8/12/24
Yours truly had been waiting to opine on Vice-President
Kamala Harris’s selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her
running mate until the hosannas on the left and the vitriol on the right have
calmed down. Finally realizing that I
would be waiting until well after the election if I were to stick to that time
frame, I have decided to pass judgment on this crucial selection after the
passage of a week or so has made nary a dent on the unceasing derision and
hagiography Mr. Walz has drawn from the right and the left.
Let’s revisit the criteria I outlined in my 7/1/24
post and repeated in my 7/10/24 post (SO WHO SHOULD AND/OR MIGHT REPLACE PRESIDENT
BIDEN AT THE TOP OF THE TICKET?) for the perfect replacement for Joe
Biden at the top of the ticket. Yours truly
stated that the perfect Democratic presidential candidate should be
·
Not Joe Biden,
·
Reasonably moderate or can be marketed as
such without inducing overwhelming amounts of laughter, as was done with Joe
Biden in 2020, and
·
Not burdened by excessive amounts of
personal or political baggage.
and asked
Who meets the above criteria? The ideal candidate would be somebody whose
name elicits the reaction “Who?” The
Democrats need the most generic candidate they can find, somebody on whom its
various constituency groups can project their aspirations for a standard-bearer
while pummeling the electorate with the message that Mr. Trump wants to
eliminate abortion, imperil democracy, and engage in all sorts of other evil
designs that he somehow didn’t get around to inflicting on us during his first
term.
Now that the Democrats, by rapidly coalescing behind perhaps
their weakest potential candidate, came close to blowing the gift of the Magi
(if “the Magi” in this case were to be Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe
Biden) presented to them by President Joe Biden’s, er, voluntary withdrawal
from the race, the same criteria that would have afforded the Democrats a
better candidate than Ms. Harris are at least as applicable to her choice of a
second fiddle. By these criteria,
Tim Walz is perfect. He is so close
to anonymous that yours truly, who follows such things more closely than does
the average bear, didn’t have him on my list of potential Joe Biden
stand-ins. Further, Mr. Walz was on few
lists of potential running mates for Ms. Harris until his ill-chosen, but nevertheless
applicable, description of the Trump-Biden ticket as “weird.” Indeed, as soon as Mr. Walz was selected,
the various Democratic constituency groups began projecting their own aspirations
for a vice-president and, perhaps ultimately, president. To “moderates,” Mr. Walz is the reasonable congressman
who wrested a swing rural district from a Republican by portraying himself as separate
from the loon-tune factions of the Democratic Party. To those same loon-tune factions, Mr. Walz
is one of them, the “progressive” governor of Minnesota who could finally be
himself once freed from the restrictive influences of a district that doesn’t
see the world the same way that Minneapolis, Hollywood, and the Upper East
side see it.
Mr. Walz is every man, but not in the way his and Ms. Harris’s
spinmeisters would like to convince us he meets that description. Instead, he is every man in that he is
everything that the constituency to which he is presenting himself at any given
time would like him to be.
We could talk until we are blue in the face about Mr. Walz’s
views on insuring voting rights for recently released felons, giving drivers’
licenses to illegal aliens, hesitancy to deploy the National Guard when Minneapolis
was burning during the post-George Floyd riots, and, to those of us who
remember what conservatism was in the pre-Trump era, such expansions of
government as free college, guaranteed incomes through manipulations of the tax
code, and free breakfast and lunch for every school child in Minnesota courtesy
of the overburdened taxpayers. However,
pointing out such aspects of Mr. Walz’s approach to government will either appeal
to certain quarters of the electorate or, more importantly, and likely, will
not be heard by those who would find such actions, and the philosophy that
underlies them, unsettling, troubling, or outright appalling. The latter group, unless they get their news
from sources other than the networks or the left-leaning counterparts to Fox
News on cable (i.e., CNN and MSNBC), will only hear that Mr. Walz is “America’s
Grandfather,” “Coach,” “a paragon of Midwestern values,” and other such pap and
pabulum. Such is the state of the
American electorate. And, to be fair,
such is the state of Ms. Harris’s opponent; most people need little reason to vote
against Donald Trump. That somebody
as ineffectual and vapid as Ms. Harris is running at least neck and neck with
Mr. Trump only proves that point.
Mr. Walz is the ultimate blank slate or empty suit onto
which voters can project all their hopes, wishes, and stretched
self-reassurances. He is the putty
that the Democratic Party and its spokespeople in the mainstream media can use
to form whatever image might comfort the constituencies they are trying to
appeal to at any given time. Mr. Walz’s
record doesn’t matter. All that matters
is his relative anonymity and the opportunities it affords.
One more thing…
Yours truly keeps waiting for the Harry Truman
analogies for Mr. Walz. Such analogies
would be strained, of course, but that doesn’t matter because 98% of the
electorate doesn’t understand President Truman; indeed, about half the
electorate probably doesn’t know who Mr. Truman was. All that matters is that both Mr. Truman and
Mr. Walz both hail(ed) from Midwestern states and “Give ‘em hell, Harry” has gone
down in history as one of our nation’s most liked and respected presidents, a
guy even conservatives can admire. Look
for Mr. Walz to be called by some overly enthusiastic Democratic wag as “another
Harry Truman,” or something along those lines. Maybe somebody has already said something to
that effect and yours truly just hasn’t noticed.
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