Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate and vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic Party ticket this Tuesday morning. And immediately on the same day, they had their first campaign event in a key state to defeat Donald Trump and the Republicans in the November 5th elections.
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The official presentation took place at a lively rally in Philadelphia, the main city in the contested state of Pennsylvania.
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"He is the kind of person who instills in people a sense of belonging and inspires them to dream big (...) That is the kind of vice president that the United States deserves," Harris said, standing next to Walz in a gym.
The hectic last weeks of the Democrats
Harris chose Walz as her running mate during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American politics. Republicans closed ranks around former President Donald Trump after he was the target of an assassination attempt in July. A few days later, President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, forcing Harris to work to unify the Democrats and choose a vice presidential candidate hastily, in just two weeks.
The Democratic National Convention begins on August 19, but they were in a rush to register before the 7th in the state of Ohio to avoid the risk of being left off the ballot for the presidential election.
By choosing 60-year-old Walz, Harris is turning to a governor from the central-northern region of the United States, who is a military veteran, pro-union, and helped enact an ambitious Democratic agenda for his state, which included extensive protections for abortion rights and generous support for families.
It is her most important decision as a Democratic presidential candidate, and Harris has chosen an option that most find acceptable: someone who asserts that politics should be more joyful and who diverts attention from the dark rhetoric of the Republicans with a lighter touch, a strategy that the Democratic campaign has increasingly turned to since Harris assumed the presidential candidacy.
In fact, Walz has great outreach and is highly evaluated by young people.
Since Walz was named as the vice presidential candidate, the campaign team has raised over 20 million dollars in donations from supporters.
The attacks against Trump made Walz known.
However, the governor of Minnesota was not among the most popular choices to run alongside Kamala Harris and is far from being a well-known name. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted before his appointment revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 American adults lacked enough information to form an opinion about him.
But the notoriety he achieved was thanks to an interview last month where he referred to Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate as "strange people." From there, the message spread like wildfire on social media with the help of young Americans.
That scathing style surfaced this Tuesday afternoon in Philadelphia.
It started with the former president. "Donald Trump sees the world a little differently than us. First of all, he knows nothing about service. He doesn't have time for that because he is too busy serving himself," Walz said. And then he finished by stating that "violent crime increased under Donald Trump. Not to mention the crimes he committed."
And after J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate who does not represent white middle-class workers, stated, “I can’t wait to debate with this guy... I mean, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”