Harris Chose Walz. Here’s What She Should Do Next.The pick may have been a sop to progressives. But it could pave the way for movement to the middle.
My turn in the Triad hot seat today as JVL enjoys his week off. —Sam Stein
1. What Can Walz Do for You?In choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris has done something superficially similar to Donald Trump: She has supplemented her ticket by picking the contender preferred by her core base. In the weeks ahead, she has the opportunity to do something different: Use the VP selection to reorient her campaign, not retrench it. The Walz selection is being seen, predominantly, as a big victory for progressives—and for good reason. As the New Republic’s Grace Segers noted, his gubernatorial resume includes abortion protections, paid family and medical leave, a new child tax credit for low income parents, affordable housing, legalized recreational marijuana, universal school meals, and more. It is nirvana for liberals. Picking Walz will likely help the party maintain the enthusiasm it has experienced since Joe Biden ended his campaign sixteen days ago. But now, having placated her base, Harris should begin thinking beyond it. As Jill Lawrence notes over on the homepage, elections are about expanding coalitions in addition to energizing existing ones. And whether intentionally or not, the selection of Walz has provided Harris with a window (and permission structure) to do that. Already, Harris has gone back on a number of progressive policy positions—everything from abortion to fracking—she took while running for president in 2019. For that, she’s been applauded as a realist. But she could and probably should go further, including possible breaks from Biden himself regarding, say, the asylum restrictions or retrospective reflections on U.S. policy towards Afghanistan. But the movement doesn’t just have to be substantive; it should be stylistic too. Harris (and now Walz) have commandeered the national spotlight. They shouldn’t let it go to waste. She should be more aggressively in the public eye. She should go on nontraditional outlets as well as conservative ones. She should take press questions and host town halls. She should court CEOs and Republicans. And, yes, she should consider calling Trump’s bluff and doing a debate on Fox. 2. But Why?Harris has every right not to agree to Trump’s proposed Fox debate. For starters, he backed out on the agreed-upon ABC one. More to the point, the network is openly hostile and had to pay a $787 million settlement for misleading claims about the 2020 election results. You don’t want to reward, let alone legitimize that behavior by letting the source of it moderate what might be the only showdown between you and Trump. And for that reason, it seems obvious that the Harris camp will continue to say no. But it’s also worth exploring, at least hypothetically, the upside. It’s not just the capacity to challenge and even embarrass Trump on his terms but also demonstrate a sort of steely nonchalance in the face of his puerile taunting. The Walz pick cements Harris’s standing among progressives in a way that could allow her to then go and try to reach voters tuned in to a Rupert Murdoch-owned network. She could even use the occasion to tell Trump’s supporters that both he and Fox have deceived them:
This is Sorkinesque political fanfic, of course. A more likely outcome is that Harris declines the debate but opens the door to an interview on Fox News. And she should do it. She needs to reach not just conservative viewers but nontraditional audiences too. As Ilyse Hogue notes on the homepage today, Democrats are largely absent from the hyperonline, largely white male community forming on various social platforms. Sure, there are risks. Harris was not adroit as a presidential candidate in 2019. She stumbled repeatedly as vice president in 2021 and 2022. But the answer is not to hibernate until November. It’s to go unscripted more regularly, get more comfortable with it, and turn those moments into assets. And if Harris isn’t the right fit, then well, you just brought a guy onto the ticket whose skills include a folksy ability to address virtually any audience and win it over with populist politics and Midwestern charm. That’s the secondary upside of Walz. Yes, he shores up the base. But he can also help Harris reach beyond it. 3. The Curse of Trying to Be FirstNews of Walz’s selection was first broken by CNN this morning. And kudos to them. Landing the VP pick before the competition is a legit scoop and a signifier of one’s reporting chops. It’s also high-risk. You’re much more likely to be remembered for getting it wrong than for being first (see: New York Post, Dick Gephardt). But this week has also brought a vivid example of the downside of the competitive impulse that drives a fair amount of political reporting: the decision by Bloomberg News to publish a story that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich had been released as part of a historic U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange. Bloomberg’s report was posted before Gershkovich and the other prisoners were confirmed to be in secure space. Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait acknowledged on Monday that the move “could have endangered the negotiated swap that set them free.” Bloomberg has since taken disciplinary action against a “number” of staffers involved in it. One reporter has reportedly been fired. That reporter, Jennifer Jacobs, took to X on Monday afternoon. She didn’t confirm the current status of her job but made a very salient point (after expressing horror that she may have endangered the safety of Gershkovich and others): There was a host of editors who signed off on the publication of her piece. We don’t know how the process went down at Bloomberg. But it’s fair to say that nothing jazzes up a reporter or a news outlet more than the possibility of landing a big scoop. I know. I have suffered from this addictive urge. I still do! But it’s useful to remember that these are often just notches on the belt. Almost always the story gets out with or without you. The more substantial scoops are those that would never see the light of day absent your story. Back in 2012, I was an editor at Huffpost and my main reporter on the Romney campaign called me while I was on break to say he had a good source telling him that Paul Ryan would be the VP pick. He was super-confident. And so was I. But we held off on reporting it. We just didn’t feel it was worth being wrong. I can’t remember who ended up breaking the news that cycle but it wasn’t us. And, frankly, I was fine with that. He was too. You’re a free subscriber to Bulwark+. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts, become a paying subscriber. Did you know? You can update your newsletter preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here.
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