After Walz Pick, Kamala Can No Longer Deny She’s A Radical

Prior to two weeks ago, Kamala Harris’ political career was defined by two things: Being America’s most liberal senator and the most unpopular vice president since we started polling.

The popularity problem was easy enough to solve. After she was dubiously installed as the Democratic standard bearer, the media charm offensive and meme onslaught began. Harris now has a degree of superficial popularity such that she’s not the toxic figure she was a few months ago.

Of course, that could change. Incredibly, Kamala Harris captured her party nomination through a bizarre process before she even answered a single question from a reporter. Everything Harris has done so far has been scripted and staged, and the voting public hasn’t been confronted with her off-putting demeanor and legendary verbal vapidity. You can bemoan how unethical and artificial this P.R. campaign was, but so far it’s been effective enough.

That leaves the problem of Kamala’s radical politics. Whitewashing her record here is no easy feat. Her legislative record as a senator is hard left — everything from trying to mandate racial quotas to legalizing squatting. Then her aborted presidential campaign in 2020 found her publicly supporting everything from banning fracking to abolishing private health insurance.

Her current campaign’s way of getting around this problem is almost admirable in terms of it’s brazenness. They’re just issuing generic statements announcing Harris has flip-flopped on several major issues which happen to be toxic in swing states such as illegal immigration, single-payer healthcare, and fracking. She still isn’t personally answering any questions about how these major reversals came about, and in response the media is happy to adopt the most favorable framing on her behalf.

In some respects, this is reminiscent of the way Obama was dishonestly sold to voters in 2008. But unlike Harris, Obama was smart, verbally fluid and explained his supposed pragmatism repeatedly in a way that was convincing to voters. In this respect, his 2004 “Red States and Blue States” Democratic convention speech that launched him to national prominence is arguably the best political speech of the last twenty-five years; it’s just too bad Obama’s record as president renders the whole thing almost entirely insincere in retrospect.

Enter Tim Walz. There’s a lot to be said about why he was chosen. Even CNN pundits are openly saying that the selection of Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is evidence of the fact antisemitism dictates who can be on a Democratic ticket. He also has a modicum of charisma, ensuring he’d outshine the lightweight Harris.

Shapiro would have been an asset to the ticket in ways Walz is not. He is a popular governor in a state that Harris needs to win. A case can be made Shapiro, who appears to have studied Obama so closely he’s even copied his unique speaking style, also adopted an Obama-style pragmatism to get elected. (And like Obama, Shapiro was also insincere in his pragmatism — he was famously in favor of school choice programs until he got elected.)

Walz, on the other hand, is very liberal and has the governing record to match. There’s no honest way to massage what he’s about. Here’s what the Minnesota Legislature passed, with Walz’s enthusiastic support, just last year:

— All limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy were repealed, as were laws requiring doctors to treat infants born alive after an abortion. References to “women” in the new laws were replaced with “pregnant people”.

— Minnesota declared itself a “refuge” for transgender surgeries and therapies for minors. Gender surgery will now to be publicly funded.

— Public and charter schools are mandated to teach “ethnic studies,” and school boards are instructed to adopt “antiracist” curricula and teach “the history of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.”

— Drivers’ licenses and state-funded health care are now available for illegal immigrants.

— Private religious colleges are forbidden to “require a faith statement” from enrolling students.

— Convicted felons now have the right to vote before completing parole or probation.

And that’s just a straightforward description of what happened. The details and politics of what’s happened in Minnesota are even more radical than they sound. And let’s not forget that Walz was governor of Minnesota during 2020, when he openly sympathized with the rioters that destroyed Minneapolis, who he enabled by refusing to call out the National Guard for days. When asked about what was going on, he actually tried to blame the riots on “white supremacists.”

Despite this, the media are falsely portraying Walz as some affable Midwestern guy with broad appeal. The groupthink has settled on the word “folksy” to describe him. As a former high school teacher and National Guardsman (albeit with one with a dubious and cowardly record) who got elected to Congress in a district that voted for Trump by a decent margin, there will be those arguing that Walz has some appeal to the blue collar voters that a San Francisco liberal such as Harris might alienate.

But to put this in terms that a “folksy” person might understand, that dog won’t hunt. If Walz ever possessed such an appeal, that was a long time ago. The results of the 2022 gubernatorial election suggests Walz isn’t going to help attract the Midwest swing state voters Harris needs. By contrast, Walz has been enthusiastically championed by the most radical members of Congress.

The media has already let Harris get away with all but lying about her record, and they will do their level best to make sure Walz gets the same treatment. But the fact is that the selection of Walz strongly reinforces the idea that if Harris is elected, their White House will embrace a hard left politics. Walz can’t run from his record, and with Harris choosing him for the ticket, she can no longer deny she’s the radical liberal she’s always been.

Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator