Last night in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, showed the country what her campaign, and her presidency, are going to look like. And they had a hell of a good time doing it.
They did so in front of a much bigger crowd than Donald Trump had just recently at the same venue at Temple University.
“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” said Walz to Harris as he began his speech, encapsulating what’s becoming a running theme of her campaign.
But he spoke last in the rally, so let’s back up.
We had a feeling that, whichever excellent choice Harris made for her running mate — and they were all excellent possibilities — all the runners-up would immediately become her most powerful surrogates, on TV and in the places they live and represent. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro did not disabuse us of that theory last night.
In a soaring speech that reminded us of Barack Obama if Obama was a Jewish man who preached like a Southern Baptist, Shapiro screamed himself hoarse asking people if they were ready to do the work required so America can “look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, ‘Hello Madam President!’”
Shapiro reassured his own Pennsylvania voters that he was committed to finishing the job for them, saying he remained focused on his three trademark letters G, S, and D, which stand for Getting Shit Done.
At one point Shapiro talked about Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, which led the crowd into its own spontaneous chants of “He’s a weirdo!” (Clap, clap, clap clap clap.)
“I am proud of my faith,” Shapiro said toward the end. “I’m not here to preach, y’all,” he said, preaching, “but I want to tell you what my faith teaches me.” He said it teaches him “that no one, no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it. That means that each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game and to do our part.”
It wasn’t long after that his voice started going hoarse.
It’s remarkable how much he sounds like Barack Obama.
But then it was time for the main event, time for Vice President Harris to come out with and introduce her running mate Tim Walz, who brought the house down in a different way.
Harris gave much of what’s becoming her regular stump speech, including all the lines about her history as a prosecutor of going after rapists, fraudsters, and conmen, therefore “I know Donald Trump’s type.” It’s a great stump speech and you should see it a bunch of times, if you haven’t done so already.
But last night’s rally had a task, to tell people about and introduce them to Walz, whom she repeatedly called “Coach Walz.” (Uh oh, Tommy Tuberville, stepping on your turf! Don’t worry, we won’t steal Tuberville’s racism, his stupidity, or his proclivities for hick-babbling out whatever the Russians told him to hick-babble out.)
Our former football coach is also a former high school studies teacher, one who became the first faculty adviser for the first gay-straight alliance at the high school where he taught when a student asked him about starting one, because he knew it would be powerful for that club to have a football coach (who was also a soldier in the Army National Guard) as its sponsor.
“Tim Walz was the kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having and that every kid deserves,” the vice president said. “The kind of coach — because he’s the kind of person — who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big. And that’s the kind of vice president he will be. And that’s the kind of vice president America deserves.”
In another memorable moment, Harris talked about the differences in their backgrounds leading them both to this moment, one of those Only In America lines that features heavily in stump speeches, at least for candidates who love America (AKA not Trump or MAGA Republicans):
“The promise of America is what makes it possible for two middle-class kids — one a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother, the other a son of the Nebraska plains who grew up working on a farm — it’s the promise of America,” Ms. Harris said in Philadelphia. “Because only in America — only in America — is it possible for them together to make it all the way to the White House.”
When Walz started talking, man, he was full of bangers, all delivered like a folksy Midwestern dad who’s super-proud of the joke he just made up.
He said there’s a Golden Rule they like to live by in Minnesota, and it’s “Mind Your Own Damn Business.” But he said it as part of his own very personal story about his children being conceived through IVF, one of the many things on extremist Republicans’ chopping block.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices that they make,” he said. “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choices for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”
Of course, both Walz and Harris talk passionately about abortion, reproductive rights, and about how we’re “Not Going Back” to a time when Americans didn’t have those freedoms.
He said, “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump,” paused for dramatic effect, then added, “That’s not even counting the crimes he committed!”
Oh yeah, and he told a couch joke about JD Vance. And it was a good one! (Not the kind of couch joke Wonkette would tell, like “knock knock!” “who’s there!” “couch!” “couch who?” “couch with JD Vance’s penis in it WOCKA WOCKA!”)
It was more like:
“I’ve got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Mr. Walz said, pausing again as he savored the attack line to come. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
See how perfect that is? If you knew the couch joke — based on the immediately debunked made-up internet rumor that JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy features an anecdote about him fucking a couch, with his erect lil-billy. And if you didn’t, you wondered why that got SO MANY LAUGHS, so you asked your granddaughter, and she was like “JD Vance fucks couches! Allegedly! WOCKA WOCKA!”)
Or as the New York Times explained it:
(The line, for the blissfully uninitiated, was a wink-and-nod reference to a widely shared yet false social media claim about Mr. Vance and furniture.)
Thank you, Jesus, for our 2024 news cycle that makes the Times type things like that.
Let us tell you, every look that went across Kamala Harris’s face at that moment was *chef’s kiss* and seemed like a combination of “Did I really pick this guy?” and “I cannot believe I picked this guy” (in a good way!) and “Yep, that’s the guy I picked! I did that!”
By the way, there are a few who are fainting on the fainting couch over that joke and the fact that Walz referenced this internet silly story (debunked) about JD Vance getting up the courage to approach a couch, ask it to dance, and then take it under the bleachers after fifth period. They are all never-Trumpers, who are consistently the only people who seem to be having absolute fits over Harris’s choice of Walz.
To them we say — lovingly — get a grip, y’all. Love you all, for real, but get a grip.
It was a great speech, and it was a great event. It was soaring when it needed to be, but the viral Threads threads about Walz’s #BigDadEnergy are all true. And Seth Meyers writer Sal Gentile’s description of Walz:
Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your [carburetor], replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door and put a new chain on your lawnmower
That is who Kamala Harris picked as her running mate, and who Kamala Harris introduced to the world last night.
Here’s video of both speeches:
[New York Times / Video via MeidasTouch]
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