Can one word make a difference? Having called the Republicans “weird”, the “governor of Minnesota, Hon Walshwho was chosen Tuesday as the vice presidential nominee by the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harrisstrengthened the current in favor of the Democrats, which was renewed when on July 21 the American president Biden withdrew his nomination in favor of Vice President Harris, who became the de facto presidential nominee.
Walsh’s move to call Republicans “weird” was especially clever because it shifted the Democrats’ criticism of their political opponents, which focused mostly on their divisive rhetoric, their racist positions, that they’re an existential threat to America—things existent -, in the fact that they are “strange”, in the sense of non-normal. As the “New Yorker” recalled, “a guy out of nowhere called Trump “weird”” when he invoked Hannibal Lecter, the maniacal killer in the film The Silence of the Lambs, at a campaign rally. The characterization was so apt and intelligible that the Democrats eagerly adopted it.
Tim Walsh, however, contributes much more than words to the Democratic campaign. Raised in a rural area, he restores the Democrats’ lost touch with the rural America of white Americans who did not attend elite universities, a small-to-middle America, like himself, that he felt the Democratic Party had forgotten.
On the left wing of the Democrats
Walsh has a reputation for being open-minded, always willing to talk to his political opponents, and politically he has shifted from the center to the left wing of the Democrats: he supports women’s right to abortion, he supports the distribution of free school meals for all students . He has also been a pioneer in the issue of gay rights since he was a football coach.
His outspoken nature, his rural background, combined with his twelve-year term as a congressman and highly successful governor of Minnesota, weighed in to favor Harris over the two other favorites for the position, Josh Shapirogovernor of Pennsylvania – a crucial, ambivalent State -, and the senator of Arizona, Mark Kelly. In the case of Shapiro, his exclusion is also due to some of his positions on the Hamas-Israel war. The Jew Shapiro is considered an extremist by some pro-Palestinian Democrats.
Ahead of the August 19-22 Democratic convention in Chicago, the Harris-Wallace duo began campaigning in Philadelphia on Tuesday and were expected to continue in the swing states of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia , Arizona and Nevada.
Second is Trump in the polls
Meanwhile, national polls show Harris leading at 48 percent to Trump’s 47 percent. The one-point margin may seem negligible, but it’s the first time the Democratic nominee has been ahead (this had never happened while Biden was running). By the end of July, the Republican campaign had raised $327 million, compared to $377 million for the Democrats. And a day after Walsh’s nomination was announced, Democrats said they had raised an additional $36 million.
Walsh’s selection creates an additional cause for concern among Republicans, as the Democrats’ “hillbilly” — the low-income, low-educated rural dweller — resonates more than their own “hillbilly,” the vice presidential candidate. J. D. Vanceknown for his best-selling autobiographical novel The Hillbilly Song. Polls show a nine-point drop in Vance’s popularity (40.8% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of him). On the contrary, already in the first joint campaign appearances of Harris and Walsh in Philadelphia and Michigan, the energy, the liveliness, the humor were much stronger and the gathered crowds much larger.
The ex-coach who doesn’t even drink coffee
In West Point, Nebraska, a rural town of only 400 inhabitants, 60 years ago Tim Walsh, the Democratic vice presidential candidate chosen by Kamala Harris, candidate for the US presidency in the November 5 election, was born. A social sciences graduate of Sandron State University in Nebraska, Walsh worked as a high school teacher, also taught English in China for a year in 1989 and coached American football teams.
He was first elected to Congress in 2006 and served in the US House of Representatives for 12 years. He was elected governor of Minnesota in 2018 and again in 2022. Walsh also served in the National Guard for 24 years, primarily contributing to natural disaster response, for which he was decorated.
Walsh owns a gun, but uses his guns to hunt pheasants. After 2018 and the massacre at a school in Parkland, Florida, where a 19-year-old man killed 17 people and injured 17 others, he changed his views on gun ownership, calling for stricter controls on the use of weapons, thus provoking the wrath of the powerful American National Rifle Association (NRA). An advocate of women’s rights, last March he accompanied Vice President Kamala Harris to an abortion clinic in Minnesota (it was the first time a US vice president visited such a clinic). He has spoken openly about the efforts he and his wife have made to have children. After seven years of trying, they had their daughter, who they named Hope, through IVF.
The vice presidential candidate has stopped drinking since 1995, when he was caught driving under the influence of alcohol. It should be noted that he doesn’t even drink coffee. He prefers the American soft drink Mountain Dew, as does the Republican vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance. That and his rural background are probably their only common points.
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