REUTERS/Mike Segar
If Donald Trump wins this election, the postmortems on Kamala Harris’ campaign should put her choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate at the top of her list of mistakes.
Much of America got to know Walz for the first time during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.
Unlike his appearance at the Democratic National Convention, the Walz we saw on the debate stage didn’t have his words written for him in a teleprompter.
And the unfiltered version underscored a very obvious fact about the governor: He is patently fake.
For starters, how about this “Coach Walz” nonsense, which he broached yet again on Tuesday.
Let’s be real, being an assistant volunteer coach isn’t exactly something to brag about. Walz always leaves out the “assistant volunteer” part of the title, to make himself out to be the second coming of Vince Lombardi.
Then there was Walz’s goofy ’80s-sitcom-dad shtick that’s meant to be endearing and relatable but is as cringe as one of Kamala’s fraudulent accents.
Just check out his answer to the question about why he’s claimed to be in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests when he was actually in Nebraska.
“I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect,” he said. “And I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that.”
How comforting to know a self-described knucklehead could be one heartbeat away from controlling the nuclear codes.
This filibuster of an answer went on for a full two minutes without addressing why he had lied about being in China at that critical moment, prompting co-moderator Margaret Brennan to press him for an actual response.
“Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “All I said on this was . . . I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that’s what I’ve said.”
Ah, he misspoke.
Who among us hasn’t made such a flub, stating we were in Asia when we were actually on the other side of the world?
The phony lied — just like he lied about serving in war zones when in reality he ditched his National Guard unit when it was about to be deployed to Iraq.
Walz’s closing statement was a doozy that underscored his fundamental fakery.
“Kamala Harris is bringing us a new way forward. She’s bringing us a politics of joy,” he said with a straight face. “She’s bringing real solutions for the middle class.”
It was truly stunning to hear this lame used-car-salesman patter as Walz tried to convince us that the sitting vice president, whose administration is responsible for this disastrous economy, is the change candidate “bringing us a new way forward” while we all bask in her “politics of joy.”
Kamala has been in office for more than 1,350 days, yet we’re supposed to pretend the Biden-Harris administration never happened.
Walz was chosen primarily for his Midwestern, regular-guy appeal, which the Democratic brain trust was sure would win the loyalty of blue-collar men in key swing states.
Harris can’t win without the Rust Belt, hence Walz’s berth on the ticket — even though she had the option of popular Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
But a pre-debate New York Times/Siena poll deflated that expectation: Walz, it turns out, is struggling in the heartland.
He’s seen favorably by just 44% of voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, for example; in Ohio, that number drops to 41%.
And men haven’t flocked to his side: A CBS poll taken before the debate found that Walz is seen favorably by 58% percent of women, but only 48% of men.
Acting silly and effeminate will do that.
After hiding from the press for weeks, Tim Walz had an awful night on Tuesday — so it may be the last most voters see of him before Election Day.
That’s what happens when you get exposed as being as phony as a $3 bill.
Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”