The stolen valor arguments are a red herring, except to the extent that they amplify the (true) perception that Walz is a man of the left.
That might not normally be a huge problem in a VP candidate except that we don't know much about Harris. Her rollout and stump speeches are so devoid of content. She doesn't answer questions from reporters. What little we have heard is from staffers saying she no longer believes in positions taken four years ago without explanation of why.
So when Harris's first substantive decision is to pick a man of the left as her VP, we are left with the strong impression that she too is a person of the left. That is reinforced when even her stump speech talks about how she will make greedy landlords and corporations raise prices less. This and the fact that she may well have passed over Josh Shapiro to appease the anti-Israel left suggests that a president she would move the government left in ways that Biden would not. I tend to think she is too much of a political hack to do this out of conviction, but it doesn't matter why she does it. The implications are frightening no matter *why* she does it.
I (like you I suspect) was ready to give Kamala a shot as she reintroduced herself. I thought, if she is a hack, maybe she will chase the center. Not ideal, but better than Trump. No longer. I won't vote for a major party presidential candidate, but if I had to, before the Walz pick I would have voted for Harris, but now I would vote for Trump. Trump is now the devil I know.
I don't pretend to be representative of *any* class of voters, but I do think the Walz pick defines Harris much more than most VP picks-- and in ways that are not good for Harris getting moderate voters to choose her.
Any chance that this works in reverse? By picking more of a leftist VP, could it give her room to run back to the center? I've seen other people mention this, but I'm not an expert.
It should be said that obviously that hasn't happened (at least not by en masse) yet.
Maybe. I agree she could overcome a lot of this with a Sister Soulja moment this week. But the problem for her with any of this is that we don't really have any idea if how she would govern and when that is the case, even small signals can be defining in a way that is hard to get out from later.
The stolen valor arguments are a red herring, except to the extent that they amplify the (true) perception that Walz is a man of the left.
That might not normally be a huge problem in a VP candidate except that we don't know much about Harris. Her rollout and stump speeches are so devoid of content. She doesn't answer questions from reporters. What little we have heard is from staffers saying she no longer believes in positions taken four years ago without explanation of why.
So when Harris's first substantive decision is to pick a man of the left as her VP, we are left with the strong impression that she too is a person of the left. That is reinforced when even her stump speech talks about how she will make greedy landlords and corporations raise prices less. This and the fact that she may well have passed over Josh Shapiro to appease the anti-Israel left suggests that a president she would move the government left in ways that Biden would not. I tend to think she is too much of a political hack to do this out of conviction, but it doesn't matter why she does it. The implications are frightening no matter *why* she does it.
I (like you I suspect) was ready to give Kamala a shot as she reintroduced herself. I thought, if she is a hack, maybe she will chase the center. Not ideal, but better than Trump. No longer. I won't vote for a major party presidential candidate, but if I had to, before the Walz pick I would have voted for Harris, but now I would vote for Trump. Trump is now the devil I know.
I don't pretend to be representative of *any* class of voters, but I do think the Walz pick defines Harris much more than most VP picks-- and in ways that are not good for Harris getting moderate voters to choose her.
What is funny is that a lot of my readers have been mad with me for saying that I know people (like you) who feel this way.
Any chance that this works in reverse? By picking more of a leftist VP, could it give her room to run back to the center? I've seen other people mention this, but I'm not an expert.
It should be said that obviously that hasn't happened (at least not by en masse) yet.
Maybe. I agree she could overcome a lot of this with a Sister Soulja moment this week. But the problem for her with any of this is that we don't really have any idea if how she would govern and when that is the case, even small signals can be defining in a way that is hard to get out from later.