The best political case against Walz is that Minnesota is not really a battleground. If Harris had chosen Pennsylvania’s Shapiro instead, she would have been maximizing her odds of winning the most important state in the Electoral College.
But the idea that vice presidents deliver their swing states is at best overstated — and most likely probably wrong. My colleague Eric Levitz recently did a deep dive into the political science research on the subject, and the weight of the evidence strongly suggests that vice presidents don’t really have much of an effect on the ultimate presidential outcome.
By contrast, there’s at least some reason to believe that Walz’s unique ability to appeal to all factions of the Democratic Party might help Harris down the stretch.
The strongest Trump attack on Harris, at least to date, is that she’s too far to the left. Scored by one (dubious) metric as the most liberal member of the Senate in 2019, she has drawn Republican flak for previous positions ranging from Medicare-for-all to banning fracking to decriminalizing border crossing.
In response, Harris has tacked to the center: repudiating many of her past unpopular positions in favor of more moderate stances that align better with mainstream public opinion. The message that Republicans are “weird” is designed to play up the notion that she represents the vast American middle while Trump is the true extremist.
Walz helps make this message more credible.
A very ordinary-seeming Midwestern white guy, he literally invented the “weird” attack on Trump and J.D. Vance. While he’s recently played up his progressive accomplishments, he’s also demonstrated the ability to take centrist positions when it’s politically convenient. He has a talent for winning over people with displays of empathy, including speaking about Trump supporters as relatives and neighbors. In his Walz endorsement, Sen. Manchin says, “I can think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic Party.”
Moreover, his celebrity status on the left gives Harris crucial running room to keep up the strategic centrism. By handing her left flank a victory, she’s theoretically built major credibility that she can spend to defray a left-wing revolt over some of her more centrist stances.
From Harris’s perspective, the Walz pick is an exercise in coalition management. It helps her keep the Democratic base united and energized while continuing her new moderate outreach to general election swing voters. If she’s right, the choice might end up mattering more in Pennsylvania — and elsewhere — than attaching herself to Shapiro’s brand.
—Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent
