Posted on 10/05/2024 3:48:03 PM PDT by Widget Jr
Column: How Kamala Harris's first big decision backfired
The final month of election 2024 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 debate with Vance. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee appeared nervous and uncomfortable and uncertain of how to respond to the conflict between Israel and Iran. 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 silly 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. “I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz blurted.
That’s an understatement. 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.
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 limited Walz’s contacts with the media, fearing that he might display ignorance or misalignment with Harris’s deliberately vague message. His stances on race and gender identity and, as J. D. Vance pointed out, abortion undercut the soft-focus moderation Harris is selling in TV ads and interviews. Nor do his selfies with far-left scion Alex Soros reinforce Walz’s preferred image as the aw-shucks football coach from Mankato.
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 phrase, including the utterance “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” left this audience member alternately confused and zoned out.
This was not a man prepared to be president. This was not a man prepared to be vice president. Walz came across instead as a semi-competent progressive governor of a midsized state. Friendly guy, maybe, but he’s not ready for the nuclear codes.
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. To the contrary: He agreed 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 not what the Harris team wanted. They would have been much happier had Walz run out the clock calling Vance a lying weirdo.
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. But the 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.” Joy is what many Democrats and independents felt after President Biden dropped out of the race and his party coalesced around his 59-year-old vice president, who can read from a teleprompter, as its nominee. 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.
The one major decision Kamala Harris has made in this compressed campaign is choosing a running mate. That choice came down to 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.
How dare he. Shapiro’s “baggage” was his ethnicity and his religion and his interest in recognition and authority. 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 and who says that Representative Ilhan Omar’s presence in Congress brightens his day.
Harris made the wrong decision. A bad decision. How many more will she make if she becomes president?
"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 is a liability that harms the top of the ticket. This article goes into why. Harris picked a nominee, who in comparison to her climb to the top, makes her look good in comparison. That is a lousy way to pick a nominee.
Call me cynical but I don’t believe that was her decision, except perhaps in the sense that she was steered into selecting Walz.
I agree. She’s no more an independent thinker than Biden.
She can negotiate a flight of stairs better, is all.
“Who am I snd what am I doing here.”
His lie about his visit to China was not a slip of the tongue. He has made this claim over 12 times in the past so while he would like you to think it was merely an accidental mix up on dates the truth is that this cat is a two bit liar.
Right after the debate, wasn’t there a poll that said that Vance bested Walz by only one point, 42-41?
A Harridan and Knucklehead!
AND, a complete fuster cluck re: Helene!
How can ANY AMERICAN VOTE DEMOCRAT THIS YEAR??????
THEY SCREW UP EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH!
GOD HELP US!
He wasn't even prepared for the debate. What a clown.
+1
He even made that claim from the dais during a Congressional hearing.
-PJ
Well that and a Hawk Tuey session
Walz referring to himself as a “Knucklehead” is an insult to Curly Howard.
Shapiro is a snake. It came down to a choice between a snake and a dummy and she opted for her fellow dummy. End of story
“Call me cynical but I don’t believe that was her decision, except perhaps in the sense that she was steered into selecting Walz.”
I do, she didn’t want anyone like Shapiro upstaging her and illustrating what an incompetent piece of work she really is. She picked a lap dog she could dominate and who wouldn’t make he look bad, it’s that simple.
She picked someone DUMBER than she is.....Walz is the PERFECT CHOICE!
Recap:
—No one voted for Harris
—Biden went down in flames
—Walz did OK but was a definite loser against JD in the debate
—In the Trump vs. Harris debate, most claim Harris won, but it was by a slight margin which is impressive since Trump had to tap dance around Harris which will use the Pocahontas, black, or woman defense in a heart beat. Trump was a boxer with one hand tied behind his back.
—The economy is so-so
—Inflation is high
—The US has a migrant Southern border crisis
—We are tangled up in an unnecessary war in Ukraine which was caused by the Biden/Harris team
—The Israeli - Palestinian crisis is on fire
—Our departure from Afghanistan was a national embarrassment, an epic failure and ordered by the Biden/Harris team
—We have no kidding political prisoners today (J6)
—Mass censorship is now the norm
—The Democrats have had control of our government for 12 of the last 16 years but talk about being the party of change
—We are importing more oil from the Middle East
—Real net income of the Middle Class has dropped (inflation adjusted) and the middle class is shrinking https://www.newsweek.com/america-middle-class-shrinking-1913772 https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/the-state-of-the-american-middle-class/
—The number of billionaires and their personal wealth has exploded under Democrat rule, even though they pretend to be the party of the poor and Middle Class which has lost wealth
—Covid and the lock-downs, social distancing, mandates was driven mostly by the Democrats
And yet the race is to close to call!
***It must be nice to have most of social media, the legacy MSM, and federal bureaucracy on your side.***
Hairy/Balz......Democrats DREAM TEAM!
You are wrong on one thing....the DEMOCRATS HAVE HAD CONTROL OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR 30 YEARS!!! Ever since the CLINTONS!
holder was in charge of vetting
obama’s wingman
Most don’t have a good reason to vote AGAINST Trump — nor a good reason to vote FOR Harris. They just know that that is what they’ve been programmed to say and do — like Orwell’s One Minute of Hate. Both the works of Orwell and Ayn Rand are prophetic of these times — and why they are ignored as the greatest literature of all-time, in favor of a lot less worthy, obtuse and obscure writing as the “best of all time.”
That seems to be particularly true of all those “celebrity” endorsements Kamala gets. There is no why beyond that declaration. Meanwhile, there are a lot of good reasons to vote AGAINST Harris — including that she hasn’t done anything in the last four years — and Walz was the only person less qualified than she is.
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