A joke that American election observers have been repeating since Kamala Harris’ meteoric rise to the top of the Democratic ticket, is that, when it comes to choosing a vice president to accompany her on the ticket, she would have to find the whitest man in the entire United States. The joke is a reflection of how the balance works within the Democratic Party, a party that needs both young, progressive, urban, racialized people eager for structural change and white, suburban adults who are more conservative in their vision of the country to govern. Barack Obama needed Joe Biden. Joe Biden needed Kamala Harris. And now Kamala Harris has found her perfect target: Tim Walz.
The presumptive Democratic nominee chose the Minnesota governor, a walking stereotype of the American Midwest, as her running mate on Tuesday. An affable, cordial, humble old man with a strong sense of community won his first campaign in 2006 in a rural district against a Republican candidate who had served six consecutive terms. But behind Walz’s “Minnesota Nice” style and moderate appearance lies a particular skill that has catapulted him from being a relatively unknown governor (71% of Americans had never heard of him until this week) to the possible number two in the White House: getting on Donald Trump’s campaign’s nerves.
Over the past few years, Democrats have called Trump everything: dangerous, criminal, traitor, insane, rapist, disgusting… None of these attacks have worked well against a former president accustomed to reality television and with decades of experience insulting and being insulted. However, when Walz used the phrase “They are just weird” a week ago to refer to Trump and his team, something broke within the unflappable Republican campaign. The epithet went viral, and the conservative network Fox News cried foul, confirming to the Democratic Party that, this time, they had hit a nerve.
The appellation, especially when coming from a figure as folksy as Walz, seems to have worked because it simply and effectively encapsulates the outlandish Trumpian stances and behaviors that have been normalized over the past few years. Things like Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance describing childless women as “ladies with cats who are miserable with their own lives” or Trump saying that Kamala Harris “was Indian and suddenly became black .” By not expressing outrage, anger, or disgust—rreactions Trump supporters love—bbut simply describing them as “weird people,” Walz has found a way to make them seem out of touch with everyday American values.
This strategy has forced Trump and Vance to respond, often in a clumsy fashion. “They’re the weird ones! If you’ve seen her [Harris], with that laugh and everything, there’s something weird going on there,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. “No one has ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not weird,” he added. Unconvincing attempts at self-defense have only served to add fuel to the fire.
“Walz seized the moment and found a way to deliver a message to Democrats just when they were desperately searching for a new, clearer way to confront Trump-Vance,” Brian McClung, a Republican consultant in Minnesota, told Axios. That appears to have been the deciding factor in Harris choosing him over the polling frontrunner for the Democratic vice presidential nomination, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Democratic onslaught
The Trump campaign has plenty of reasons to be nervous. Harris’ arrival has been a huge boost after months of calm in which they perceived the race for the White House as practically won against an unpopular, weakened Joe Biden, whom they only had to point at and say “old.”
According to the latest Morning Consult poll, Harris leads Trump by four points nationally, a record for Democrats in the past year, with 48% support versus 44% for Republicans. This is the third consecutive week in which the pollster shows the vice president ahead of Trump, highlighting an increase in the mobilization of young and African-American voters, as well as greater confidence among women that Harris will better defend their interests.
This is not an isolated case: virtually all polls show Harris narrowing Trump’s lead, if not overtaking him, and her approval rating has continued to rise since she announced her candidacy. In an Economist/YouGov poll, Harris leads by two points, and in another Reuters/Ipsos poll, she is one point ahead. This week, in the election forecast by Nate Silver, probably the most famous pollster in the United States, he shows for the first time that the Democrats have a better chance of winning the White House than the Republicans: a very narrow 51%.
The vice president’s rise in the polls coincided with a return by Trump to the kind of aggressive, visceral rhetoric that characterizes him, but which he seemed to be holding back since the failed assassination attempt on him. During the Republican National Convention last July in Milwaukee, the already-confirmed candidate made a glimpse of a call for unity, stating that “there is no victory if you only win for half of America.” An unconvincing turn that was reversed as soon as Kamala Harris became the new rival to beat.
And while Democrats have finally found a name that makes Republicans nervous, Trump, the master of the insult, has shown a lack of originality and adaptation in finding ways to attack Harris. His insistence on labeling the vice president as a mere “diversity hire” and focusing comments on her race have left the candidate’s campaign with the perfect rebound, time and again: “What a weird comment.”
With just under three months to go until the election, the race is far from over. Polls show tie after tie in the handful of key states that will decide which candidate returns to the White House by a handful of votes. Republican candidates who thought they had the prize have a different narrative and enthusiasm than Democrats whose campaign has miraculously revived. Now, for the first time, there is a game. And with Walz’s arrival, we already knew all of the players.
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