The Joy of Being a Democrat

 

One of the things I'm enjoying most about the Harris/Walz campaign, and the current Democratic mood more broadly, is how joyful it is. A common critique of progressives has always been that we're joyless, and while that attack has never been entirely fair, it doesn't come wholly from nowhere either. There's a generalized version of the old Futurama joke ("I'm sorry, but if it's fun in any way, it's not environmentalism!") -- if you're not trudging along in grimdark misery, then you don't understand the stakes/don't care about the oppressed/aren't a true believer in the revolution. It's exhausting to live out, and it isn't a lifestyle anyone really wants to join.

But that isn't us right now! It's the right that is wallowing in its own self-induced machine of rage and fear and misery. The Olympics were a great example -- conservatives spent their time searching for their calipers and reliving their frustration that Simone Biles didn't snap her neck in 2021; meanwhile liberals just enjoyed watching some of the greatest athletes on Earth do incredible things under the American banner. Who would you rather be? 

And this divide is present all over the 2024 race. The complete inability of conservatives to make anything stick on Tim Walz stems from their complete bafflement that a basic cishet white guy can just be happy in 2024. Doesn't he know that trans-CRT-illegal-abortionists are coming for his daughter?!? The RNC was a miserable slog of one apparatchik after another warning us that we're all going to die unless the God-king Trump is restored; the DNC was a dance party featuring your favorite tunes from middle school. Hell, one of the primary attack lines Republicans have been trying against Kamala Harris is her laugh! Democrats now are literally the party of laughing (and football, and Bud Light)!

It's really nice. And for what it's worth, I do understand the stakes, and I do understand that many people are hurting, and I do understand there's a lot of work to be done. But joy counts for something. And it feels really good to be part of a joyful Democratic coalition.

May I Have This Walz?

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been selected as Kamala Harris' running mate.

I thought all of the major names floating for VP would have been fine picks. But now that Walz has gotten the official nod, I can say that I'm really enthusiastic about him joining the ticket. 

What do I like about him? To begin, he's got the support of the base while not doesn't seeming to have any particular clique or bloc of voters with a beef against him. In terms of immediate reaction and instinctual enthusiasm, he's all upside. He's already proven himself an effective messenger against Trump and Vance, which is really a VP candidate's number one job. His presentation is a best-of-all-worlds: moderate affect, but progressive results. What's not to like?

As a member of congress representing a swing district, he had a relatively moderate voting record. But his moderation never took the form of hippie-punching for its own sake. In contrast to a Sinema or Manchin type, he wasn't randomly looking to sabotage progressive priorities just so he could grandstand about how he's constraining the left. He just wasn't interested in putting on a show of being a bold maverick bucking the party.

That approach really has come through in his tenure as Minnesota Governor, where he's delivered a long list of progressive priorities that have made Minnesota a model for other states to follow. Some people were surprised at Walz's leadership, again taking cues from his moderate reputation. But Walz's progressivism is really a lot like his moderation -- it wasn't part of some big performance about taking on The Democratic Establishment or being leftier-than-thou, it was just the honest, grinding work of making progress when you can. And it turns out that when you have that orientation, you really can accomplish a lot that makes a lot of people's lives better.

In short, Walz is a pragmatist in the best possible sense: someone who concentrates on getting things done. And I've realized that I lot of what I like about Walz is what I like about Joe Biden. Sure, there's the folksy demeanor and the "moderate" reputation, and the underlying warmth and human decency. But fundamentally, Walz seems like someone who is in politics to actually make things happen -- not to talk about them, not to ride the talk show circuit and get a big book contract, and not to impotently fulminate about how the system makes any real change impossible. And when he's put in a position to make positive change, he's taken it. Just as Joe Biden surprised a lot of people with the muscularity of his domestic agenda (coming from a "moderate"), so too did Tim Walz as Governor of Minnesota. In both cases, the surprise was a product of mistaking an affect and a pragmatic orientation for antipathy to progressivism. And in both cases, the results speak for themselves. I have absolutely zero qualms about carrying that tradition forward.

So I'm delighted to have this Walz on the Democratic ticket. To victory in November!

Who's Heard of Tim Walz's H. Res. 11 Vote? (Not You)

In December of 2016, the UN Security Council passed resolution number 2334, affirming the view that Israel's settlements in occupied Palestinian territories were unlawful. The United States abstained from voting -- the first and only abstention on an Israel-related vote during Barack Obama's entire tenure in office.

Shortly thereafter, Congress passed H. Res. 11, condemning this Security Council resolution. In doing so, the resolution specifically denounced "politically motivated acts of boycott, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel" and expressed opposition to the resolution's insistence on distinguishing "between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967."

The vote tally on H. Res. 11 was 342-80. Among those voting in favor was Tim Walz, then the Democratic representative from Minnesota's first congressional district.

I do not reveal this detail to undermine Walz's case for joining the Democratic presidential ticket. I like Tim Walz. I liked him as a congressman, and I certainly liked him better than the antisemite who succeeded him representing my in-laws' home congressional district. And I've liked him even more as Governor. As far as I'm concerned, he'd make an excellent addition to the ticket.

Moreover, while this vote was not great, I don't think it suggests that Walz is some uniquely bad figure on matters of Israel/Palestine. Certainly, if one framed it the right way and possessed the right priors one could easily make the case: He openly attacked BDS! He was opposing even condemning Israeli settlements! He can't even claim the defense of "well, everyone was doing it back then" -- Walz was to the right of the Obama administration on this, and seventy-six Democrats voted against the resolution he supported! If one was looking to attack Walz on matters of Israel/Palestine, H. Res. 11 offers a very viable angle of attack. If one's primary concern regarding Harris' VP pick is avoiding Democratic politicians with a history of hostility towards either BDS or a record of unblinking support for Israel, then H. Res. 11 generates a very valid reason for concern.

But as far as I know, nobody has taken this angle. In fact, as best I can tell, nobody has even raised Walz's H. Res. 11 vote before I wrote this blog post. This is despite the fact that, as we know, questions about Israel policy have been front and center in why many have rallied aggressively against Josh Shapiro as a potential VP pick.

So here's the question that does motivate this post: how do you think it came to be that we learned about Josh Shapiro's collegiate op-ed columns written as a 20 year old before we started considering Tim Walz's actual voting record?

The position I took last week on Shapiro as VP nominee remains the position I'll take this week: I think Shapiro would be fine as VP, and I don't think he should be picked. On the former side of the ledger, I don't think his positions on Israel are substantially different from those of other potential members of the Democratic ticket (Harris included) -- the differences that exist are matters of degree, not kind (see also: Mark Kelly supporting police breaking up pro-Palestine protests). In that post, I argued that 

the congealing anti-Shapiro backlash smacks of a very predictable and unlovely hyperpolicing of Jews-qua-Jews on Israel, whose every jot and tittle on the matter will be pored over with exacting and unforgiving scrutiny in a manner that just isn't imposed upon non-Jews. Non-Jews can have unacceptable positions on Israel, but only Jews become unacceptable for things like "her book has an Israeli in it." Shapiro is getting heightened scrutiny here not because his positions on Israel are significantly different from those of Kelly or Beshear or Cooper, but because he's a very visibly Jewish politician and so is presumed to need greater scrutiny.

The fact that Shapiro is having his college views scrutinized while nobody even bothered to look at what Tim Walz actually voted for as a congressman I think pretty emphatically proves the point. Noting that Shapiro really has done X Y and Z potentially problematic things vis-a-vis Israel cannot explain why one didn't even think to look at Walz at all.

My point is not, to be clear, that Walz is actually "worse" than Shapiro on Israel/Palestine. It's not even that they're identical. While I don't think it is clear-cut, I have zero problem with someone who is highly motivated by pro-Palestine/anti-Israel sentiment looking at Walz's H. Res. 11 vote, and the remainder of his record in Congress and as Governor, comparing it to that of Shapiro, and say "on net, I think Walz is comparatively better on the issue, and so I prefer him to Shapiro."

But the difference in affect we're seeing directed towards Walz (and all the other plausible Democratic contenders) versus Shapiro, centered around Israel, is not one of "I think so-and-so is comparatively better." What differences exist between Shapiro and Walz cannot bear the weight of justifying being ecstatic about Walz, or even just thinking of Walz as adequate, and viewing Shapiro as cataclysmically unacceptable. If what Shapiro's done on Israel while in office is outright unacceptable, then it's hard to argue that Walz's objecitvely similar record is hunky-dory. They might be different, but they're not that different, and the only reason they're viewed as that different is because of an instinctual suspicion of Shapiro that is largely based on his identity. And I'm further saying that the reason why people immediately fixated on digging into the deepest recesses of Shapiro's Israel record while being completely uninterested in learning the first thing about Walz's is because Shapiro is vocally and publicly Jewish, and so became a target.

Does any of this change my opinion on whether Shapiro should be selected as VP? No. Why not? Because even if it is the case that some of the attacks Shapiro has faced are unfair, vice presidential selection is not about "fair". It's about maximizing one's chances to win, and fairly or not Shapiro seems to be a problem for some important swaths of voters. Harris also doesn't seem to be considering any women for her running mate, presumably because it is thought that having two women on a ticket will turn off certain voters. Is that "fair"? No, any voter who thinks that way is indulging in rank misogyny. And yet, it would be facile to suggest that Harris should pick a woman just to vindicate that these voters are wrong. They are wrong, but the purpose of a vice presidential candidate is not to even justifiably say to certain influential voting blocs "you're wrong."

But we shouldn't delude ourselves as to what's happening here. Everybody reading this has seen a slew of commentary analyzing Josh Shapiro's Israel record from top to bottom. Nobody reading this had seen a droplet of ink spilled on Tim Walz's H. Res. 11 vote. Likewise, it is quite clear that what is an unforgivable heresy for Shapiro will be easily (and quite literally) overlooked when it comes to Walz. That difference is not random. It manifests for exactly the reason you'd expect it to.