Tim Walz vs. J.D. Vance: the Battle of the Veeps—and Vibes—Is On

In an election cycle with a sitting vice president suddenly elevated to become her party’s nominee, and a former president, now the challenger, grazed by an assassin’s bullet, the American people have gotten a crash course in why veeps matter, whether it’s Tim Walz or J.D. Vance.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump at age 78 is the oldest person to run for president. He got a lot of mileage out of making fun of President Biden as too old and infirm to lead the country for another four years, and he was right. Now the tables have been turned, and 40-year-old Vance represents the future of the GOP, not Trump, who will be a lame duck the moment he sets foot back in the Oval Office should he win the election in November.

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Vance is trying hard to deliver the whole Trump thing—the misogyny, the rollicking joy in taking on the elites—but it’s not transferable. There’s only one Trump show, and Vance doesn’t add votes. “He represents a choice by Trump to double down rather than reach out—a choice that pleases the base and no one else as far as I can tell,” says Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

When he named Vance, Trump was at the top of his game and confident in his ability to win on his own. Vance had a rocky rollout, but Trump has not lost confidence in his understudy’s ability to go on the attack. Vance’s job in the campaign is to follow Kamala Harris and Walz and lob whatever the Trump campaign has to define them as radical liberals whose policies will hurt hard-working middle-of-the-road Americans.

Enter Walz, 60, the two-term governor of Minnesota, a Midwesterner born in Nebraska, that the wider public never heard of. He beat out a former astronaut and the popular governor of a key swing state to get the nod from Harris. Why?

This email from Jim Kessler with Third Way, a center-left group, says it all: “You pick a vice president to solve a problem. Donald Trump picked Mike Pence in 2016 because he had a problem with Evangelical voters. Kamala Harris has a problem with White men over the age of 60. She doesn’t need to win them, but she needs to come close to the support Joe Biden won in 2020. Tim Walz is a candidate who can help with older White voters, particularly men.

“It also helps that these voters are over-represented in the battleground Blue Wall states in the Midwest. The gun owning, football coach who can fix a lawnmower will be the Tim Walz the Harris team will want to introduce to voters.”

Walz is ready for the attacks. Reverend Sharpton revealed on Morning Joe on MSNBC that the governor had called him before he was chosen as veep to remind the civil rights activist that he had chosen Minnesota’s attorney general to prosecute the murder of George Floyd, securing convictions that might have evaded local authorities. That won’t stop the Trump campaign from alleging Walz was slow in responding to the protests and street violence in the wake of the murder.

Even so, Republicans will have to fight against type to frame Walz as a wacky, out-of-control liberal. He doesn’t look the part. Put a red hat on him and he would look right at home at a Trump rally. “He codes avuncular,” says Galston, who is nonetheless skeptical that Walz can insulate Harris from the attacks on her liberal record. “She’s going to get pummeled because of the positions she had as a senator and as a presidential candidate four years ago. She’s busy throwing that baggage overboard, but she was pretty far out there.”

Democrats are saluting the Walz pick as they continue to rally round Harris as their only chance to stop Trump. Is Walz someone who can expand on the Democratic vote—or is he a ratifier who doubles down on the base Harris can get on her own?

The policies that Trump and Vance are getting ready to demonize are not tax and spend fanciful liberal positions. They are the staples of American life, and Walz has shown he can enact a progressive agenda without appearing to be some wacky-left radical. Most of the progressive agenda is common sense that ordinary people want and approve of: Better health care, better education, regulate polluters, control guns, make the billionaires pay some tax, keep corporations from running roughshod over the rest of us.

It's not crazy stuff and as governor, Walz got things done like free school meals, goals to address climate change, tax cuts for the middle class and expanded paid leave for Minnesota workers. He’s been out front on reproductive rights for women, which he’d be happy to discuss with Vance should the two of them debate.

These are two smart articulate men who can do a lot over the coming days to shed light on what the next four years will be like in terms of policy and temperament. Walz is a joyful politician, the happy warrior, while Vance has a darker view of America and its promise and possibility. One of them will help shape our future.