Why Tim Walz is the right choice for VP

Especially for this moment

Welcome to a Tuesday morning edition of Progress Report.

There’s a whole lot of news to report and discuss — and we’ll do that tonight. This morning, we’re talking about the vice presidential sweepstakes, one of the most unique face-offs that we’ve seen in years.

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Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris will introduce her running mate at a rally in Philadelphia layer today, and according to reports, it’ll be either Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The location of the rally stoked speculation that Shapiro was going to get the nod, and for a while he did look like the favorite. But after several weeks of increasingly negative press and discourse, it’s now looking more like Walz will be the pick; at the very least, betting sites have the Minnesota governor on top at the moment, so if my prediction is wrong, at least I won’t be the only one.

Either way, I think that Walz would be the right choice for this political moment, both due to his own strengths and Shapiro’s very specific weaknesses.

What do they stand for? What have they done?

If the resistance to Shapiro were largely a leftist objection to his stance on Israeli-Palestinian relations, Harris may well have chosen him. But Shapiro has also been dinged for his history of supporting private school vouchers, and that criticism has come from people perceived as more vital to the Democratic coalition, including UAW president Shawn Fain and… me.

(After a tweet I posted about Shapiro’s effort to pass a voucher program in Pennsylvania went semi-viral last week, his team reached out to me in hopes of clarifying his position. It was a good conversation.)

While Shapiro has otherwise been a solid governor, his list of major legislative accomplishments has been limited by Republican control of the state Senate. Walz, on the other hand, cruised to re-election in 2022 and helped Democrats finally flip the upper chamber in the Minnesota legislature. He has used that thinnest of trifectas to deliver an astonishing run of progressive legislative victories, including universal daycare.

I don’t know what Shapiro’s record would have looked like if Democrats had flipped a few more seats in Pennsylvania, but it’d be hard to beat what Walz has accomplished over the past few years.

Class war is culture war

Policy and ideology matter in governance, and as Harris’s ascension indicates, a vice president’s convictions should be considered on their own terms. But the reality is that while it’s nice to have a complementary or simpatico running mate, presidential nominees are mostly looking for a partner who can help them win a general election.

I’m not entirely convinced that a VP pick can single-handedly deliver more than a percentage point or two, but small margins matter. And as JD Vance’s faceplant is proving, a running mate can absolutely be an anchor around a candidate’s neck.

Shapiro’s electoral proposition is clear: he’s the governor of a must-win swing state, where he enjoys a 55% approval rating and a 64%-25% margin among moderate voters. He went to Georgetown Law, speaks with a cadence that reminds some people of Barack Obama, and projects easy intelligence and competence. The man looks like he was born to be a lawyer and if not a politician, then a CEO or top litigator, and I think he will likely be a top presidential contender in the future.

It’d be easy to write off Walz’s popularity in Minnesota as less helpful in the Electoral College given the state’s blue tint, but it’s the foundation of that appeal that suggests an intangible edge.

A Nebraska native, he spent 24 years serving in the Army National Guard, building a career as a high school geography teacher and football coach in between deployments. Walz earned his masters’ degree at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and after serving as a volunteer on the John Kerry campaign, decided to run for Congress. He spent ten years representing a rural district before returning home to run for governor, a job that comes with perks like private meetings with little piglets at the State Fair.

That’s a populist

In a town filled with ambitious camera hogs, Walz kept a relatively low profile in DC, driven by service more than attention. Unafraid of spoiling a legacy or sabotaging this accidental second career, Walz is content to shoot from the hip — he’s playing with house money at this point — and can hardly contain the glee he feels when roasting the elite on cable news.

Walz doesn’t rage against the machine — he hasn’t even endorsed Medicare for All — yet he radiates a kind of populism that can’t be recreated through policy platforms. Putting aside that string of successful cable news appearances during this unique audition stage, Walz perhaps best known for being mobbed by a crowd of excited kids when he signed a law guaranteeing free school lunch for every student in Minnesota.

Looking more like a clean-cut Santa Claus than state executive, Walz delivered one of the few truly feel-good political moments of the past few years, displaying the kind of middle class authenticity that Democratic leaders so often lack.

For all of Shapiro’s political talents, he does not represent a break from the well-educated, center-liberal elite that the party has been serving up since the Clinton era. Unfortunately for him, Kamala Harris, as the former district attorney of San Francisco, also falls into that category. As economic inequality has spread and deepened, resentment at this class of elite leaders, on both sides of the aisle, has continued to grow into an increasingly cohesive moment.

We remain at a precarious moment, still riven by broader resentments that have boiled up to the surface in this country and realigned our politics.

The average American is technically wealthier and healthier than they were when the Reagan realignment emerged from the malaise of the ‘70s, but there is also a more pervasive feeling of paranoia, driven by tech and media and deep income inequality. The political discourse emanating from Washington is often alienating to people, even when in service of good policy.

I don’t believe in catering to reactionaries, but I do think that there is a growing class resentment in this country that has nothing to do with political party and doesn’t require playing to cynical or base instincts to address. There’s no single type of leader that can transcend it — Bernie Sanders represents one approach, speaking to not only the economic despair that people feel but also the anger and alienation that comes with it, but there are other options as well.

Walz’s geniality, solidly working-middle class interests and tendencies, and enthusiastic empathy, and progressive instincts are unique to this election — JD Vance can discuss his roots, but he clearly resents the people from his past and has alllegiance to the elite — and make for the kind of candidate that Democrats have rarely embraced. He isn’t the coastal Ivy League elite, but instead the Midwest state school grad who got the advanced degree a bit later in life.

Kamala Harris has her own gifts and has clearly driven a resurgence of excitement among many voters. She represents the nation’s aspirational side, while Walz offers something more familial.

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