Ideological soulmates as running mates

Both presidential candidates are confident enough to have picked one

So JD Vance and Tim Walz will be the vice presidential candidates this year. The two have almost nothing in common. Vance is a MAGA conservative. Walz is a hardcore woke leftist.

As these characterizations suggest, however, the selection of the two has something in common — a willingness by the presidential candidates to stick to their ideological guns. This, in turn, suggests overconfidence on the part of both candidates.

Donald Trump resisted selecting a running mate who might have broadened the scope of his appeal — Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, for example (though with Rubio there was the problem of his Florida residence). Instead, Trump doubled-down on pure MAGA.

Other things being equal, a presidential candidate will always pick a running who shares his or her ideology. But other things are seldom perceived to be equal, so candidates typically compromise some on ideology in the hope of boosting their appeal thought the selection.

Trump did this in 2016 when he picked a traditional conservative, Mike Pence, in order to shore up his support with the non-MAGA wing of his party.

That Trump did not compromise on ideology this time indicates to me that he’s confident he will win and doesn’t need help from a running mate.

Trump could reasonably believed this to true when he thought his opponent would be Joe Biden. But Trump must have known there was a good chance Kamala Harris would replace Biden. I assume Trump was confident he could beat Harris — a lightweight, after all — regardless of his running mate.

That confidence appears to have been misplaced. Trump still has fair chance of winning, but so does Harris.

As for Harris’ selection of Walz, this too suggests a confident candidate — one who believes she needs neither a Pennsylvanian nor a non-hardcore leftist to win this election. The Pennsylvanian, Josh Shapiro, probably fell by the wayside because he’s a Jew who supports Israel. For this reason, his selection would have alienated the Dems’ leftist base. But Harris had other non-hardcore leftists from whom to choose — Mark Kelly for example.

The pro-Democrat mainstream media will cast the selection of Harris as a shrewd play to gain support in “the heartland.” But Minnesota — or at least the parts of it where Democrats rack up big margins — isn’t part of the contested heartland. No Republican has carried Minnesota since native son Walter Mondale won it by a razor thin margin in 1984. (My friend Jim Dueholm, who lived in Minnesota at the time, assures me that Reagan would have carried the state if he had campaigned there.)

It looks, then, like Harris believes the race has turned decisively in her favor and that things will only get better for her thanks to Trump’s lack of restraint. Thus, she felt safe nominating someone whose woke-left ideology very closely resembles hers, even though he’s unlikely to broaden her appeal.

As with Trump, Harris’ confidence is probably misplaced. Polls suggest a very tight race. Harris still has to run on Biden’s record. She’s still at the mercy of events, including the possibility of a stock market crash, a big war in the Middle East, or both.

And she will still have to withstand examination of her record, including various unpopular left-wing positions on issues like crime, policing, and immigration. In addition, she and Walz will have to withstand an examination of his leftism.

The mainstream media will do its best to shield the two from that scrutiny. However the campaign ads presenting the reality will write themselves.

In my view, Trump’s momentum stalled with his selection of Vance and his acceptance speech at the convention, and was reversed with Biden’s withdrawal from the race.

Harris’ momentum may stall with her selection of Walz. If so, however, this is likely to occur in slow motion due to the media’s efforts to protect Harris and Walz.