Kamala Harris’s pick of running mate Tim Walz is a political gift to Republicans
In what is expected to be a close presidential election in November, Harris bizarrely passed over the governor of the most critical battleground state, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a popular Jewish centrist Democrat who advocated for school vouchers and abolished university credentials as requirements for most public sector jobs.
Instead, she chose to elevate a man few Americans had even heard of until last week, whose relatively radical political record in office places him firmly on the far left of the Democrat party, handing a gift to Republicans less than three months out from polling day.
Consider Walz’s long list of policy ‘achievements’ and political stances that have already gifted Republicans with the attack slogans ‘Tampon Tim’ and ‘Make America Burn Again’.
As governor, Walz signed laws that required tampons in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools, and supported legislation that would see parents in effect lose custody of their children if they refused to approve gender reassignment surgery. He declared Minnesota a “trans refugee state”.
During the Covid-19 pandemic he oversaw among the most draconian lockdowns and vaccine mandates in the nation, policies which however popular at the time, haven’t aged well. He even set up a hotline for the residents of his state to snitch on anyone who was breaking the rules. Last year he signed state legislation that permitted abortion up until the moment of birth.
He’s on the record supporting the ‘defund the police’ movement which emerged following George Floyd’s death in May 2020 in Minnesota’s biggest city Minneapolis, during which he waited three days before calling in the national guard to stop riots that caused massive damage and destruction.
His wife Gwen Walz even recalled savouring the moments in solidarity with the rioters. “I could smell the burning tires … I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening,” she later told a journalist when looking back on the incident.
At a time when American concerns about illegal immigration are at an all time high, Walz signed laws as governor that provided free health care, drivers licences and university education for undocumented immigrants. He tried to lift income tax as governor and supported policies to phase out fossil fuels.
Democrats were apparently impressed with his political smarts in coming up last week with the term “weird” to describe Republicans, but his past stances suggest the term might easily be applied to him
For Harris to be successful in November Walz will need to play well in the critical midwestern battle ground states near Minnesota, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which are considered critical to victory.
Republicans have already started to cast Harris as the ‘most radical candidate ever’, and it’s far from clear her choice of Walz helps to dispel that characterisation.
After all, he’s the creature of the sole state that Ronald Reagan couldn’t win in his 1984 landslide.
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Josh Shapiro, Another Victim of Unforgiving Identity Politics
Kamala Harris has made her vice-presidential pick, and it is Tim Walz. In doing so, she forewent the popular Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, reportedly her second choice, who is currently presiding over a crucial swing state with two-thirds of independents approving of him.
Any number of reasons could be given to choose Walz, a former teacher and very Midwestern-looking white man, over the young Shapiro, but one clearly stands out: Shapiro’s Judaism and adamant support for Israel.
In the 2000s, much was made of Cuban Americans and how crucial they were to what at the time was the crucial swing state of Florida.
American Cuban policy was disproportionately distorted through the lens of the small minority of emigres who came to disproportionately populate Florida and the city of Miami—and who split very evenly between Democrats and Republicans. They were the “swing minority” of the time.
Judging by the Democrat senator’s action, she and her campaign see a new minority in the new swing states—the Rust Belt of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota that have a large contingent of Arab Americans.
The states themselves, although cycling back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, also have constituencies that elected “Squad” members like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
Notably, both these congresswomen have been vocal in their disdain for Israel, with Omar saying, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” and Tlaib calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide.”
Tlaib’s district has 74,449 people who speak Arabic, nearly 10% of the entire district. Omar’s district has some 32,000 people who speak Somali or other languages from that region of Africa.
Many of these voters are livid about America’s participation in Israel’s war against Gaza, with 64% of Muslim voters saying their sympathy “lies entirely or mostly” with the Palestinians (less than 2% support the Israelis).
Shapiro, unfortunately, expressed support for bills that would penalize college students for speaking out or protesting against Israel, even boycotting Israeli-made products, as the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement prescribes.
He said of the protesters: “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia.”
Comparing anti-Israel protesters to the KKK is not the best way to curry favor with the Arab American constituency. In truth, however, Shapiro may simply find himself on the wrong end of the contemporary understanding of identity politics that has entrenched itself in progressive Democrat politics.
Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s an age when antisemitism was a crucial issue and Holocaust survivors were assimilating into American culture, Shapiro dealt with a cultural context in which more Americans supported Zionism, or the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland, with criticism over Israel’s policies being less prominent.
One 2021 survey found that 38% of Jewish Americans under the age of 40 believe Israel is an “apartheid state,” while only 13% over 65 do.
He perhaps thought the Democratic establishment would have his back as he decried the antisemitism of the campus protesters. In a move of profound confidence (and maybe even arrogance), he revised his employee code of conduct to bar state employees from demonstrating “scandalous and disgraceful” behavior, right after he sent a May 8 email to colleagues calling for “moral clarity” against “antisemitism” and “hate speech.”
Unfortunately, to a particularly mobilized group of progressive anti-Israel voters, accusations of antisemitism are seen as an impediment to their rights to freely demonstrate against what they see as Israeli-committed genocide and American support thereof.
Witold Walczak, the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, criticized Shapiro for likening protesters to true antisemites: “If an employee off the job posts, ‘From the river to the sea,’ is that something the governor would consider disgraceful and scandalous?” he said.
Shapiro is also harmed by the fact that he himself is Jewish. Although politics is separate from one’s religious beliefs, Walz, who is Lutheran, is less likely to face immediate scrutiny over his reported support for Israel, saying that support for Israel is “not a Democratic or Republican issue,” according to the Minnesota Post.
Certain segments of the Democratic Party are even engaging in speculation of the notion of having too many Jews so close to the president. NBC News reported on the condition of anonymity a Jewish official expressing what he believes are real voter concerns over this issue.
“The two closest people to the president being Jewish—what long-term impact does that have on us?” the official said, referring also to Harris’s husband, Jewish-American lawyer Doug Emhoff.
This is a wild speculation, but it has basis in history: Winston Churchill once warned his prime minister, David Lloyd George, who was serving as minister of munitions, not to appoint an overbalance of Jews to the Cabinet. In a letter to Lloyd George, he wrote, “There is a point about Jews which occurs to me—you must not have too many of them.”
If Harris skipped over Shapiro, a longtime friend and correspondent in the National Democratic Attorneys General Association, because he is Jewish and a supporter of Israel, she would be acknowledging a reality in the Democratic Party: Critical votes in swing states would be lost if she appointed someone perceived to be on the side of Israel.
The anti-Israel protests have made their political mark and have ushered in a new identity politics movement that will reset our country’s social politics for the next generation and beyond.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/06/josh-shapiro-another-victim-of-unforgiving-identity-politics/
*******************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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