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With thirteen weeks to go until Election Day, the tickets have now been established. It’ll be Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for the Republicans squaring off with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for the Democrats. Both VP candidates were in Philadelphia Tuesday, as Harris introduced her pick and Vance spoke at a rally. But do Walz and Vance actually offer any tangible skills that make them attractive to the majority of American voters, particularly those in the “undecided” column? Connell McShane is the host of “News Nation Now with Connell McShane” weekdays on News Nation; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to suggest that, despite the fawning within their respective parties, in the long run, the second name on the ticket is merely a name.
“Running mates very rarely decide elections,” McShane explained to Berman and Riedel. “They very rarely tip the scales in a state, too, which is interesting, because that was the argument for Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and he may have helped Harris win the state of Pennsylvania. Tim Walz, you know, adds to Kamala Harris. She’s a Democrat, she picked a liberal. He’s a liberal; I don’t think that should surprise very many people, and that’s what you have. You have Donald Trump picking a conservative that appealed to his base, or he thought that he did, and Kamala Harris picking a liberal who she thinks appeals to her base and will help with turn out in some of these key states.”
McShane theorized that Tim Walz and J.D. Vance are where they are not to appeal to undecided voters, but rather to whip up the base among Democrats and Republicans and remind them to turn out en masse. “We may not like it, and I think a lot of regular people in this country don’t necessarily like it, but that’s how the two-party system has decided you win elections, right; you double-down on your base and you try to get them to turn out. If you think about eight years ago, why did Hillary Clinton lose that election? The real reason that I think she lost that election to Trump is that there wasn’t enough excitement among the base, and she didn’t turn out people in the places where she needed to--for example: Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Charlotte. She didn’t turn out the Democrats in the big cities in big enough numbers to win, and if you’re a Democrat, that’s how you win.”
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