Harris hits her first Wal(z)
Harris HQ must assess if Coach must take a knee. The tougher question is how to handle Kamala's culpability.
Mark Day 17 as the first in which Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign got scraped up.
Cuts and bruises, in need of Neosporin and gauze.
It’s not honeymoon over – the Democratic National Convention approacheth – but it’s the first day where the vibes shifted definitively against them.
The energy in Eau Claire wasn’t as ebullient on the second day of the battleground state tour – (to be fair, it would be a tall order to match that first-date magic in Philly.) Someone fell ill in the Wisconsin crowd due to August heat, knocking Coach Walz off his game, briefly. (“Drink some water folks!”)
Later, Gaza protesters infiltrated the ticket’s Detroit crowd, predictably, and while Harris’ clapback was sufficient for her fans – “I’m speaking!” – it lacked the savvy of a candidate looking to lure her skeptics aboard. How about, “I’ve said it’s time for the war to end. I’m with you!” Do recall 101,000 Michigan Democrats cast protest votes against President Biden in the February primary, largely over the administration’s support for a protracted Israeli war.
Most menacing and immediate for Harris, there’s the Tim Walz military service story that doesn’t look to be going away – not if Republicans still know how to run a concerted “Swift Boat” campaign.
Walz, a 3-day-old national candidate, elevated the ‘wow’ factor of the newly furbished Democratic ticket. Now, the first true test of the Harris campaign is whether it can successfully put to rest the boiling accusation that their No. 2 misrepresented his service, a reoccurring boil in American politics.
A member of the Minnesota Army National Guard, Walz retired two months before his unit got word it was going to Iraq in 2005. He attributed a planned run for Congress in 2006 as his reason for leaving.
Records show Walz filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for Congress on Feb. 10, 2005. In March 2005, the National Guard announced a possible mobilization of troops. But the Minnesota National Guard told CBS News that Walz formally retired on May 16, 2005 – two months after a deployment was floated as a possibility.
There’s also the C-SPAN clip of Walz stating he “deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom,” the name the U.S. used for its war in Afghanistan. There’s no record of Walz serving in Afghanistan.
And a Walz congressional campaign press release touting Walz as a “veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom.”
You can call this lingual semantics, about how a particular veteran characterizes his work. But a precise and detailed biography for a potential vice president of the United States is warranted.
And given the evidence laid before us, Walz has some cleaning up to do. In the red zone is when a true “Coach” is tested with making the right call.
Questions the Minnesota governor should address: