Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks at a rally in La Vista, Nebraska (Bonnie Ryan/AP)
Originally written for The Conversation:
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The fanfare and publicity surrounding Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s Vice-Presidential pick has sparked renewed interest as to whether the second person on the ticket makes any difference when it comes to the result of the election.
The conventional wisdom on the role and significance of the US Vice-Presidential office – in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s VP, John Nance Garner – is that it’s “not worth a bucket of warm spit”.
Garner’s experience is instructive. Having been Speaker of the House of Representatives he felt frustrated and sidelined as FDR’s Vice-President for eight years, eventually resigning to go back to Texas in 1941. Yet had he stuck with the job his reward would have been to become President when Roosevelt died in office in 1945.
Indeed, the chances of such a succession are actually quite high. Out of America’s 45 Presidents, nine assumed office unexpectedly: eight on the death of the sitting President, four of them due to assassination. Gerald Ford took office when Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate in 1974.
The dramatic and relatively late withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 race propelled his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate without a contested process, precisely because of her heir-in-waiting status.
The position of VP can be an important stepping stone to the Presidency and has been throughout US history. Fifteen vice-presidents, about one-third of the 46 Presidents, proceed to the top job. In the Democratic Party, all their recent Vice Presidents — Harris, Biden, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale — subsequently became their party’s choice to top the ticket.
The Significance of Tim Walz
The nominations of Walz and on the Trumpist side, J.D. Vance, speaks to the divided nature of America at this pivotal time in its history. In choosing Vance as his running mate, Donald Trump was doubling down on his America First populist message. Vance’s anti-internationalist, anti-abortion, pro-natalist stances are an attempt to appeal to core Trump supporters.
Remarks such as Vance’s attacks on “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” are aimed squarely at Trump’s base and the usually non-voting third of the American electorate who turned out to give him victory in 2016.
By contrast, Harris’s pick of Walz is the more traditional strategy of choosing someone to balance the ticket. As a cosmopolitan, multi-racial lawyer from California, she chose a midwestern, gun-owning, pheasant-shooting, army veteran who has spent nearly all of his life as a social studies teacher in Minnesota.
But, importantly, Walz is much more than these headline credentials. He is a choice designed to appeal to Trump voters from midwestern states like his own — people who feel they have been left behind by the growing inequalities of 21st-century America.
As Governor of Minnestoa, he has implemented tax reform credits for childcare worth up to $1,750 for each child of medium income families. He has introduced universal free school meals, and paid sick and medical leave and workplace protections for Amazon workers and Uber drivers. To fund these initiatives, he imposed a statewide surtax of 1% on investment income and raised corporation tax on foreign-based revenues.
For Trump and Vance, these policies are dangerous examples of socialism. But in Minnesota they succeeded in getting Walz re-elected as governor in 2022. The Democratic party also controls the offices of Secretary of State, Attorney General, and both chambers of the state legislature.
Uncle Veep
Not only is Walz the avuncular and popular midwestern everyman, he also represents an effective policy response to the grievances and frustrations that led to the growth of Trumpian populism in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. In choosing Walz, Harris was signalling her support for his form of progressive policies. The selection helped unify the Democratic Party’s coalition, and signalled how Harris would govern as President.
This is a choice which has proved popular across social media, but is has also helped to build on the energy and enthusiasm of Harris’s own honeymoon period at the top of the democratic ticket.
In choosing Walz, Harris made a calculation that this little known governor could appeal to enough mid-western voters to swing the key rust belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in November’s election. If she fails in this task, she may well have inadvertently also selected the future of the Democratic party for the next election in 2028.
