Our best material from the week Harris chose her vice president

We’ll see how that plays out in November. In the meantime, as we noted on Wednesday, Democrats are pretty enthusiastic about Walz. The Harris campaign raised $36 million in the 24 hours after the announcement, a packed crowd greeted Harris and Walker at their rally in Philadelphia, and staffers said Send politics that Walz, the “60-year-old folksy Midwesterner, is a better fit for Harris and offers more political potential than Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.”

In the days leading up to Harris’ announcement, observers wondered if one of Shapiro’s weaknesses was his religion. Shapiro is Jewish, and as you may have noticed, Democrats have something of an anti-Semitism problem, made more apparent by the war in Gaza. Is Harris’s choice of Walz a sign that she has caved to pressure from the left?

Robert A. George doesn’t think so. Whatever leftists think of Shapiro’s religion, they probably don’t like that he’s a moderate supporter of education vouchers. But George cited another reason, which was evident at the Harris-Walz rally. As I mentioned above, that event was in Philadelphia — and Shapiro was there. But his speech wasn’t just a friendly gesture to unite the party: The governor was electric. George wrote, “In the words of some social media wags, he is ‘Baruch Obama.’ Not only has Shapiro mastered Obama’s vocal range in an almost uncanny way, he also has smoldering star power and charisma. … Walz has a certain kind of star power, but it’s not the same as Shapiro’s. If you want to say Harris is a coward for not wanting to be overshadowed, that’s fine. But that means she is a typical politician, not an anti-Semite.”

So what can we expect from Walz, and what does he bring to Harris’ campaign? Kevin wrote on Friday that while Walz may sell himself as “another duck-hunting farmer from the west,” his “actual political views are largely left-wing in nature.” This makes him a perfect fit for the “campaign that Kamala Harris clearly wants to run: an old-fashioned, partisan, spend-it-all-for-everything Category 5, DEFCON-1 category of utter fiscal incontinence.”

With that in mind, thanks for reading and have a nice weekend.

At the beginning of July, I noticed that many liberals Really angry about Project 2025. I saw friends posting about it on social media, and memes flew around claiming (falsely) that it would call for the teaching of Christianity in public schools and a complete ban on abortion, that it would cut welfare and raise the retirement age. (Our fact check drew some angry comments.) Donald Trump responded to the outcry by distancing himself from the report. So what’s in Project 2025, which was created by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a possible GOP administration? Andy Smarick has read the whole thing. He writes, “Sometimes even a diehard conservative might think it goes too far,” pointing to a chapter on the Office of Management and Budget, which would turn the OMB director into a kind of vice president. But other parts are quite useful, including a chapter on the organization of White House staff, and many topics contain either pro and con arguments and good background on the recent history and structure of departments. But none of it is actually important, Smarick points out. It runs to over 900 pages of policy recommendations, and Trump has “never been credibly accused of being a dedicated public policy scholar.”

Warren Cole Smith Reviews German Shepherds for salea book by Meghan Basham from The Daily Wirethat tries to explain how the evangelical movement has been corrupted by politicization. If you have read Shipping even a little bit, you are probably nodding in agreement as this is a topic we have often addressed. But Basham has a new theory: the corrupting influence comes from the left. Smith knows Basham and many of the evangelical figures mentioned in the book, and he points out that much of her book is simply wrong. She takes comments and statements from evangelical journalists who seem to promote liberal ideas out of context, misrepresents timelines, and omits details that, if mentioned, would undermine her argument. And then there is the crux of the matter: “German Shepherds for sale “There are many villains, but only one true hero: Donald J. Trump,” Smith writes. He adds, “The real sin of those demonized by Basham is their public opposition to Trump. Their book purports to fight for the gospel against heretics, but Basham is waging a proxy war, defending Trump against his evangelical critics.”

As political scientists, pundits, and historians try to analyze how a billionaire star real estate developer from New York was able to win over the Republican Party’s working class in 2016, we hear a lot about how both parties, but especially the Democrats, ignored that segment of the population. But most of the time the idea is discussed in philosophical terms: The party began to emphasize identity politics and progressive social policies, a reflection of its growing share of college-educated, professional voters. What if, as Tom Zoellner suggests, it had been less a question of ideology than of tactics? “The scythe of Trumpism has cut so cleanly across America’s farm and ranch country not so much because voters radically changed their beliefs but because Democrats made the disastrous strategic decision to abandon them,” he writes.

And here is the best of the rest.

• We know a lot about Kamala Harris’ domestic policy positions, but she lacks experience in foreign policy and national security. Rebeccah Heinrichs argues that what little we do know shows Harris is not ready for the international stage.
• On the same day that progressives scored a victory by electing Walz, Representative Cori Bush — a member of the “Squad” alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar — lost her primary and delivered a vindictive speech blaming a pro-Israel group that had funded her opponent. Charles Sykes writes that voters across the country are turning against far-left candidates, and predicts that tensions between mainstream and left-wing Democrats will be on display at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
• Kamala Harris’ surprisingly strong start and the attention her running mate attracted pushed Donald Trump out of the spotlight for several weeks. Boiling frogs (🔒) Nick notes that the former president is not handling it well. He resorts to tantrums and race-baiting, and the best nickname he can think of for his opponent is “Kamabla.” He writes, “Trump is currently failing strategically because he is seething with anger at the loss of the race and lacks the self-control to channel his anger more productively.”
• Jonah takes a break from politics to rail against a Nike ad that celebrates athletes with killer instincts and values ​​victory above all else. He laments other cultural examples that convey similar messages – and quotes Walter White in breaking Bad and even Penny from The Big Bang Theory— and argues in Wednesday G-file (🔒)that we lost something along the way. I can’t do it justice in a few sentences, so read the whole thing.
• Did you hear JD Vance’s comment that “a million cheap knock-off toasters are not worth the cost of a single American manufacturing job?” Well, Scott heard it, and in Capitolism He explains everything that is wrong with this attitude.
• And we must not forget the pods: On The Dispatch Podcastour podcast guru Adaam and David French have an important discussion about Israel’s war against Hamas and talk about the possibility of a larger regional war. Speaking of David, he and Sarah are launching a special August book series on Appraise through a conversation with Professor Keith Whittington about his book You can’t teach that!: The battle for university lecture hallsand they discuss whether academic freedom should be a constitutional right. And get your weekly dose of blatant expert opinion with The Remnantwhile Jonah welcomes Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution to discuss party politics, the selection of Walz, and the twin scourges of populism and anti-Semitism.