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I don't want to toot my own horn too loudly, but I gotta say, I told ya so.
Way back on July 18, which in Gregorian calendar terms was—yikes—less than three weeks ago but might as well be last century in this political season, I took the plunge and very publicly predicted that not only would President Joe Biden bow out of the race for re-election, but that Kamala Harris would pick up the torch and choose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate for the Democratic ticket.
And ever since Biden's tectonic plate-shifting decision, I have continued to double down on my bet that Walz was the man Harris would eventually pick as her running mate. Now it's obvious that my bet paid off. Walz is Kamala Harris' choice and is very likely on his way to becoming the next vice president of the United States.
But the real question is, why did I feel so alone the past few weeks? Aside from Mehdi Hasan and a handful of other pundits, where was everyone else?
Of the contenders under consideration, Walz was the only veep candidate who made any sense whatsoever. And I knew Harris and her advisers would come to see it as I did.
Sure, Walz had a compelling backstory as an enlisted soldier, schoolteacher, and champion football coach. But he was the only contender who could "speak farm," with a proven track record representing and later governing an agrarian state with an electorate that looks very similar to the base of white, non-college-educated, Christian voters in places like Menomonie, Wis. or Coldwater, Mich. that the Harris ticket will need to get past the finish line in November. Perhaps more importantly, Walz was the only contender who didn't threaten to rip apart the fragile peace that had finally unified the Democratic Party after the fractious infighting that had engulfed it only a few weeks earlier.
Now, I am not writing this to gloat or prove that I am some sort of political soothsayer, but rather to shine a light on how the East Coast political media firmament got this veepstakes so wrong—and to ask what this all might mean for political coverage as we head into the general election.
I think I know what happened.
Take, for example, Chris Cillizza, the forlorn ex-CNN political pundit who proudly proclaimed only a few hours before Harris was to make public her decision to tap Walz, that "Kamala's no-brainer VP pick" was going to be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. And then, a few hours later, after learning that she had picked Walz, he called the selection a "weird VP choice." Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, who is now a pundit for ABC News had a similar take as did Allan Lichtman, the so-called "Nostradamus of U.S. politics."
And the list goes on—scores of political pundits across all major networks and outlets incessantly trumpeted the reasons why Harris had absolutely no choice but to pick the charismatic and popular Shapiro who "talks likes Obama" and could somehow better the ticket's chances in Pennsylvania despite there being almost no statistical or historical evidence that a VP pick's home state advantage makes a lick of difference. That the Pennsylvania governor represents a state with 19 coveted votes in the Electoral College was enough of a reason for scores of pundits to jump on the Shapiro bandwagon.
But this so-called bandwagon was replete with political news elites who live up and down the Acela Corridor—that thin stretch of land that hugs the coast between Washington, D.C. and New York City—doing what they do best—projecting; almost all of them got Kamala's VP pick wrong because they were attempting to will onto America the type of soundbite-friendly running mate they would like to cover and not the complementary figure who would best shore up Democrats' chances across the vast rural swaths of the Midwest. Because most coastal media personalities do not understand Middle America at all.
As a Midwesterner, it was clear to me that Shapiro would come across as a bit too slick for many rural voters in this neck of the country; his schtick was not going to bring back any of the types of voters that have been gradually parting ways with Democrats over the past 20 years—exactly the types of folks that Tim Walz depended on to ignite his political career.
As usual, the political news media in this country suffered from another bout of what I call "coastal blindness" when it comes to understanding the Heartland. And with the next election, and perhaps the future of democracy itself on the line, this is something they can't continue to get wrong.
Arick Wierson is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and served as a senior media and political adviser to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He lives in Minneapolis, Minn. and advises corporate clients on communications strategies in the United States, Africa, and Latin America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
