Kamala Harris caved to her liberal base and may have alienated moderates and Jewish voters by passing over pro-Israel Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in her running mate decision.
Harris’s selection of little-known, far left Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz showed her campaign is still controlled by Democratic progressives and is unwilling to make an uncomfortable move to the center.
The pick is just as uninspiring as Trump’s selection of conservative Sen. JD Vance, which is showing signs of being a bust.
Walz is Hillary Clinton’s Tim Kaine, a nondescript older white guy who has no presidential ambitions and won’t give Harris any battleground states.
Shapiro could have made history as the nation’s first Jewish vice president, but instead she has a 60-year-old running mate who is most known for labeling Donald Trump supporters as “weird.”
Minnesota is a solidly Democratic state that has given us presidential losers Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey and is often out of step with mainstream voters. It is the state that keeps electing extremist Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Walz, who served in the National Guard, is posing as a Midwestern moderate because he kind of looks like one — but in fact he is more to the left than Harris. Walz signed into law a liberal abortion bill and presided over one of the biggest scandals in Minnesota history — the ripoff of pandemic relief funds.
A scathing legislative audit found that the Walz administration’s lax oversight and failure to catch red flags led to the theft of $250 million in the state’s “Feeding our Future” pandemic relief program. Seventy people were charged in the scheme to steal COVID funds for food.
Walz is completely untested on the national landscape and could be prone to making major mistakes on the campaign trail, despite what the Harris campaign is telling us. His slow reaction to the riots in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder also could be fodder for Trump and Republicans.
The dynamic, younger Shapiro could have tilted Pennsylvania to Democrats and brought in voters from the center, especially Jewish voters. It would have been a bold choice but one that showed Harris is not kowtowing to the pro- Hamas crowd.
Was Shapiro, one of the reported two finalists for VP, just a smokescreen to show she was considering a moderate?
If so, the move could backfire by upsetting powerful Jewish voices in the party.
It appears as if Shapiro was rejected because he is Jewish and is a strong supporter of Israel. That appears to be the main reason Harris passed over the rising star in the Democratic party.
