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The suspicion was that Kamala Harris was going to pick a «moderate» battleground state Democrat who could expand her path to 270 electoral votes. She didn’t do that. She went with a radical leftist governor from a blue state: Tim Walz. While this choice had many scratching their heads, the conventional wisdom from the Democratic Party is that with Walz as her running mate, it will significantly enhance the ticket’s appeal in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
«One of the Democrats’ chief challenges in those states is in blue-collar and small-town areas, where the party once ran competitively (or at least respectably) before the floor fell out amid and after Donald Trump’s emergence in 2016», explains MSNBC’ national political correspondent Steve Kornacki. «The thinking is that Walz’s story and style will be relatable and reassuring to some of those voters, blunting at least part of the Trump GOP’s newfound dominance.»
The problem with this theory, Kornacki points out, is that Walz «wasn’t able to do that himself in his last campaign.»
The theory was that Minnesota shares demographic similarities with Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The one thing that makes Minnesota a blue state and not a battleground is that «it has a higher share of the college-educated, Democratic-friendly cohort.
