Harris Fumbles Momentum Ball with Walz Pick

Kamala Harris opted to pander to her far-left flank with the selection of progressive (read: neo-Marxist) Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. My initial impression of Walz is Bernie Sanders without the charisma (you can laugh now). If Harris’s goal was to choose someone simpatico with her policy positions while not stealing the spotlight from her, then she has succeeded. However, a duo of far leftists should not be electable even in today’s America, even running against the perpetually self-sabotaging Donald Trump.

It seemed in the run-up to her selection announcement that Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was the obvious pick despite his being Jewish. Pennsylvania is simply too critical to Harris’ chances of winning the presidency and the thought was that the popular Shapiro would help carry the commonwealth for her. This raises the question of whether the concerns of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, fiercely anti-Israel House members, were given more weight than other voices in the party who wanted a more “moderate” VP candidate to “balance” the ticket. The apparent answer is yes. 

In making this dubious selection, Harris has made a tactical if not strategic error, with the Walz announcement coming on the heels of the continuing makeover of Harris as not so far-left as her previous pronouncements indicated. Does she really think that voters will buy what she’s selling about supposedly “moderating” her positions on key issues when her selected running mate is on the record, proudly I might add, as four-square in favor of the radical positions that Harris, until the last few days, has given full-throated support to also?

All the Trump campaign needs to do in their political ads is to run clips of Harris’ on-the-record quotes about illegal immigration, how everyone should go “woke,” defunding the police, providing bail money to violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors during the 2020 nationwide riots, etc. They can assuredly find Walz saying some of the same things as well. It’s one thing for Trump to drone on about these things – it’s quite another to see Harris actually saying them as a consistent theme throughout her Senate career and mercifully short previous presidential campaign, not to mention as Biden’s vice president.

Another bugaboo may soon haunt the Harris campaign – a faltering economy. The nascent bull market seems to be beating a hasty retreat lately, and the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates by a marginal amount next month will do little to ignite anything right away. It’s about time, in light of disappointing new jobs numbers in July, that the Trump campaign points out how misleading the current “unemployment” rate really is, since it removes millions of people who are not currently seeking employment; that is, legions of people who have given up, at least for the time being. This is especially important since the inflation rate has cooled recently and, like the unemployment rate, misleading figures will be presented to minimize the problem. The Harris/Walz plan will assuredly call for throwing a lot of money the government doesn’t have at problems both perceived and real, a solution that has been shown time and time again to result in failure.

On the Republican side, however, things aren’t exactly rosy either. Have the Sean Hannitys of the world proclaimed “This election is the most important in the nation’s history” one too many times like the boy who cried “Wolf!” until people no longer believed him? If so, voters who are turned off by both candidates may just stay home, and this will hurt Trump more than Harris. In addition, Trump showed a rather vindictive side by slamming Governor Brian Kemp while speaking in a rally in Georgia – not a good move for someone running as a “uniter.” His questioning of Harris’s racial background at a black journalists’ event was an over-the-top blunder even by Trumpian standards, destroying whatever goodwill points he may have gained by having the guts to show up at an event where he was sure to get a grilling.

In an election as close as this one is being portrayed, at least by the pollsters, every move by each candidate will be put under the microscope to predict the impact it may have on their chances of winning. With the Harris selection of Tim Walz conflicting with her makeover attempts and Trump’s continuing foot-in-mouth disease, this may truly be a race to the bottom. It’s kind of like watching a football game where both teams keep fumbling the ball back to their opponent. Unfortunate for them, but more so for the country.