Josh Kraushaar on the Democratic Party’s Veepstakes and American Jewry

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she’d invited the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, to be her running mate in this fall’s presidential election. Walz has pretty conventional views of Israel for a Democrat: he believes in Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, he has previously spoken at an AIPAC gathering, he condemned Hamas after October 7, that Hamas is not representative of the Palestinian people, that Israel is guilty of allowing too much civilian harm and civilian casualties in Gaza, that there must be a two-state solution, and that Israeli settlements are a barrier to that political outcome. That's what any number of other candidates on the vice-presidential shortlist also think, including Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.

For that matter, until the announcement, Shapiro was widely thought to be the front-runner by virtue of his popularity in what's expected to be the most important swing state in the election. Why didn't Harris select him? Over the last week, there’s been an enormous amount of speculation about the reasons. One of the most foreboding possibilities is that Shapiro is a religious Jew, and among the activist class of the Democratic party, being an Israel-supporting religious Jew is now a liability. Of course, no one from the campaign or any Democratic official has said that Walz's selection had to do with that liability. But many of America’s Jews—Democratic and Republican alike—took it that way, and so did many of America’s anti-Semites.

To disentangle the role that such factors may have played in the Harris campaign’s decision, host Jonathan Silver speaks here with the longtime political reporter and editor of Jewish Insider, Josh Kraushaar. Together, the two look at what the activist opposition campaign looked like, and how that campaign interpreted the selection of Walz as a validation and a victory.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she'd invited the governor of
0:12.7	Minnesota, Tim Walz, to be her running mate in this fall's presidential election.
0:17.9	Governor Walls has a record of pretty conventional views of Israel in the Democratic Party.
0:23.4	He believes in Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. He has previously spoken at
0:28.8	APAC gatherings. He condemned Hamas after October 7th. And at the same time, he also believes
0:34.8	that Hamas is not representative of the Palestinian people, that Israel
0:39.0	is guilty of allowing too much civilian harm and civilian casualties in Gaza, that there must
0:44.1	be a two-state solution, and that Israeli settlements are a barrier to that political outcome.
0:49.8	That's not what I think about Israel, but it doesn't matter. That's a pretty conventional picture
0:53.8	of what the mean Democrat tends to think. It's also some version of what any number of other
1:00.0	candidates on Vice President Harris's shortlist also think, including Arizona Senator Kelly
1:06.1	and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Actually, up until about five minutes before Vice President
1:11.9	Harris selected Governor Walls, Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania was widely thought to be the frontrunner.
1:18.1	He's 51 years old, good on the stump, a poll from Emerson College found in July that
1:23.3	Shapiro enjoys a 49% approval rating in Pennsylvania, just 31% disapprove.
1:29.4	Pennsylvania's got 19 electoral votes, nine more than Governor Walls, Minnesota.
1:34.7	Pennsylvania is expected to be one of the most closely contested and important swing states
1:39.5	in this election, and winning it opens up multiple paths to 270.
1:45.4	The selection of Governor Shapiro was thought to be a savvy political choice for the vice president, emphasizing
1:50.1	the generational change that the forward-looking Democratic Party could claim after President
1:55.6	Biden's decision not to seek re-election. But of course, Vice President Harris did not select Governor Shapiro,
2:02.5	and over the last week there's been an enormous amount of speculation about the reasons that she
	...

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