has negligible effect on the race. However, a bad choice can hurt a candidate, such as Senator John McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin.
To date, Vance has not been a help for Trump. It is not good for a candidate when people are talking about the vice president’s comments about childless cat ladies. In 2021, Vance said that “we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too…How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” It also does not look good that Vance belittled Olympian gymnast Simone Biles a few years ago because she had to deal with mental heath issues.
Walz is the safe pick. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was attacked by those on the left because they thought he was too supportive of Israel and his past support of school choice. It was clear that there was an underlying current of anti-Semitism in such comments, since Shapiro’s position on Israel was in line with the administration. Fellow Pennsylvanian, Senator John Fetterman, also attacked Shapiro, claiming that he is too ambitious. No one attacked Walz.
Harris did not want the fight over Shapiro to be a distraction, so she took Walz. Why shake things up when you are rising in the polls? She may have picked Walz because she thought that she would have a better working relationship with him than with Shapiro. However, it is not going to be seen as being the reason by many. It will be perceived that Harris caved into the demands of the left flank of her party who did not want her to pick Shapiro.
There were some Jews who did not want Shapiro because he is Jewish and there is enough anti-Semitism in this county. They should be happy today. I am not. It would have been exciting having a Jew as vice president. We cannot let the anti-Semites dictate how we act.
Also, Shapiro, who is a popular governor, would have increased the chances that Harris would win Pennsylvania. I am not sure what Walz brings to the table that will help her win a specific state. Although Walz is from the Midwest, I do not see rural white voters moving from Trump to Walz.
In the end, the pick of Walz may not have much of an impact on the race. How many people remember vice-presidential choices of losing candidates? You remember the person who ran for president and lost. For example, people remember in 2016 Hillary Clinton ran for president but few remember she took Senator Tim Kaine as a running mate. Now that both Republican and Democrat tickets are complete, it is time to move on to the election.
Warren S. Hecht is a local attorney. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
