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A new book on the end of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and the birth of Kamala Harris’ sheds light on the process behind the vice president choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a decision widely panned by pundits in retrospect.
“2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” released Tuesday by journalists Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of The New York Times and Isaac Arnsdor of The Washington Post, described a vetting process that came down to three finalists: Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
All three candidates did a final interview with Harris at her residence, the book explains, adding that when asked what they wanted to drink, Shapiro and Kelly chose water while Walz chose Diet Mountain Dew.
Appeal with rural voters was a top priority for the Harris ticket and the book states that Harris’s advisors felt that Walz was the best candidate to do that.
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“Pelosi privately pushed for him too, because she’d worked with him in Congress,” the book said about the former House speaker. “The pitch for Walz was straightforward: He could appeal to white voters across the Blue Wall states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) and hopefully help Harris with male voters. He’d never lost election.”
While most political experts felt Shapiro, governor of a key swing state, was the most logical choice, the book states that the interview with Harris and Shapiro “revealed the two were not a perfect match.”
“He came across as overly ambitious, pushing Harris to define what his role would be. He also conceded it would not be natural for him to serve as someone’s number two, leaving Harris with a bad impression,” the book states.
Conversely, the authors explain that Walz was “deferential” while “showing no interest in himself” and “flatly denied any interest in running for president.”
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“He went so far as to proactively volunteer reasons why she might not want to pick him,” the book says. “In his interview that Friday, he said he had never used a teleprompter before. On Sunday, he told Harris, ‘I would understand if you went with someone else because I’m really nervous about the debate, and I don’t think I’ll do well.’ Still, the vetting team did not fully appreciate his tendency to misspeak, his folksiness sometimes tipping into factual imprecision.”
Walz would ultimately draw intense scrutiny on the campaign trail for his “folksiness” with a series of blunders, including his characterization of his military service and a claim he was present at the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The book says Harris “struggled” deciding between Shapiro and Walz, believing that she had a better “rapport” with Walz but understood the importance of Pennsylvania. Harris’ team, according to the book, told her that polling did not offer a clear answer as to which of the two candidates would help the ticket more.
“There was no empirical evidence that Shapiro would deliver Pennsylvania and with it the White House,” the book said.
As Shapiro was being considered, many pundits speculated that his staunch support of Israel could be an issue given the progressive wing of the Democratic Party being vocally pro-Palestinian, resulting in protests, sometimes violent, across the country after Oct. 7.
The book said the Harris campaign was aware of that issue.
“Much of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party declared war on Shapiro, largely because of his support of Israel,” the book said. “Some Shapiro allies saw the criticism as deeply unfair and borderline antisemitic, since the governor was an observant Jew, but his positions on the Palestinian conflict broadly aligned with the Biden administration and the other vice presidential contenders. The lawyers vetting Shapiro did flag some comments they viewed as more incendiary, particularly as it related to pro- Palestinian protests on college campuses after the October 7 attacks.”
“One that caught their attention was his commentary on CNN from April: ‘We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this, if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia, making comments about people who are African American in our communities.’”
Ultimately, the book says Harris “went with her gut” and chose Walz believing he was the “better fit” in a decision her staff was “unanimously behind.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Walz and Shapiro for comment.
After losing every battleground state and ultimately the presidency to Donald Trump, critics were quick to judge the Walz pick as a misstep by Harris.
“The choice of Walz was only one of many disastrous mistakes but symptomatic of one larger problem – the Democratic Party leadership is too scared to say no to the hard-left progressive wing of the party,” Julian Epstein, longtime Democratic operative and former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital shortly after the election.
Rob Bluey, president and executive editor of The Daily Signal, told Fox News Digital in November that Harris picking Walz “proved to be a disastrous decision that doomed Kamala Harris from the moment she made it.”
“Not only was Walz ill-prepared for the national spotlight and media scrutiny, but Harris passed over several better options,” Bluey said. “Given how little Americans knew about Harris or her policy positions, they were right to question her judgment on this big decision.”
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