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00:00Next now to the U.S., where Vice President Kamala Harris is set to unveil her running
00:03mate later this Tuesday.
00:05This will be her first major decision as the Democrat Party's presidential candidate.
00:10And all of America is watching.
00:12Our Doug Herbert's been keeping a close eye on that as well.
00:14He joins me now on the set.
00:16Doug, the U.S. media is topping around a few top contenders for the job at this point.
00:21Talk us through the favorites.
00:22Yeah.
00:23Yeah.
00:24Well, first of all, I will just—I have to say, she has had 16 days to go through a process
00:29that normally is spread out over several months.
00:32Usually you get your vice presidential pick sometime in the spring when the primaries
00:35are starting to wrap up.
00:37She's had since July 21st, the day Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election
00:42and endorsed her as a Democratic nominee, and the rest came afloat.
00:47Look, what we know is she has a short list, OK?
00:50And what we also know is they're all white men, at least from the short list we have.
00:54We know that she's seeking to, in American political parlance, balance the ticket, which
00:57means she's a black woman, so a white man.
01:00She's trying to get the perfect ticket to take on Donald Trump and his running mate,
01:04J.D. Vance, in November.
01:05You see those six faces there?
01:07These are the short list.
01:08It doesn't mean we can't be totally surprised, because as of 10.30 p.m. last night, Paris
01:13time, 4.30 in Washington, a Harris campaign spokeswoman told The Washington Post she had
01:17not yet made her decision.
01:19So we don't know, and it will come down to this, her decision to make.
01:22But I will go with a few of the ones that are getting a lot of attention in the American
01:26press right now.
01:27It doesn't mean they're going to be the picks.
01:29Tim Walz is – a lot of the speculation has been, well, she's going to pick someone
01:33from a battleground state, because she needs those battlegrounds.
01:36In American presidential politics, everything pivots on tens of thousands of votes in a
01:41handful of states that will determine the election.
01:43So Minnesota is not a battleground state, but what it is is it's a Midwestern state.
01:48Tim Walz is a very successful governor there.
01:51He's very folksy.
01:52He's able to really appeal, and he's popular with the middle, the working class there.
01:57He's a former educator.
01:58He was an athletic coach, a wrestling champion.
02:01And what he's also is he was able to win votes in a very rural part of his state that
02:06is really a Republican bastion, so it shows perhaps an ability to pick up votes in places
02:11that are sort of red and not obvious.
02:13The other one a lot of people are speaking about, he's also very progressive, Tim Walz.
02:17So he's a favorite of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
02:19Josh Shapiro, you see him up there in the top right corner, governor of Pennsylvania.
02:24Obviously, it is the ultimate, it is the mother of all battleground states, if you will, Jeannie,
02:28along with Wisconsin, Michigan.
02:30But he would be seen as a pick.
02:32He's very popular in a state that is critical.
02:35And more importantly, he beat a diehard MAGA Republican for election as governor in 2022.
02:43A guy named Doug Mastriano couldn't be more pro-Trump if you tried.
02:47He beat the guy, and he did it in Pennsylvania.
02:49So that makes him perhaps a favorite choice.
02:51However, I will say the caveat comes is Josh Shapiro is Jewish.
02:55He's been very outspoken on issues, very supportive of Israel, but critical of student protesters,
03:02pro-Palestinian protesters.
03:04That has drawn the ire of some on the left wing of the Democratic Party.
03:07Whether that is going to deter Kamala Harris, who knows?
03:10It's her decision to make, but it has been an issue.
03:13There's been a fierce lobbying effort, I will say, among Democrats in the party around this decision.
03:19Some say it's come down to almost like a primary contest that never happened.
03:22Well, whoever is going to be the new candidate, and we will know in a few hours, they're going
03:26to have to hit the ground running because the new VP candidate is already on the schedule
03:30with Kamala Harris for a campaign event tonight.
03:33Absolutely.
03:34She's expected to announce in some sort of perhaps online streaming.
03:37We don't know the exact format yet, but we do know that if she's scheduled Philadelphia,
03:42right, Pennsylvania, that key battleground state, I just showed you Josh Shapiro, governor
03:46there, they will start off there.
03:48This is going to be a five-day, seven-state tour.
03:52If you're getting breathless just hearing that, you're absolutely right, Jeannie.
03:56It's going to cover Pennsylvania.
03:57It's going to cover Michigan.
03:58It's going to cover Wisconsin, North Carolina, I believe Nevada, Arizona.
04:05She was supposed to as well go to a seven-state, Georgia.
04:08I believe that's been postponed because there's a hurricane that made landfall in Florida
04:11on Monday.
04:12But seven states in five days, at least 10 initially, that is a lot of campaigning.
04:17Donald Trump's campaign is said to be planning to try to follow in tow, to try to sort of
04:22piggyback their campaign on their campaign and follow them everywhere they go.
04:27It is breathless from the start, but they don't have much time to campaign, less than
04:30100 days to go until the election.
04:32All right.
04:33It's going to be incredible to watch how that develops.
04:35Thanks so much, Doug, for keeping an eye on it for us.
04:36That's France 24's Doug Herbert.