Most observers were shocked when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was nominated to run as Kamala Harris’s vice president. While highly touted Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro had the possibility of moving Pennsylvania into the Democratic column, it is hard to see what Walz brings to the ticket.
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Some people refer to Minnesota as a swing state, the fact it that it is deeper blue that New York or Massachusetts. The last time Minnesota voted for a Republican for president was in 1972, and it was the only state that went Democrat in Ronald Reagan’s 49-state romp in 1984. Walz’s politics are hard left. He’s pro-BLM rioters, pro-abortion, pro-genital mutilation of children, and anti-police. His record in the Minnesota National Guard reeks of opportunism. According to his colleagues (Paid letter: The Truth About Tim Walz and Third command sergeant major corroborates story of Walz dodging deployment), he unceremoniously retired when his battalion was ordered to Iraq. Even though he portrays himself as a Command Sergeant Major, the truth is he never completed the required academic work to hold that rank and was retired with a one-grade reduction.
BACKGROUND: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Accused of Cowardice and Embellishment of Army Service Record by Former Peers
Walz has a DUI (his blood draw pegged him at .128 BAC), which is not something the “public health” and Karen wings of the Democrat party go for.
Shapiro is fairly moderate by Democrat standards and won by the blowout of 15 points in a state that has gone for the GOP in seven of the last eight elections. (A victory he owes to Donald Trump for endorsing possibly the only candidate worse than “Dr. Oz” in the 2022 election cycle.) Theoretically, he could put that state into play and convince a large number of unaffiliated voters that Kamala is not a dangerous leftist nutter.
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When you cut through all the underbrush, I think it comes down to one issue. Shapiro is Jewish.
The current Democrat coalition is pervasively antisemitic. The antisemitism isn’t localized to a few Ivy League campuses where antisemitism has been a strong undercurrent since at least the 1920s and the advent of “Jewish quotas.” It has become part and parcel of mainstream Democrat politics, with several out and proud Jew-baiters in the Democrat House Caucus. A major campaign was launched inside the Democrat party, called the “No Genocide Josh” campaign, to block Shapiro because he supports Israel, which, in this case, is a transparent proxy for attacking him for being Jewish. In a close-fought election, Kamala’s campaign couldn’t take the chance of the antisemites sitting it out.
There was also a danger of running a campaign in Michigan with a Jewish vice president who has served in some way with the Israel Defense Forces. Trump carried Michigan in 2016, the first Republican to win there since 1988. He lost by 2 points in 2020 after COVID destroyed election integrity. Angry “river to the sea” types refusing to vote for an observant Jew and vocal supporter of Israel could easily flip that state. And if Michigan flips to the GOP, barring a catastrophe, the election is over.
I think there is a third part of the equation that ties into the rampant antisemitism on the left more than the Israel-Hamas slugfest. Kamala’s husband is Jewish. There is no way that broad segment of the Democrat coalition that seems to believe that Jews are to blame for everything from crop failure to boils on the buttocks will campaign or vote for a ticket that would place two White Jewish men at the center of power. It isn’t equitable, it isn’t diverse, it isn’t inclusive, it isn’t intersectional, and it isn’t going to happen.
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Walz may stun me by being a dynamite campaigner, but he strikes me more as an old-style Soviet apparatchik than someone comfortable on the national stage. But no matter his talents, he got the nod for one reason: open antisemites now own the Democrat party.
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