As we enter the post-Labor Day phase of the presidential campaign, self-reflection is in order. It’s time to confess the one big swing and miss I made this summer: My contention that Kamala Harris’s selection of Tim Walz was a mistake .
If you watched Walz rally the union vote in Wisconsin over Labor Day weekend, his contribution to the campaign is obvious: After Donald Trump found a way to miraculously out-populist Democrats in 2016, Walz is the key to making sure Trump doesn’t repeat the trick in 2024.
Just as Harris seems hell-bent on beating back Trump’s encroachment into blue-collar populism (see her plan not to tax tips , among other positions she has switched or coopted), Walz is the personification of Harris’s strategy to pander to the populists — and cast Trump as Gordon Gekko.
Consider Walz’s remarks on Monday about Trump: “He’s sitting down at Mar-a-Lago … and this was his exact quote, he’s talking to a bunch of folks at Mar-a-Lago: ‘You’re rich as hell, and we’re gonna give you a tax cut.’ At the same time, he was telling workers they get paid too much already. That’s who this guy is.”