Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' strategic choice
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00:00of American Studies and Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. He's also from
00:04Democrats Abroad here in France, James Cohen. Thanks very much for being with
00:07us in the program. Why has Harris picked Wooles? I mean, no one out of his state of
00:12Minnesota really knows who he is, do they? Well, he's a governor of a state. He'll
00:18soon become known. This campaign will be a short one but it'll be a very dynamic
00:22one and I'm sure that within a week or two he'll be a nationally known
00:26name. I think he was chosen for a number of, by now, fairly obvious reasons. He
00:33represents a Midwestern state and the Democrats, in order to win this election,
00:39need to make sure that they win states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin,
00:45not to mention the other swing states in other parts of the country, and
00:48Waltz is really the man to help them do that. No question about that. And he also,
00:52I think it's no secret that he comes from sort of the center-left of the
00:57party. He's not really a leftist but he is certainly someone in favor of
01:02better government. He comes from a whole tradition in the Midwest of, you know, the
01:07former Labour Democrats from way back. He has a high idea of what
01:12government can do for people and that's a very different sound from what you
01:16hear on the Republican side. You mentioned those battleground states. He's
01:19not from one of them, though, is he? He's from Minnesota. You would have thought
01:22you might pick somebody from one of those states. He's from a neighbouring
01:26state. He's from the same region and if you look at the map of his state you'll
01:28see that, like in many other states, in other regions as well, the essential
01:35source of strength for the Democrats comes from the cities. Minnesota is an
01:38urbanized state but with lots of rural counties where the Democrats have
01:43had trouble in recent years and Waltz is the kind of guy, with the kind of
01:47language that he speaks, that will help bring a lot of people from rural areas
01:52too back into the fold. What else do you think he's going to bring through? I mean
01:56he seems to be the man who's brought up this this idea that the Democrats seem
02:01to be peddling at the moment of the Republicans being weird, for example. I
02:05mean isn't that sort of slightly trivializing the debate? Well, it's a
02:09sort of milder way of saying that the Republicans have become an extremist
02:14party, a dangerous party, a party dangerous for democracy, a party that
02:19doesn't really take the country in a direction which most people can identify
02:22with if you look more closely what the Republicans are
02:25proposing. So I think that his innovation, his labeling of Trump as
02:32weird, is actually a pretty good campaign tactic. It's just a sort
02:37of euphemism for saying that Trump and his version of the
02:41Republican Party have become dangerous and extremist. The convention is coming
02:45up very soon isn't it? I mean it's all been incredibly compressed
02:49obviously after Joe Biden decided to pull out. It means though there's been no
02:53democratic process to select Harris, there's been no democratic process to
02:59select him either. Is that really the way to go about winning an election?
03:05Well look, Biden had to step down and there had to be very quickly a new
03:11candidate found and that candidate was pretty naturally going to be the
03:16vice-president who was able to draw on the campaign treasury of the Biden
03:20campaign. That part was pretty clear. It was not clear at the outset that she
03:25would be the one most accepted candidate on the Democratic side but
03:32she has imposed herself. Her presence has become quite charismatic I would say in
03:36the past several days and what brings an extra dimension of charisma to the
03:42ticket as well. You talk about that charisma, I mean four years ago she had
03:45to drop out early because of the primary. A lot of people accused her of not
03:50really being clear about where she stood and what she stood for. Is that not going
03:55to be a problem as the campaign continues? I don't think so. She's gonna
04:00have to define her priorities and I think those priorities are pretty well
04:04known because it's not just her. It's about the Democratic Party and the whole
04:08block of voters who are pretty clear on a few things. Pretty clear on wanting to
04:11defend women's reproductive rights. Pretty clear on not wanting to have a
04:15disastrous anti-environmental policy for the future of the planet. Pretty clear on
04:20not wanting guns to be sold to anybody without checks. Those kinds of
04:25things are pretty clearly priorities on the Democratic side and I think we can
04:29count on this ticket to defend those priorities. Watching the debate in the US
04:34from abroad as we are and seeing Donald Trump there, he's a man who's been
04:39impeached twice. The Democrats say he's a danger to democracy and yet there's
04:44still this very very fine line isn't there between the Democrats and the
04:48Republicans in the US. I mean bearing all that in mind shouldn't the Democrats be
04:52way ahead? Well I think that demographically speaking if you look at
04:57the vote as a whole in the United States the Democrats are ahead. They were ahead
05:01even when Trump won the election in 2016. They were way ahead in 2020 when
05:06Biden won with a margin of six million votes or so and I think that continues
05:11to be the case. The problem is that we have this old archaic electoral system
05:15divided into 50 separate states and Washington DC and so the winner of the
05:22popular vote is not necessarily the winner of the election but I think that
05:26this can be fixed this time. I think that with this ticket there's a good chance
05:30now of sweeping the north eastern, the Midwest states of Pennsylvania,
05:36Wisconsin, Michigan. I think that there's also a good chance of defending
05:42the Democratic majority which is a thin one in the states like Arizona and
05:47Georgia. That can now happen. It's still very early days though is it? I mean
05:53you know let's face it we've had a lot of momentum behind Harris because Biden
05:58has stepped down so it means there's been a lot of attention on her and a lot
06:03of attention on who she was going to pick. That attention will start to go
06:06back to what was Donald Trump won't it? Not necessarily. I think that the
06:11campaign is just beginning really. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are now on a
06:16tour of all the swing states. There are seven of them and they're going to be in
06:21the next five days attending rallies and meetings in all those states and it's
06:26not just about appearing it's also about getting people to vote and what I
06:30have also been learning is that the Democrats on the ground are mobilizing.
06:38They have lots of volunteers who are now going out and knocking on doors making
06:41sure that people vote. The Biden candidacy wasn't wasn't bringing out
06:48that enthusiasm in voters but I think that now there's a ticket that can do
06:52that. So finally in 30 seconds sum it up for us as we go ahead. Are you very
06:58confident in this pairing from the Democrats? I'm quite confident. I think
07:02that the Democrats in general are more and more confident because what we're
07:06looking at is the polls that are changing. Clearly Trump was ahead in all
07:12the swing states according to most polls but now with this ticket
07:17even before naming Tim Walz as her running mate Kamala Harris was
07:23climbing back to parity with Trump on a national level and I think that this
07:29campaign has only begun to show what it's capable of. They have a message
07:33which is basically of quite a popular one. Let government do what government
07:37can do best. Let's not go scaring people about too much government. Let's not go
07:42scaring people about too many immigrants. Let's go let's let's try to make
07:48government work for people. That's a pretty simple message and I think it's
07:51going to be an effective one. James Cohen great to talk to you on the program today.
07:54Thanks very much Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle
07:58University also from Democrats abroad here in France. Thanks very much.