Conservatives are already branding Tim Walz, who demanded boys’ bathrooms in schools have tampon dispensers, as “Tampon Tim.” Walz is so far left that he actually made it legal not just for a woman to carry out an abortion after a baby is born alive but also to allow men to coerce women into having abortions.
Walz, likewise, allowed Minneapolis to burn to the ground before calling out the National Guard in the name of equity and racially discriminated in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, prioritizing “BIPOC” people over those with hypertension. Walz also set up a hotline so neighbors could report neighbors for violating lockdowns. He says socialism is neighborliness.
At least he is not a Jew.
Kamala Harris chose to placate the far left of the Democratic Party. It’s no surprise Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, etc. — the leading antisemites of the Democratic Party — have been the most excited by Walz’s pick. Harris’ first major decision on the campaign trail is a failure.
I saw that David French has said he’ll still vote for Harris because he thinks the GOP needs to be rid of Trump, and defeating Trump is necessary. I actually think the better play is for people like David to sit it out so that their numbers register for both parties to signal they’re tired of crazy.
Most people sitting in the middle might reconsider Trump given just how far left the Democrats’ ticket has become. If you really think Trump is a threat to democracy, you don’t double down on the left, but give hesitate voters a middle of the road normal person they can rally around.
However, this is up to the Trump campaign. They have to act fast.
As Leland Vittert and I discussed on NewsNation last night, here’s the reality of the calendar.
This week is the Harris-Walz rollout.
In two weeks the Democrats get their infomercial.
Then comes Labor Day weekend.
Voters start voting in Pennsylvania in the middle of September.
Meanwhile, Trump is doing a streaming show, a trip to Montana, and an interview with Elon Musk, with little in between. Trump’s team says they plan to do more streaming interviews, which is bizarre. The audience tends to be younger and every single one of you, whether you are willing to admit it or not, knows young voters don’t show up on Election Day. Democrats have been trying to rock the vote for years to no avail. Likewise, having Vance on the campaign trail instead of Trump isn’t really the best plan. There is meaningful, long term data, that a presidential candidate boosts turnout in states they visit. Clinton didn’t go to Erie, PA or to Wisconsin and her turnout was off. Trump went and his turnout was up. He won. She lost. Wisconsin is a place. TimZippy6501 on Twitch is not a place. It is a fiction in which fans hang out. But it is not where you’ll get the greatest return on investment for middle-aged independent swing voters — the people who’ll decide the election.¹
Also, the GOP ads need to start yesterday.
The Democrats have offered the GOP a golden opportunity to make the case that Democrats are too far left—a fiery but mostly peaceful ticket that is so committed to open borders that they even made the Walz short on the campaign sign (see below).
Execution and discipline are key here. The race is close. Harris has the bulk of the press corps on her side, and the clock is ticking. The bottom line is this: if MAGA cannot beat Ferraro/Mondale 2024, it needs to hang it up and let some other coalition on the right have a try.
Also, Tim Walz, when ordered to Iraq by the Army, quit, then campaigned using a rank he did not earn. It’s stolen valor. He made a big show of signing back up after 9/11, then bailed when actually sent into combat. Walz never served in combat, unlike JD Vance. Here’s an interview with the man who had to take Walz’s place in Iraq.
Frankly, I’m not surprised by the pushback to the above. But the pushback all comes from Twitter, where they are always online, and the Trump fans ask, “Did you watch the interview with Aidan whatshisname?” No, no, the hell I did not. Why? Because I’m a grown-ass man with a wife, two kids, a job, and a life with limited free time, and that free time is not going to be spent watching two hours of Trump and some guy I’ve never heard of. And that is exactly my point. The people who have time to watch that stuff either aren’t voting or already made up their minds. Meanwhile, the people who will decide the election don’t have time for that. They have time for soundbites and buzz from their friends who went to events or ran into the candidates glad-handing in town. If you must, at least do Joe Rogan to expand the margin to middle-aged undecided men. But this election is not going to be decided by twenty-somethings. It’s going to be decided by the forty and fifty year old people who come home haggard from a long day at work and watch the local news, where they think the anchors are still local and honest. And they’ll see the presidential campaign visit there, not the Twitch Stream.
