It was a sign of weakness when Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Harris needed to boost her street cred with the Democrat Party’s far left wing, and Walz’s antics as governor fit that bill much better than did Shapiro’s solid performance. Second, as was shown in her CNN interview, Harris is an immensely insecure individual, and Walz filled the bill of “emotional support animal” better than Shapiro. Finally, there was a need for a strong personality on the ticket. While Shapiro seems to be competent, for a leftist, there is nothing about him that screams ” manly.” Walz, with his presumed stellar career as an Army noncommissioned officer and his career as a teacher, principal, and high school football coach, was thought to fill the bill nicely.
“They saw him as a man’s man, and I think the idea was that he is somebody who could connect with these very alienated male voters who feel that the trend of national policy in recent years has been very much tilted in favor of women,” [Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University] said.
That might have had some relationship to reality until Walz’s abject cowardice and flirtation with Stolen Valor had him running from his military experience like a scalded dog, and his sponsorship of a high school “gay-straight alliance club” left many wondering why a grown man would want to get involved in the sex lives of his students.
A slew of new polls show that the Democrat bet on Walz to attract male voters has failed. Kamala Harris is losing the battle to win over male voters in a handful of critical states, and she’s not doing all that well with women.
Whatever manliness the Harris campaign hoped to evoke by bringing the cowardly, slovenly Tim Walz on board clearly is not working. Kamala is scoring worse with men nationally and in key swing states than that most unmanly of men, Joe Biden, did in 2020.