I & I Editorial BoardThere’s a reason nobody expected far-left Kamala Harris to pick a far-left governor from a deep blue state as her running mate. It’s never worked.
In the wake of Jimmy Carter’s crushing defeat in 1980 and repeated Democratic losses thereafter, the party decided that to win presidential elections they had to at least appear as moderates.
Bill Clinton won by labeling himself a “new Democrat” and picked Al Gore, then a fellow moderate Southerner. Gore in turn tapped Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Barack Obama tried to position himself to the right of John McCain and ran with Scranton Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton picked Virginia moderate Sen. Tim Kaine to balance the ideological scales. Biden ran as a sensible centrist with a talent for working both sides of the aisle (and picked Harris more as an insurance policy against impeachment than anything else).
Which is why pundits across the board expected Harris – in what amounts to the first important decision she has made as presidential candidate — to pick a more mainstream governor with cross-party appeal from a swing state like Arizona or Pennsylvania.
But the radicalized, hopeless woke Democratic party couldn’t bring itself to OK anyone like that. So instead, Harris decided to “balance” the ticket with another leftist.
As Axios reported today: “Many Republicans expressed surprise and relief at the choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, readying renewed ‘radical’ liberal attacks.”
No matter, it goes on, because “Walz has backing from many influential Democratic voices, including the progressive wing of the party which has at times turned on President Biden, especially over his handling of the war in Gaza.”
Just how far left is Walz? On a recent fundraising call, he said “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” Bernie Sanders enthusiastically endorsed him.
We won’t bother to detail Walz’s tattered record as governor here — his mishandling of the George Floyd riots, the COVID lockdowns, his reckless tax-and-spend policies, support for unlimited abortions, the fact that his state was involved in one of the biggest COVID relief fraud schemes, or that he recently approved a budget that hiked spending 38% and taxes by $10 billion.
Nor will we dwell on his multitude of failures as governor – overseeing a rampant increase in crime, high energy prices, tumbling student test scores, a weak economy, and the resulting exodus of people from the state — which Powerline’s John Hinderacker, who lives in Minnesota, does to devastating effect.
We will let others detail all that.
What we will say is this:
Either Democrats are supremely confident that they can beat Donald Trump and see this as their golden opportunity to import Venezuelan-style socialism into the U.S., or the party has completely lost touch with reality.
We just hope voters haven’t lost touch with reality. Because the best thing to happen to this country would be for them to hand the radical team of Harris-Waltz a Jimmy Carter-scale defeat this November. Maybe that will smack some sense into the Democratic party.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
By doubling down on ideology, and at great risk of being found out by moderate Americans this move is a test of the character and education of the nation. Will it go the way of Rome or will it be a 1700’s America. An America defiant in the face of a centralized command and control government ready to asphyxiate its existence. Our “give me freedom or give me death” moment has arrived, will we recognize it?
I must commiserate with my Minnesota friends who were satisfied when they had Jesse Ventura as governor, and then got Walz within a decade.
I’m sorry; I tried to warn you.
And? We’ve crossed the Rubicon. A majority of Americans would vote to starve to death rather than vote Republican. Nominating a deranged crackpot three times in a row hasn’t been helpful.
I guess nominating a career criminal in 2016, a mentally-handicapped career criminal in 2020, and a cackling utter incompetent in 2024 is the crowning glory for the Democrat party.
I mean, he is leading in the polls…
If this ticket is elected, this nation will deserve everything that it gets. And, it’s going to be ugly.
Hi I&I – I completely agree that Walz and Harris are out of touch with a voter like me. However, this guy won re-election after “destroying Minneapolis”. So he’s not out of touch with California or Illinois or New York or NJ or every other blue state nightmare. Republicans need to forget about shouting Harris/Walz are out of touch with voters and keep hammering home the kitchen table issues and immigration/jobs issues which will attract voters who do not generally lean Republican. The campaign has to stop focusing on the 45% of us who are voting for Trump and focus on trying to attract 6% more of the voting public.
I believe that Harris (or her flunkies) picked Walz not only because she didn’t want to antagonize her “Death to Americans” base, but also because she wanted to make it less likely that she’ll be convicted if impeached.
You need 2/3 of the Senate to convict in impeachment. It’s hard for me to see any Republican (or even Democrat) vote for impeachment when the person who takes over (in this case Vice President Walz) is a socialist.
I believe he’s even admitted to proudly adhering to the anti-democratic and anti-capitalistic creed of Socialism.
Unless the MSM memory-holes his past statements and actions, even if Harris SHOULD be impeached, I don’t believe the Republicans (and certainly not Democrats) will dare impeach her.
Or even if they for some reason do impeach her they certainly won’t convict.
First off, the “democrat” party, ie communists, are so close to what they believe is their end goal of total power over the U.S. that they are are not hiding their disdain for our country’s constitution AND REASON(S) for founding. Can you imagine them admitting being socialists(communists more likely) in the 1960s? After all, the uber wealthy elites funding this overthrow of our democratic republic could VOLUNTARILY donate/give ALL their wealth to fund the socialist policies they shill for during election season(ie. all the time). But no they don’t do that because their intention is to further their power and wealth thru being part of the totalitarian elite ruling class of a nation rather than honestly compete in a real free market.
Second, after the blatant cheating they got away with to win the 2020 “presidential” election as well as the cheating they have been getting away with for decades and the fact that the election is looking to be close means they know they have enough USEFULL IDIOTS buying their lies that now is the time to go all out for the final takeover.
The people who describe socialism as ‘neighborliness’ have never lived under socialism, where your neighbor’s kids are party snitches, and you can’t say a word to them for fear of being denounced.
The bigger concern than the actual voters is the machines that count the ballots. If Kamala (who was so terrible she provided job security to Biden) can do the hiding routine, give only choreographed appearances and win a national election during desperately bad economic times that she created, you know the machines are bad. Now that Smartmatic is clearly involved in bribery and money laundering and Dominion is rumored to be no different, Americans are justified in doubting their government is democratically elected.