It is a weird feeling to have a politician I strongly identify as a VP candidate.
It is a weird feeling to have a politician I strongly identify as a VP candidate.
Walz is an #Army#Veteran like me, he's and his wife are school teacher like my in-laws and sister in law. I'm heartend by his work on the Veterans Affairs committee because I get most of my healthcare from the VA.
As such I just donated again through Mastodon for Harris.
What stands out to me about Walz is his progression from high school lunch room supervisor to a governor who pushed for free school lunches for kids in his state. He saw a phenomenon, recognized it as a problem, then used his powers to work toward solving that problem. That's leadership.
He seems to tick all the right boxes for progressives, though it seems like his pick is similar in a way to Pence's role as VP for Trump. The idea seems to be to shore up support amongst the base and to cover what the other candidate may be lacking. For Harris, apart from her stance on abortion (which isn't controversial), I'm not sure that she has alot of progressive "street cred" that she can really point to, despite what Republicans will paint her as. He seems to be ok though, it'll be interesting to see how he performs in a debate against Vance, him asking if Vance will find the time to "get off the couch" was hilarious.
@paddirn@andy Walz is a progressive, but that's not the real value he brings to the ticket. He's also a rural, white, midwestern, gun-owning vet. Having that demographic on the ticket both shores up support amongst a critical swing-state demographic, while protecting against broadside attacks about "liberal costal elites" and bullshit like that.
@paddirn "expand your appeal" is the primary job of the VP pick. Outside of being considered competent to become president, you want to make more people vote!
Vance is really the outlier for the fact he doubles down on most of what Trump is.