It has not been a month since the former U.S. President Donald Trump was shot at, in an assassination attempt and just more than a month since a disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden helped Mr. Trump to gain a decisive 2-3 point advantage in national opinion polls in the run-up to the presidential elections in the country. Yet, after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race, following a push by his own party leaders and adverse opinion about his faculties – the 81-year-old President has been prone to verbal gaffes and memory slips – and following the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, the race has seemingly been upended. Ms. Harris now leads Mr. Trump in most national polls by at least a point (and close to three points in weighted polls according to forecasting models such as the one maintained by ace pollster Nate Silver).
Editorial | Healing a nation: On Kamala Harris and the U.S. Presidential race
Mr. Trump’s campaign would point out that Ms. Harris’s lead was narrow and in any case, national polls aren’t that pivotal as polls held in “swing States”. After all, the presidential election’s winner needs a majority of votes in the U.S. Electoral College (i.e more than half of the 538 votes), which means that the swing States – where both the Democrats and the Republicans are competitive – become crucial in (over)determining the winner. Interestingly, Nate Silver’s model shows that in nine swing States – Pennsylvania (Ms. Harris leading by one point), Wisconsin (by 1.4), Michigan (2.4), Georgia (trailing by 1.2 points), North Carolina (-2), Arizona (-1.3), Nevada (-0.5), Florida (-5.5) and Virginia (4.7) – Ms. Harris is leading in four and trailing in five, but those leads are enough for a path towards a majority in the electoral college. Wins in these States where Ms. Harris leads in the polls, will give her exactly 270 votes as against 268 for Mr. Trump, provided and if as expected, the Democratic strongholds are retained.
Still, this upturn in fortunes since Mr. Biden dropped out, has only made Ms. Harris competitive and not ensured a thoroughgoing victory. In such a tight contest where every margin matters, choices made by the candidates such as the running mate – the vice presidential candidate – are of consequence.
Vice presidential (VP) candidate choices are primarily made keeping in mind factors such as compatibility with the head of the ticket (political, ideological and personal affinity) and the accretion of support. Many Democratic strategists and commentators wanted Ms. Harris to choose a VP candidate from a competitive swing State, so as to enhance her chances of a victory in that State. The popular choice was Governor Josh Shapiro, a charismatic moderate from Pennsylvania, a key swing State. Even though polling boosts through vice presidential candidates are generally minimal, even the possible 0.5 to 1 point bump could have been useful for Ms. Harris, earning her vital electoral college votes in a narrow path towards victory. Or so the argument went.
Walz ticks a lot of boxes
But Ms. Harris threw what is called a curveball in baseball terms, choosing the less-known Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz as her VP candidate. The factor that went into this choice was a relatively simpler one – “balance”. Mr. Walz is an affable Democrat leader with experience as a former military man with the U.S.’s National Guard followed by a career as a social science teacher and a football coach, before entering politics by taking the electoral plunge as a Congressman from Minnesota’s District 1 in 2006.
After a decade in the House of Representatives and with a relatively moderate record, Mr. Walz went on to become the Governor of his State, and is now serving his second term in the post.
As Governor, Mr. Walz implemented a slew of progressive measures in recent years which include making abortion legal at all stages of pregnancy in Minnesota and access to reproductive health care, major gun control measures, paid family, medical and sick leave for workers, allowing immigrants of any status in Minnesota to obtain drivers’ licenses, restoring voting rights for former felons and most importantly, providing free breakfast and lunch for school children in public schools in the State. These measures have endeared him to progressives, who expect such policies to be implemented country-wide.
As a “progressive doer”, and a moderate politician who has shown the ability to work with Republican representatives to pass legislation, besides being a loyal party man, Mr. Walz has managed to get the support of all ideological factions of the Democratic Party and beyond, getting endorsements from fiscally conservative centrists such as West Virginia senator Joe Manchin to establishment Democrats such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to firebrand progressives such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent Senator Bernie Sanders.
Apart from his work, his rural origins, having been born into a farming and working-class family in Nebraska and an everyman image provides the Democrats a VP candidate with whom a large section of the U.S. electorate can identify with, especially among a constituency that has increasingly preferred the Republican party in the last decade or so.
In the most recent national elections – the 2022 mid-term polls – Pew Research found that 68% of urban voters preferred Democrats as opposed to 30% for Republicans, the suburban vote was split 50%-48% in favour of Democrats, while the rural vote split 69%-29% in favour of Republicans. It is clear why the Democrats wanted to have a VP candidate with a rural background, to “balance” Ms. Harris on the ticket. After all, Ms. Harris is a former senator from California after extensive experience as an attorney from the city of San Francisco and her mixed ethnic heritage, born to immigrant parents – an Indian-origin mother and a Jamaican-origin father – is seen as an advantage that works with the multi-ethnic base of the Democrats.
Balance in the ticket
In choosing a white man with rural, working-class roots and an everyman image, Ms. Harris’s campaign managers achieved balance, something that even the Republicans did for their ticket.
One important reason for Mr. Trump’s choice of JD Vance, a 40-year-old junior Senator from Ohio, that leans Republican, was to address concerns about his age.
Can Mr. Walz’s presence on the presidential ticket overcome the gulf that separates rural voters and the Democratic Party in swing States at least? That is a difficult question to answer, as VP candidates only have a marginal effect as voters still look at the presidential candidate to firm up their choices. But there seems to be something about Mr. Walz that has energised the Democratic base as the campaigns have heated up, brought grudging respect from Republican partisans and an acknowledgement of endearment even among voters who have not heard of him before.
Even before his naming as the VP candidate, Mr. Walz was playing the role of an efficient “attack dog” taking on the Republicans. His terming the Trump-Vance combination and others of the Trump wing of the Republican party as “weird people” has resonated well with the Democratic base and independent voters as well. His electoral history – becoming only the second Democrat to win in Minnesota’s 1st district since 1891 and remaining a representative well into the urban-rural shift in the U.S. politics in the 2010s – suggests that Mr. Walz’s identifiability factor with the white working class could indeed help the Democrats as he makes it difficult for the Republicans to use the usual “class-war” tropes to attack his party.
The Gaza invasion
Another reason that contributed to the dampening of enthusiasm among Democratic voters for Mr. Biden was his government’s position on Israel’s invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s terror attacks in October 2023. The indiscriminate nature of the attacks, the continual displacement of the residents of Gaza and the severity of the suffering with thousands being killed and maimed on a daily basis combined with the fact that the U.S. continues to supply Israel with arms, ammunition and funds has alienated a lot of progressives, Arab-Americans and Muslim voters who had favoured the Democratic Party.
Ms. Harris has sought to redefine her ticket’s outlook to a more critical position on Israel unlike Mr. Biden’s and this also reflects in the fact that her campaign chose not to take the Jewish and pro-Israel Governor Shapiro as her running mate. Mr. Walz has evinced a relatively more nuanced position on the Gaza invasion.
While he unequivocally condemned the Hamas’s attacks and ordered Minnesota’s state flags to fly at half-mast, he also said that the “vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas and Hamas does not represent [them]”, and called for a permanent “working ceasefire” following the killing of thousands of Gazans by the Israelis. He went on to say in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio that “[y]ou can hold competing things: That Israel has a right to defend itself, and the atrocities of October 7 are unacceptable, but Palestinian civilians being caught in this… has got to end.”
This has encouraged Arab-American voters. For example, Abdullah Hammond, the mayor of Dearborn in Michigan State, told Arab News that “Picking [Mr. Walz] is another sign of good faith”.
Besides alienated Democratic supporters, those among the donor classes who fund the Democrats also seem to be enthused following Mr. Walz’s ascension to the ticket. Reports suggested that Ms. Harris’s campaign raised $41 million in funding just a day after announcing Mr. Walz as the VP candidate.
Republican reaction
Already the Republicans have sought to paint Mr. Walz as a “dangerous liberal” from the “radical left” besides going on to spew falsehoods about his military record as Mr. Vance did recently. This is right out of the Donald Trump playbook of using lies and insulting epithets to characterise his opponents and to vitiate the contest to obfuscate the policy differences between the candidates. Aided by a vast conservative apparatus that includes television and social media, this has helped Mr. Trump build a narrative and a base for the Republican party under his leadership.
Yet the fact that despite an assassination attempt and a decision by an incumbent President to withdraw from the race, Mr. Trump trails narrowly in polls with only three more months to go for voting, suggests that the Democrats have landed a sweet spot with Ms. Harris’s candidacy and in her choice of a running mate. How the ticket manages the campaign, uses the new found energy among the Democratic base to turn out the vote, utilises Mr. Walz’s and Ms. Harris’s identities, backgrounds and experience to reach out to the diverse electorate in the U.S. and most importantly, tackles the already-ongoing attacks by Republican partisans and well funded Political Action Committees, will determine whether Ms. Harris will become the first woman to become the President of the U.S and waltz her way with Mr. Walz to the White House.
