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With under 90 days to go in the run for the White House, it appears the undecided voters in the swing states will be the critical element that decides the winner in the 2024 election; that means they will have to acquaint themselves with the people that appear on the tickets, as well as their resumes and ideologies. Just about every voter is familiar already with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Many voters have at least heard of J.D. Vance. But how many voters had a fundamental understanding of who Tim Walz was before he was announced as the Democrat V.P choice? Mike Kelly is the award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to lay out the curriculum vitae of the man who hopes to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.
“He’s leaning very, very progressive these days, but I think he approaches politics and life in a sort of reasoned manner,” Kelly told Berman and Riedel. “This is where I think he could appeal to what I call ‘purple voters’. These are people who, you know, as Walz says, may not approve of abortion in their personal loves or that sort of thing, but they want to allow people the opportunity to be able to make their own decisions… and I think he brings that kind of different voice to the campaign. Now, that said, I think we’ve got about two more weeks of the honeymoon period, and then the real fun starts, probably around September 1st.”
Kelly had some advice for how Walz could help Harris anchor a successful campaign in 2024- advice that comes, surprisingly, from Donald Trump himself. “When Donald Trump, if you look back on his 2016 race, Donald Trump’s campaign really started to solidify when he started talking about practical issues, and if you look back to a speech he gave in Gettysburg, of all places, about what he planned to do in his first 100 days- now, he didn’t do everything, but it was a very practical road map to where this guy wanted to take the presidency. He never took it there; he’s too undisciplined. But, I think, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz need to do something like that if they are going to solidify some sort of hold on the 15-20% of the American electorate that’s really going to decide the presidency.”
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