Sandwiched between several odes to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after VP Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate, NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd conceded on MSNBC’s Tuesday installment of Andrea Mitchell Reports that his selection at the expense of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro raised a “yellow flag” about progressives’ ability to bully Harris.
First, Todd had to get in the obligatory praise, “Look, I like to say, you know, sometimes people speak Washington and sometimes people speak American. Tim Walz speaks American, you know? He’s not going to tell you about his subcommittee chair, he’s not going to tell you about—I have a feeling he won’t talk about the Veterans Committee, he’ll talk about just helping veterans and things like that. So, in that sense, it strikes me that's what Harris is looking for.”
The fact that Shapiro is Jewish and doesn’t have patience for Hamas sycophants on college campuses led far-left Democrats to oppose him being Harris’s number two, which was not lost on Todd, “but it does tell me, I’m wondering, I have a yellow flag in my head going, ‘huh, if you squeal loud enough, she hears and responds.’ You know, there's going to be people that will come away from this experience thinking, ‘huh, the progressive backlash is what got her off of Shapiro or what got her off of Kelly.’”
Todd spared Harris a red flag because, “In fairness, maybe they didn't vet either. Okay, that's also a possibility when all is said and done, but on substance, I can't help but have that takeaway.”
Later in the segment USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page returned to MSNBC’s regular scheduled programming by alluding to the idea that Walz was the one who came up with the attack line that Republicans are “weird,” “You now, if the Democrats lose Pennsylvania and then lose the presidency as a result, there’ll be a lot of second-guessing about this decision. On the other hand, Tim Walz is the opposite of weird. Like in a dictionary, if you had ‘weird’ and ‘ant-weird,’ you’d have Tim Walz’s picture there as a high school coach and its history teacher, and a guy that seems as normal as can be.
If Walz is supposed to be the guy who ensures progressives don’t abandon Harris, it wouldn’t make much sense for Republicans to find him appealing, but that didn’t stop Page from trying to wish cast his bipartisan credentials into existence, “maybe in hindsight that'll turn out to be a great decision if Tim Walz is appealing to rural Americans and gets some swing and even Republican votes maybe they wouldn't have gotten with Shapiro on the ticket.”
So, Walz is meant to shore up progressive support, but Shapiro wouldn’t appeal to Republicans? How does that make sense?
Here is a transcript for the August 6 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
8/6/2024
12:08 PM ET
CHUCK TODD: Look, I like to say, you know, sometimes people speak Washington and sometimes people speak American. Tim Walz speaks American, you know? He’s not going to tell you about his subcommittee chair, he’s not going to tell you about—I have a feeling he won’t talk about the Veterans Committee, he’ll talk about just helping veterans and things like that.
So, in that sense, it strikes me that's what Harris is looking for, but it does tell me, I’m wondering, I have a yellow flag in my head going, “huh, if you squeal loud enough, she hears and responds.”
You know, there's going to be people that will come away from this experience thinking, “huh, the progressive backlash is what got her off of Shapiro or what got her off of Kelly.” In fairness, maybe they didn't vet either. Okay, that's also a possibility when all is said and done, but on substance, I can't help but have that takeaway.
…
SUSAN PAGE: You now, if the Democrats lose Pennsylvania and then lose the presidency as a result, there’ll be a lot of second-guessing about this decision. On the other hand, Tim Walz is the opposite of weird. Like in a dictionary, if you had “weird” and “ant-weird,” you’d have Tim Walz’s picture there as a high school coach and its history teacher, and a guy that seems as normal as can be. I also wonder if Vice President Harris was affected by her own difficult relationship, fractious with Joe Biden—
ANDREA MITCHELL: Absolutely.
PAGE: — in the early years of their presidency, of their administration and that she didn't want that and maybe in hindsight that'll turn out to be a great decision if Tim Walz is appealing to rural Americans and gets some swing and even Republican votes maybe they wouldn't have gotten with Shapiro on the ticket, so remains to be seen, but I think often you are fighting the last war and that was for Kamala Harris the last war.
