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Kamala’s first big decision wasn’t so good
Posted at: Oct/08/2024 : Posted by: Mel
Related Category: Politics & Gov, Watching America,
The final month of the 2024 election season begins with J. D. Vance triumphant, Tim Walz wounded, and the presidential race too close to call. By now, it should go without saying that Walz bombed in Tuesday’s October 1st debate with Vance. Even CNN, with its corps of Democratic Party sponsoring pundits, has said as much. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee appeared nervous, uncomfortable, and uncertain of how to respond to the conflict between Israel and Iran. If scored like a prize fight, he hardly landed a blow on the youthful, confident, fluent, and unflappable Vance until the final minutes of the bout. Walz spoke too fast, made strange faces, and squirmed when confronted with the fact that for years he’d been lying about visiting Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. When confronted with this Walz exclaimed, “I’m a knucklehead at times.” Just for clarity, I did not watch the 2024 VP debate live. I watched a National League Wild Card game believing it would be more uplifting. Two days after the debate I sought out an online recording to determine what I had missed. Confessing to being a knucklehead may be his greatest understated truth. Walz is more than a knucklehead. He’s a liability. Why? Because vice-presidential nominees take an electoral version of the Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm to the top of the ticket.” Walz had a good rollout and a quick and effective speech at the Democratic National Convention. He entered the debate with positive favorable ratings. Yet he’s become a distraction for Kamala Harris and her campaign. Walz is a walking reminder that Harris’s judgment is questionable at best. Maybe the problem is merely that Kamala Harris doesn’t know how to surround herself with staff and advisors who would identify these potholes early. The problems began with evidence that Walz misrepresented his military service. They mounted with further evidence that Walz inflated additional items on his résumé. The campaign has to this point limited Walz’s contacts with the media. It is difficult to determine if Walz’s limited media exposure is in fear that he might display ignorance or misalignment with Harris’s deliberately vague message, or simply the new Democratic campaign strategy --- “campaign from the basement.” As J. D. Vance pointed out, Walz’s stances on race and gender identity and, abortion undercut the soft-focus moderation Harris is selling in TV ads and interviews. Concurrently, they are avoiding the tough questions on taxes, economic policy, and free speech. While the campaign is trying to promote him as the aw-shucks football coach from Mankato, his selfies with far-left scion Alex Soros reinforce a much different image. The debate showcased these liabilities while revealing others. Walz was lucky that there was, shockingly, a single question on foreign policy. He was awkward and tongue-tied when asked if Israel had the right to take preemptive action against Iran. He defended Obamacare’s “individual mandate” to buy health insurance despite its long-standing unpopularity and repeal in 2017. His prevarication on late-term abortion enhanced his reputation for dishonesty. His rat-a-tat delivery and awkward and jumbled turns of a phrase did at least make him sound like his Presidential running mate. Debates, by their nature, tend to either bring strength and vision, or confusion and clutter. When Walz uttered “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” you could sense the collective confusion from the audience members. Historically, Vice Presidential debates don’t garner a lot of attention. VP candidates are normally chosen because they are popular in a contested region of the country. Adding them to the ticket is intended to sway a distinct voting bloc in a state that would otherwise be considered a toss-up. But the 2024 election is different. With two assassination attempts already on a candidate, it is reasonable to ask; “Is this person prepared to be president?” Bigger still; “Is this person ready to have access to the nuclear codes?” This was not a man prepared to be vice president. Walz came across instead as a semi-competent progressive governor of a midsized state. He might seem like a friendly guy, but that is not the same as potentially being President of the United States. The post-debate reviews showed that Democrats were also disappointed that Walz didn’t seize every opportunity to attack J. D. Vance and Donald Trump as MAGA extremists threatening the republic. Nor did he spend much time praising Harris’s background, experience, and bold leadership for a new way forward. Fortunately, he did not brag about growing up in a middle-class neighborhood where everyone took pride in their lawns. To the contrary: He seemed to agree with Vance throughout the evening. The result was a debate over domestic policy that established a few points of common ground and was praised in the media as civil and substantive. That was presumably not what the Harris team wanted. They would have been much happier had Walz run out the clock calling Vance a lying weirdo right-wing extremist. Thus Harris was left with the worst of both worlds: Not only did Walz lose, but he hardly tried to bring Vance down with him. Yes, Walz scored points toward the end when he zinged Vance for refusing to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. That late exchange was also notable for being the lone section of the debate where Vance played defense. Walz said during his closing statement that Harris is “bringing us a politics of joy.” Obama campaigned on the theme of “Hope.” Is this the new Democratic Party, hope, and Joy … what is next; “love?” Joy is what many Democrats and independents felt after President Biden dropped out of the race. That was two months ago. Joy is not what many Americans feel this first week of October as war comes to the Middle East, survivors of Hurricane Helene deal with the wreckage, and the first dockworkers’ strike since 1977 for several days stopped half the nation’s ocean shipping. We often measure leaders by the decisions that they make. The one major decision Kamala Harris has made in this compressed campaign is choosing a running mate. Most pundits argue that Kamala’s VP choice was Walz or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. Rather than select the highly popular 51-year-old governor of the most important state in this election, Harris chose Walz. Why? Shapiro’s identity as a pro-Israel Jew might have outraged the Democrats’ progressive anti-Israel base. And Shapiro came into his job interview with demands, asking for guarantees and a seat at the high table to steer Middle East policy. How dare he? Shapiro’s “baggage” was his ethnicity and his religion, along with his interest in recognition and authority. One would think in this age of woke and DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), the Democrats would relish a Jewish candidate. Maybe inclusion has its limits. All this was too much for Harris, who opted for the progressive agent of organized labor who governs a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president in half a century. Walz is also quoted as saying that Representative Ilhan Omar’s presence in Congress brightens his day. For her first big decision, Harris appears to have made the wrong choice. How many more will she make if she becomes president? Having now seen the debate in its entirety, I think I made the right decision watching the baseball game.
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