The Other McCain

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Republicans Dodged a Bullet Today — and Van Jones Tells the Truth About Why!

Posted on | August 6, 2024 | Comments Off on Republicans Dodged a Bullet Today — and Van Jones Tells the Truth About Why!

Folks, if Donald Trump wins in November, today will be remembered as the day that the 2024 election shifted decisively in his favor. While vice-presidential picks rarely affect the outcome of an election (Thomas Eagleton being perhaps the most egregious exception to that rule), Kamala Harris could have made the Electoral College (EC) arithmetic very difficult for Trump if she had chosen Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Pennsylvania has 19 EC votes (tied with Illinois as the fifth-largest state) and Shapiro is so popular in the state, it would have made it effectively impossible for Trump to compete there. But snubbing Shapiro, Harris automatically puts those 19 EC votes in play. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz adds no such obvious advantage for the Democrats; in theory, his Midwestern appeal might help Harris in Wisconsin (10 EC votes) and Michigan (15 EC votes), but that’s not nearly as clear-cut as what the Shapiro/Pennsylvania play would have added.

And, of course, there’s the Jewish thing. A week or so ago, when the “short list” of VP contenders was much longer, my brother Kirby more or less predicted that Harris would not pick Shapiro, simply because such a choice would alienate the anti-Semitic segment of the Democratic Party’s coalition. I thought North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper might have a shot but, again, Kirby correctly predicted that wouldn’t happen, because Harris looks likely to lose, and Cooper doesn’t want that stain on his resumé. When the name of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was floated as one of the finalists, I was skeptical — really, a bald 60-year-old? — but then Walz was mentioned, and I was like, are you kidding me with this?

However much Harris might want to pander to the pro-Hamas college kids, and the “uncommitted” voters in Dearborn, surely, I thought, the advantages of picking Shapiro were obvious enough.

Hello, Jewish money? Not to play into any stereotypes here, but the Democratic Party collects many millions of dollars in contributions from Jewish donors every year, and with the current situation in the Middle East, one might think that Harris would wish to reassure those donors that the party was still pro-Israel. Because guess what? Trump was arguably the most pro-Israel president ever, and there’s no guarantee that all that money’s going to keep going to Democrats if Democrats are going to be sucking up to the anti-Jewish mobs we’ve seen at Columbia, Harvard and other elite universities. As much as losing Pennsylvania in one election would hurt Democrats, how much worse would they be hurt by alienating Jews permanently? So I was honestly startled this morning when it was announced that Harris had picked Walz and, of all people, CNN’s Van Jones shared my feelings:

Look, Josh Shapiro is a class act from beginning to end. He’s a rising star in this party. He’s done an extraordinary job. . . .
Republicans, they were chewing their fingernails down to the knuckle because they were afraid of a Josh Shapiro, they were afraid of a Mark Kelly, they’re not as afraid of [Walz] . . . [H]ere’s the challenge you’ve got in this party, and you know, people don’t want to talk about it — we got to talk about it.
On the one hand, you have a lot of young people who are concerned about Gaza. You have a lot of Muslims and Arabs and others, they have not felt seen by the Biden administration. You started hearing that genocide joke, that was building that was building and so those folks needed to have a candidate that they could feel comfortable with. This helps him in that regard. But you also have anti-Semitism that has gotten marbled into this party. You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot. But there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there and there’s some disquiet now and there has to be. How much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts in the party? So that’s going to have to get worked out. It’s going to have to get talked through.

Republicans are, of course, worried about the election, but we now have a lot less to worry about, thanks to Harris picking Walz.



 

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Category: Election, Kamala Harris, Minnesota, Pennsylvania

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