Learning to Walz won’t save Kamala Democrats should not overestimate their VP's power

This record is an important asset for Harris. Throughout her term, she has struggled to lift public approval of the Biden administration’s economic agenda, reinforcing perceptions she is a lightweight on the administration’s signature industrial, trade and development policies. Many progressives, meanwhile, worry she is too enmeshed with the donor class and will wobble on Biden’s efforts to support organised labour and rein in monopolies. Walz’s presence at the very least assuages some of those concerns, even if vice presidents are hardly known for influencing an administration’s economic priorities.

At the same time, his elevation also provides some insight into how the campaign views the battleground states, particularly so-called Blue Wall states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and the Sun Belt. In 2020, Arizona and Georgia padded Biden’s final total in the Electoral College, but only by razor-thin margins in each case. Some progressive strategists nevertheless believed these victories were a sign of things to come, and that Democrats needed to expand their support in the diverse metro areas and affluent suburbs of the South and West to make up for expected shortfalls in an ageing Midwestern Rust Belt. But Biden’s standing in the Sun Belt, especially Nevada and North Carolina, took a beating from inflation. As Biden’s poll numbers lagged behind Trump this spring before his fateful debate performance, it became evident that some combination of Midwestern states and Pennsylvania offered the clearest, and perhaps only, pathway to victory. By early July, however, even those odds of reaching 270 Electoral College votes had dwindled.

Harris appears to be a determined realist on this front. By ultimately declining to pick Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, another top contender for the VP slot, she has signalled her campaign is laser-focused on the swing states most in reach. Despite the challenges she may face as a female and biracial candidate, she recognises that the industrial Midwest still exerts a powerful hold on the liberal-Left psyche. In addition to Walz, Harris is therefore still expected to be aided on the campaign trail by two of her other potential running mates: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who were feted by pragmatic progressives for repelling MAGA opponents in the 2022 midterms.

Of course, should Harris make up Biden’s lost ground in the region over the next couple of weeks, her fundraising will undoubtedly swell. That would allow her to divert some resources back to the Sun Belt and make a concerted effort to win Georgia, where Democrats still have the best chance of cobbling together an “anti-Trump” coalition in the South. That strategy, in turn, would likely bleed the Trump-Vance ticket of campaign cash in states that it still expects to win, while leaving Walz to venture deeper into Midwestern swing counties rich in working-class votes.

The selection of Walz is not foolproof, however. While he coasted to re-election in 2022 by a margin of almost 200,000 votes, his first term was rocked by the George Floyd protests, which led to extensive looting and property damage in Minneapolis. Conservatives are again claiming Walz did not deploy the Minnesota National Guard soon enough to contain the chaos, while some Left-wing activists remain angry over the limited policing reforms pursued by the state’s Democratic establishment. In an election that will be won on tight margins, Walz will have to quickly prove he can parry these sorts of attacks on the Right and the Left and keep the focus on Trump’s unfitness for office.

Another potential liability concerns the way blue cities and states handled the pandemic. Though many progressives adhered to stringent protocols, extended school closures and remote-learning policies in some cases put the Democrats’ traditional urban coalition of affluent professionals, black and Latino workers, and teachers’ unions under strain. In particular, wage-earning parents who could not work from home struggled to adapt to shifting policies, and research now shows that learning loss and absenteeism have been greater in those districts that did not resume in-school learning sooner. Although not an extreme outlier, Minnesota was also no exception to these challenges. Hence, as much as Walz was selected to bridge divides in the Democratic coalition and win over disaffected independents, the party which relies on robust turnout in all cities could suffer unexpected defections or poor mobilisation in key districts due to divergent experiences of the pandemic.

To be sure, none of these vulnerabilities on their own are enough to drag down the Democratic ticket. Walz is the archetypal happy warrior of Midwestern liberalism, something the Democratic Party arguably needs more of. Still, it would be naive of progressives to discount the most obvious attack the GOP will deploy: that Harris is a “DEI” limousine liberal and Walz a feckless bleeding heart. Democrats are counting on Walz to deflect those volleys, but in the end the ticket will need more than Walz’s pugilistic talents to prevail in November.

In fact, Democrats should not overestimate the ways in which Walz “balances” the ticket. While Walz is expected to lend the campaign a much-needed everyman feel, the election will come down to the economic concerns that national Democrats have struggled to alleviate. Walz can help, but the top of the ticket needs to convey, with force, how it plans to tackle an across-the-board affordability crisis. As the party strives to unify a frayed coalition divided between pro-globalisation professionals, young identity-driven activists and progressive populists, it will take more than one man to show regular workers Harris has their interests at heart.

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Justin H. Vassallo is a writer and researcher specialising in American political development, political economy, party systems, and ideology. He is also a columnist at Compact magazine.

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