Tim Walz

Saturday

Cockburn

AOC sets the stage for herself at Pennsylvania Harris-Walz rally

State College, Pennsylvania Cockburn wandered curiously up a bustling College Avenue in State College yesterday toward the State Theatre, where Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was set to take the stage and stump for the Harris-Walz campaign. He was waylaid along the way by a group of Republicans waving flags and ringing a cowbell alongside a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump. The “counter-protesters,” as they described themselves, were garnering numerous supportive honks and thumbs-up from cars driving by. They told Cockburn only one person had yelled an obscenity. So much for the Divided States of America! Down the street, two lines had formed half an hour before AOC’s scheduled showtime.

aoc

Wednesday

Teresa Mull

Kamala creaks in hard-hitting Fox News interview

Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Fox News’s Bret Baier for a half-hour interview in which Baier politely took no prisoners, pressing Harris on the issues most voters cite as their top concerns. Harris took almost zero accountability for the Biden-Harris administration’s failures and offered few answers on her specific policy positions, pivoting instead to besmirching rival Donald Trump and provide offerings from her platitude grab-bag. Baier hit the ground running by asking Harris how many illegal immigrants she thought her administration has released to date — “One, 2 million?

bret baier fox news

Saturday

Amber Duke

Hunters laugh off the Harris-Walz campaign effort to win their vote

Avid outdoorsmen are slamming a new political coalition formed by the Harris-Walz campaign aimed at winning their vote in the 2024 presidential election. “Hunters and anglers want to support Harris-Walz as much as the fish and game want to be eaten,” one Maryland-based hunter who recently bagged a state record bear chuckled to The Spectator. Governor Tim Walz kicked off the “Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz” group on Friday with an article placed in Outdoor Life magazine. The coalition is described as “a new national organizing program to engage, mobilize a broad coalition of sportspeople, conservationists and rural and gun violence prevention voters in key states across the country.

hunters Embroidered campaign hats of US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Friday

The Spectator

Obama pitches black men on Kamala Harris

Former president Barack Obama made his pitch on Thursday to black men on why they should vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing them of having hang-ups about voting for a woman. Obama stopped off at a Harris campaign office in Pittsburgh ahead of a rally in the city and said he wanted to “speak some truths” to black men as recent polls show former Donald Trump doing comparatively well with the group.

Cockburn

The Gretchen Whitmer chip video IS the Democratic message for 2024

Early voting has started and the efforts to sway undecided voters are growing more unorthodox as we head toward Election Day. Donald Trump deconstructed the art of the dismissive nickname on Andrew Schulz’s podcast; Kamala Harris likewise partook in a much-vaunted “media blitz” through the friendly studios of The View, Call Her Daddy, Stephen Colbert — and the slightly more testing environs of 60 Minutes. Dem VP pick Tim Walz is also kicking off what Politico bills as a “man-focused media blitz,” which comes across a bit Harvey Fierstein. As for high-profile Harris backers?

Thursday

Charles Lipson

CBS: from the Tiffany Network to the cheap discount bin

Once upon a time, in a land faraway, CBS was called the “Tiffany Network.” The network’s glittering jewel was its news division. This is the story of that division’s decline and fall, driven by partisan goals and leftist ideology. CBS News gained its fame in the 1940s, under the leadership of Edward R. Murrow, who not only painted a vivid word-picture of London during the Blitz, but also recruited the best broadcast journalists in the business. For decades, they formed the core of CBS News, first on radio and then on television. That tradition continued through the 1960s, when tens of millions of Americans turned to Walter Cronkite for an honest report of the day’s news. If the newscast included editorial comments, as it sometimes did, they were offered by Eric Sevareid.

CBS
Ben Domenech

Kamala thought the vibes could save her

Welcome to Thunderdome, where the vibe is Miller High Life — which should only ever be enjoyed in a longneck as befitting the champagne of beers — and a Kamala Harris campaign that is turning from ebullience to despondence in short order. As my colleague Amber Duke and I discuss in the latest Thunderdome podcast, the refrain is a simple one: the joy is gone. The summer vibes that once sent a thrill down the pant-legs of everyone on the set of Morning Joe, including Mika and her lower-T colleagues, are now reduced to a point of constant contention: what is Kamala doing wrong — and how can she right the ship? And: why can’t Tim Walz be more like Josh Shapiro? And, even more: why won’t Joe Biden just shut up?

Tuesday

Paul du Quenoy

Saturday Night Live is helping Trump

“Me and Vice President Harris are the same!” concluded Saturday Night Live veteran Dana Carvey, in character as Joe Biden, when he returned to NBC’s legendary sketch comedy show for the first episode of its fiftieth anniversary season. After Carvey, who left SNL’s regular ensemble in 1993, uttered those politically unhelpful words, former cast member Maya Rudolph, playing Kamala Harris, nervously gave him the bum rush off stage, only for him to wander back on to smell her hair — one of Biden’s stranger campaign trail moves — before the two delivered the show’s signature, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” line to a cheering studio audience, millions of viewers at home and millions more who (like me) caught it later via social media streaming.

saturday night live

Monday

The Spectator

Trump returns to site of first assassination attempt

President Donald Trump triumphantly returned to Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday — exactly twelve weeks after an attempted assassin shot Trump in the ear, killed a rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, and injured several others.Trump previously promised he would go back to finish his rally in Butler, and he did indeed show up at the same spot where he was very nearly killed, kicking off the event with an acknowledgment that the last time he was there, his speech was cut short. “As I was saying...” Trump said to cheers and laughter. He referenced the famous illegal immigration chart that likely saved his life, as he turned his head to look at it at the exact moment the shooter fired, ensuring the bullet grazed his ear and did not go through his head. “I love that chart.

Friday

Dave Seminara

Vance proved he has what it takes to lead the GOP

The media told us that Trump made a colossal blunder in picking JD Vance, the childless cat lady hater and impostor hillbilly, as his running mate. It sure didn’t seem like it on Tuesday night. Neither he nor Walz had an easy brief — Trump is a polarizing character with a lot of baggage and Harris is a grating, flip-flopping, vacuous empty suit with an unclear agenda and a track record of incompetence. I expected Vance to come out swinging, but was surprised at how deftly he was able to bloody his opponent while remaining calm, collegial and likable at the same time. Its been hard for me to watch Trump debate for a long time now. Sure, he did fine against Biden in July, but that was about as challenging as striking the final blow on a half-shattered piñata.

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Kamala Harris embraces a Liz-Cheney-sized mistake

Welcome to Thunderdome. Liz Cheney is campaigning with Kamala Harris today in Wisconsin at Ripon, known as the birthplace of the Republican Party at the Little White Schoolhouse. It was there in 1854 at a church meeting that Whig and Free Soil Party members gathered to form a “great irresistible Northern party, organized on the single issue of the non-extension of slavery.” This was even then pretty aggressive language for the Episcopalian who called the meeting, but not for Horace Greeley, who publicized it to the nation. Whatever Liz Cheney says today about how important it is to elect Kamala Harris will no doubt equal the historical significance of that moment, at least according to Rachel Maddow.

Wednesday

The Spectator

GOP falls in love with J.D. Vance

Republicans who were worried about former president Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate are eating crow after Vance’s dominant performance in last night’s vice-presidential debate over Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Immediately after the pick, GOP commentators and operatives feared that the narrative that Vance was “weird” and other Democrat-backed opposition research against Vance could hurt the ticket. But Vance proved himself as an effective messenger of the Trump agenda and demonstrated his ability to be a steady and, well, normal politician, a potentially important contrast to Trump’s sometimes off-putting personality for suburban and independent voters. Conservatives who pushed for Vance, including Donald Trump Jr.

Ben Domenech

A debate night for Vance to remember and for Walz to forget

It’s not always easy to tell who wins a political debate. Sometimes performances need time for people to process them and have key moments emerge that connect with American voters. And sometimes you witness a debate performance so dominant, so one-sided, that one party in the spin room is left arguing more out of hope than belief that debates just don’t matter.  Tonight was one of those nights for Democrats — and this one wasn’t even close. J.D. Vance was smooth, empathetic and emphasized his life experience with hardship and poverty. Tim Walz was nervous and unsteady from the opening question and didn’t seem to find his footing until more than an hour into the debate.

Wednesday

The Spectator

GOP demands investigation into Zelensky visit

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky just stopped by an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania — which CNN points out is President Joe Biden’s hometown.Now, a group of House Republicans is demanding answers about what taxpayer dollars and US resources were used in what they allege was essentially a campaign event for Democrats.The Hill reports that this past Sunday, Zelensky “was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 plane.” He was also protected by the US Secret Service.

Grace Curley

Tim Walz faces a Yale Law reckoning

The Harris-Walz team has a plan to coax Trump into another debate. According to NBC News, the Democratic National Committee will accuse Trump of being a chicken in the hopes of getting under his skin: “The chicken billboards, which will first appear at Trump’s rally Monday in Indiana, Pennsylvania, include a digitally altered image of Trump in a chicken suit alongside the words ‘There’s no debate: Donald Trump’s a chicken.’” The tactics here aren’t subtle, but considering Trump’s penchant for taking the bait, it just might work. But if Operation Chicken lays an egg, then the last big televised event of this campaign season is next week’s vice presidential debate, when Ohio senator J.D.

Thursday

Ben Domenech

An election stuck in the trenches

Welcome to Thunderdome. In the space of four weeks, the incumbent president was dethroned from his nomination and replaced by his running mate in a behind-the-scenes coup led by the most powerful person in the party (who still insists on the absurd claim it was an “open primary”). Within that time, the nation witnessed the first of not one but two assassination attempts targeting his opponent, the former president who has faced a thermonuclear level of lawfare in an attempt to seize everything he owns and put him behind bars.

tim walz weirdness polling
Roger Kimball

A vindication for our polling obsession

One of the entertainments that every election season brings revolves around polling. Every season seems to bring more and more and more frequent polls. The measure registered voters and (for all I know) unregistered ones. They register people who are designated “likely voters” and they claim to filter for gender(s), age, race, ethnic back, party affiliation or non-affiliation, ZIP code, income, and favorite pastimes, and what seems like a thousand other things.    Like everyone else who is interested in politics, I pay fretful attention to the results of these surveys and questionnaires beginning about a year out from the election itself.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Does Trump’s platform say he would ban IVF?

The Kamala Harris campaign held a press call on Tuesday morning in which they claimed Republicans and former president Donald Trump are “attacking” access to in vitro fertilization. An email sent out advertising the call said, “Donald Trump’s own platform — linked on his campaign website — could effectively ban IVF and abortion in states nationwide.” I found this to be surprising because I read Trump’s platform — linked on his campaign website — when it became official the week of the Republican National Convention. Of course, Trump has also publicly said that he supports IVF and wants to require insurance companies to cover the treatment. I double checked Trump’s platform just in case, and confirmed my suspicions.

Thursday

Spectator Editorial

The meme election

Each subsequent election seems to get more and more online. The Kamala Harris campaign, armed with a strategy devised by a few twenty-five-year-old women in a Bushwick coffee shop, thinks the election will be won by hiding the candidate away and replacing her with a string of memes and cringe slogans. Unfortunately, they may be right. When you have a candidate that has a problem stringing three unscripted sentences together into something coherent, you must find some other way to shove her across the finish line. That means spiriting her away from the press as much as possible, limiting speeches to only those with a teleprompter and changing your policy positions so many times that no one has any idea what you’re actually running on. Hey, it worked for Joe Biden.

election
Walz
Ben Domenech

Tim Walz’s Minnesota vibes

The first thing a Minnesota political activist tells me when I ask about Tim Walz is this: when he gets mad, he tends to spit when he talks. The blue-state governor’s version of Minnesota Nice leans hard on the aggressive side of passivity, with an abiding predilection for taking offense at questions that fall into the category of what most politicians expect. His superior on the Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris, responds to such queries with awkward laughter in an attempt to buy time for an answer. But for Walz, the very act of questioning is felt as an insult to his character, leading to an unleashing of bitter invective founded in righteous anger that will absolutely lead to a follow-up call from his staff, as it did for multiple people over his years in Minnesota politics.