Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / JUST JOSH: The Perfect Veep Pick

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JUST JOSH: The Perfect Veep Pick · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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Here's a dangerous idea for you. The seemingly innocuous selection of a seemingly innocuous
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gentleman from the Midwest of the United States, Governor Tim Waltz, or some people say
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Waltz, or some people say Waltz, I'd like to say Valtz with a harsh,
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Jutonic Valtz, Governor Tim Waltz of Minnesota, the Vice-Presidential candidate
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for the Democratic Party. This seemingly innocuous selection could actually have profound
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implications, massive ripple effects for the future of the left in the United States, and maybe
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even the future of the left, across the whole western world. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
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I'm Chipper, as you can probably hear. I think this is a great pick. Let me give you
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three reasons why. Firstly, the main takeaway from this pick that Kamala Harris has made of
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her Vice-Presidential candidate is that there is no obvious advantage to picking this guy,
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and that is why the pick is paradoxically brilliant. It's not nearly as strategic as it could
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have been, and therein lies the kernel of genius. In what I regard as being three ways,
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the first thing I want to discuss is the impact of this, and what it means for the left in America,
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then I want to talk about what this means for Trump and the narrative about Trump,
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and then I want to talk about what this tells us about Kamala Harris as a candidate and
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potentially as a president. Firstly, on the left, in one respect, the selection of a governor
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VALTS is something of a capitulation to the left. He's pretty left-wing. Of all of the people
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who Kamala Harris was looking at selecting, he's certainly not the center-rightish kind of
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stodgy pro-Israel governor of Pennsylvania, which Shapiro Hushie could have selected. This is
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someone who has enshrined the right to abortion into his state's law. He has legalized marijuana,
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he has expanded background checks to make it harder to buy a gun. The National Rifle Association
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gives him an F. They give school cards. Isn't that sweet? They give school cards to politicians
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on how pro-Gum they are. They used to give him an A, because he is a gun owner, and he lives
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in a farming community, or it's totally normal in the United States to own a gun. But after
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several of the successive shootings, I mean, which one? Take your pick. After Sandy Hook and then
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the Las Vegas shooting, he ended up favoring some minimal restrictions on gun ownership,
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which sound radical to the National Rifle Association, and probably to many people who are his
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constituents in the great state of Minnesota. Nonetheless, so there's that that puts him firmly
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on the left. He has provided universal free meals for school children in his state. He's given
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felons the right to vote once they leave prison. So, you know, convicts will be able to
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vote. That's a pretty left-wing idea in the United States, although not in most other countries.
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He has allowed undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants. Let's just be blunt. To get driver's
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licenses, this is something that most people in left-wing states support, but can sound very
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sort of California to people in in red states who are more hostile towards illegal immigrants.
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He has required companies to offer paid family and medical leave to their employees. He's committed
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his state to a to transition to carbon-free electricity by 2040. He's put a billion dollars
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into affordable housing. You get the drift, right? Like he is a person who actually achieves real
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world, real life, left-wing policies that would terrify, you know, right-wing, think tank,
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poor Ryan, and possibly even Mitt Romney types. However, that is actually an asset in the sense that
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he doesn't couple any of those policies with social justice workiness. He doesn't smell of California
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San Francisco liberalism. He smells of the heartland. And this is exactly what the left
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needs. I had sort of jokingly said that actually if the Democrats seriously want to win the next
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election, and I joked about this in some seriousness with David from on the episode that we did
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right after Donald Trump's assassination attempt, which he should go back and listen to. It's
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really interesting hearing us sort of we were recording it just before the assassination attempt,
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just before the Republican convention. And it feels like a lifetime ago. I mean, the way that we
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were talking about the inevitability of Joe Biden as the presidential candidate, about the
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upsides and downsides of Donald Trump as a candidate, feel like they might as well be from a
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decade ago. Nonetheless, that's really interesting to listen to. We were sort of saying at the time,
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almost half jokingly, that what the Democrats would do if they really, really, really, really,
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really regarded Donald Trump as the existential threat to democracy that they say that he is,
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is they would nominate Mitt Romney to run instead of Joe Biden. They would nominate someone who
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is so inoffensive to everybody on the right that the only reason why you would favor Donald Trump
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over him is because you're a deranged weirdo with culture war hangups. And then you would get the
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center right, you would get the center left, and a few people on the far left would probably stay
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home, but they would be more than outweighed by the center of gravity, yada yada, appealed to the
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middle, blah, blah, blah. And when it became clear that Kamala Harris had the nomination stitched up
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because President Biden basically handed it to her, and her potential rivals failed to step up
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and challenge her, then I thought, well, okay, she should nominate someone like Mitt Romney. She
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should follow that logic, you know, she should select as her running candidate, as her running
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mate, somebody who is incredibly inoffensive and fairly right wing to pander to conservatives and
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reassure, especially the business community that she's not a wild-eyed lefty. I thought she could
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nominate Mitt Romney for Vice President. I mean, I don't know if you'd take it or what about
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someone outside the box I've heard the name thrown around Mark Cuban, you know, businessman,
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television personality, you know, much liked and would reassure the business community that
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a Democratic White House would not be antithetical to their interests and would have people who
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understand business in there. And now I realize that's all a bit silly because actually what you
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need in a Vice presidential candidate is not someone who's radically different from the presidential
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candidate in order to attempt to placate people who hate the presidential candidate. Rather,
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it's someone who reflects the values of the presidential candidate, but in a slightly different
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way. They refract the attributes and point towards the attributes and the assets of the presidential
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candidate, but in a same, same, but different way. So Romney wouldn't quite be right. Cuban
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wouldn't quite be right. A conservative person wouldn't quite be right with Kamala Harris.
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You would end up trying to please everybody and pleasing nobody. It reminds me of the,
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the sort of rule that you always tell to young writers, young creatives, young performers,
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people who might be going to auditions and so on. Like, just if you're an apple, be the best
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apple that you can be. Don't try to go in and be an orange. And, you know, if you're an apple and
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hope think that all the market is really good hot on oranges at the moment. So I have to go and
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be the best orange. If you're an apple, you're never going to win by presenting yourself as an
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orange because there's already always an orange out there. And I'm not even making this illusion to
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orangeness on the basis of Donald Trump's skin color. I'm just saying, like, be the apple that
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you truly are. And Kamala Harris is Kamala Harris. And she's never going to persuade people who don't
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like Kamala Harris to vote for her by nominating Mark Cuban. What she has done is realized that
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instead of nominating a conservative, what she needs is somebody who's not woke. She needs somebody
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who is not just not woke and not even anti woke, but trans woke. Like, not in the sense of transgender,
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in the sense of superseding all ideals of wokeness, like someone who is beyond the culture wars.
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And that is Governor Tim Valtz of Minnesota. He comes across as a guy from a small town who,
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and by the way, if you don't know about that, you know what I'm going to do right now before I
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even go any further. I want you to listen to where this guy first exploded into public attention.
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Because, you know, this is this guy a few weeks ago. Most Democrats had never even heard of him.
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And he sparked this kind of meme. This, I suppose, cultural idea that has ricocheted all over
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the interwebs and social media and pinged off pretty much every talking head on the left wing
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side of politics in America over the past two weeks. This idea that Donald Trump and JD Vance,
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his running mate, are weird. They're just weird. And I'll get to this in just a moment,
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and I'll close the loop on the point about his sort of being super woke, beyond woke,
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you know, not even on the battleground of wokeness versus anti-wokeness. But have a listen to where
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this all began. It was the 23rd of July. He was not on anyone's radar as being a potential
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running mate, but he went on Morning Joe, which is the Morning Show on MSNBC. And he said this.
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People like JD Vance know nothing about small town America. My town had 400 people in it.
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24 kids in my graduating class, 12 for cousins, and he gets it all wrong. It's a not about hate.
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It's not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business.
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Their policies are with destroyed rural America. They've divided us. They're in our exam rooms.
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They're telling us what books to read. And I think what Kamala Harris knows is bringing people
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together around the shared values, strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the
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middle class, health care that's affordable and accessible. Those are the things you look what
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they're talking about. They went right to division. They did not give us a plan on health care.
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Donald Trump talked about infrastructure. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris built bridges, built roads.
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So I think this is going back to the bread and butter. Getting away from this division,
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we do not like what has happened where we can't even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our
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uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary. And I think bringing back
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people together. Well, it's true. These guys are just weird. They're running for
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key man women haters club or something. That's what they go at. That's not what people are
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interested in. So that's what started this whole hubbub. That's what got the bull rolling.
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Then everyone started picking up the word weird to describe Donald Trump and JD
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Vance. And all of a sudden this governor from Minnesota was kind of shot to national
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superstar. I mean, became a real candidate of potential running mate for vice president.
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And what strikes me about that, why I say it's kind of beyond workers is just listen to the way
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that he talks. He talks like a real heartland American. And that's why I think this is potentially
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so revolutionary for the left because for the past five or 10 years, it's been clear that left
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wing politics has become obsessed with the narcissism of small differences where tribes of identity
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politics representatives like to complain at each other about how they're the more aggrieved ones
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and how we have to make everyone realize that there's a new sheriff in town and we all have to
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watch what we say and make sure that we use the right transgender pronouns or you know that we
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don't say the N word even in conversation when we're talking about how terrible a word it is or
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that we don't tell any jokes that could be regarded as being sexist or like, you know, there's this
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whole tripwireification. There's cancel cultureification that I feel like we've reached peak levels
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off. But it hasn't yet, well, certainly not in academia we haven't. I think it's still very
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entrenched in academia and the media and entertainment. But in corporate America, I think we've reached
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we've reached peak work. But it hasn't yet leached out of the body politic in the way that
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political actors think about things and talk about things. And this nomination of a guy who never
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seems to have been on board that train and who is talking about the values of progressiveism and
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leftism that I believe in that I suppose old school leftists would have believed in egalitarianism
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equality universalism giving people opportunity giving people a leg up treating people equally on
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the basis of their need rather than on the basis of their identity characteristics. You know,
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treating all people on the basis of their characteristics rather than the color of their skin or,
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you know, what genitals they've got between their legs like those kinds of ideals that you would
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have heard leftist talking about, you know, before the I suppose the work culture wars is what this
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nominee embodies. And let me read one other thing because it's such a great point that he makes
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about Donald Trump in terms of being weird. He says, and this has been an interview with the New
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York Times. He says, I come from a town of 424 kids in a class 12 cousins farming those types of
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things. And I know they're not weird. I know they're not Donald Trump. The thing is we have to get
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them away. He says from what he's trying to sell because that's just not who they are. He says,
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just picture in your mind Donald Trump coming home after a day of work and picking up a frisbee
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and throwing it and his dog catches it and the dog runs over and Donald Trump gives him a good
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belly rub because he's a good boy. Isn't that like a perfect articulation of the difference between
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Donald Trump and a non weird person, a person who the governor of Minnesota is trying to reclaim
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the Democratic Party for is trying to reclaim leftism for. As an op-ed columnist in the New York
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Times put it, Mr. Volts' liberalism is not California inflected. Here's of a vanishing political
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breed. This columnist writes, the heartland left populist. And here is where I hope there's a
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glimmer of real change, which is not only is he a heartland left populist, which I think is
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the winning strategy because the majority of people just are heartland left populists. At least
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enough of them are that when you combine them with the latte sipping, chardonnay, swilling,
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cosmopolitan elites in the big cities, you have a majority. But it's also a way of kind of undermining
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the smugness, the contempt that has been, that the left has been saddled with ever since the great
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awokening began. You know, the sort of attitude that was embodied in Hillary Clinton's line about
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deplorables, which I think which she was unfairly malign for because it's not what she really meant.
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She was talking about there being a specific class of Trump supporters who are deplorables,
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and then she went on to say, but most of them aren't. But the very idea that you could write
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anyone off as a deplorable has become something that something of an albatross around the neck of
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people on the left. This is kind of I know better than you finger wagging high-minded school marmish
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attitude towards those stupid people who are too dumb or racist to know any better than to vote
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for Donald Trump. And what Tim Valtz brings to the table is a kind of ability to float above
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all that, an ability to float above the culture wars and speak plainly and truthfully to
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heartland Americans in a way that does seem like he would come home and throw the frisbee
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for his dog in a way that JD Vance and Donald Trump never would.
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So the guy comes from a small town in Nebraska. He did a series of odd jobs after high school.
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He built grain silos. He processed mortgage loans. He enlisted in the National Guard in the army
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at the age of 17. He served in the army for 24 years, never saw combat, but hey, he is most
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definitively not weird, which brings me to the second reason I think this is an inspired
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pick. What the term weird is doing to Donald Trump, both to his candidacy and to him as a human
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being, it's getting him riled up. He really doesn't like it. He's talked about it a few times
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in the past week. He's talked about, you know, he said, oh, I've been called a lot of things in my
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life. I can assure you I've never been called weird. I'm definitely not weird. He's weird. He's
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in ways that were sort of reminiscent of when his brain broke during one of the debates with Hillary
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Clinton. And, you know, he started talking about, you know, I'm not a puppet. I'm not a Russian
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puppet. You're a puppet. You're the puppet. When you get Trump into that mindset where you really
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get under his skin, you can, you know, you can call him a dictator. He doesn't give a shit. You
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can call him an authoritarian. He doesn't give a shit. You can call him toxic, you know, sexist. He
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doesn't give a shit. But make him feel like he doesn't belong in the Cool Kids Club.
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And you scratch a nerve. Make him seem like a misfit, like someone who was just sort of born
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broken. And I think you're getting somewhere with Donald Trump. It's his, it's his, it's his
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Achilles heel, this sense that no matter how hard he worked, Joe, I mean, how hard he worked,
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you know, obviously at the superficial glib things that he works hard at, like, you know, calling
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up publicists and pretending to be Donald Trump's, calling up journalists rather and pretending
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to be Donald Trump's publicist so that he could get in the gossip pages of, of Murdoch tabloids
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and things like that. But no matter how hard he works at that, he never gets the cuedos of the
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high end of town. He never really gets invited to the important parties. He never gets regarded
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with the respect that he deserves. That is, that is a kind of algorithm that's running in the
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background of Donald Trump's brain. And if you can scratch it, if you can open it up, if you can
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needle it, then you bring out the worst in him. And so it's sort of almost like a trial lawyer
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in a court trying to make the witness snap. I think the vice presidential candidate on the
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Democratic side has this ability to articulate and frame the worldview and the, really the intrinsic
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beingness of Donald Trump and of JD Vance in a scathing way that cuts to their own insecurities
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and shows them up to be emperors with no clothes. I mean, so that on the one hand, it's great because
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it deranges them. And on the other hand, it's great because it reinvigorates the left with less
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fear and more power. Like to call someone weird is very different from calling them an existential
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threat to democracy. It's quite clear that Governor Tim Vance does believe that Donald Trump is
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an existential threat to democracy does believe that he will use the tools of his power and the
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organs of state to punish people who disobey him to hollow out the public service and install his
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his loyalists inside instead of people who will give fearless, you know, advice to the powerful.
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It's quite clear that, you know, the attacks that the Republicans will make on the judicial system
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in terms of installing favorable judges all over the place will run a pace and that Governor Vance
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is is keenly aware of those threats, but he's also keenly aware of human psychology and he's
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also keenly aware of how small town America feels and what they respond to and what makes a popular
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politician, frankly, because he is extremely popular in his state. And what he knows is
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people aren't going to become their best selves if you're wagging your finger at them and telling
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them that they're idiots if they vote for a person who's going to destroy America.
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It's actually more powerful to dismiss Donald Trump as being just a bit of a self-obsessed
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weirdo than, you know, some kind of posturing potential Hitler or Mussolini who's going to destroy
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the United States. I think there's something very psychologically astute about that denigration
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of the Trump and Vance movement. What I would just say is that it's deeply important that the left,
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that people on the left who are not as sensitive as Governor Waltz in the way that they articulate
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the point that they're trying to make that they don't get carried away with this idea of weirdness
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in ways that make them sound as smug and condescending as Hillary Clinton did when she was talking
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about deplorables. We have to make sure that it's not the Trump supporters who are being regarded
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as weird. It's not the people who were left behind in Appalachia by economic changes that they
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had no responsibility for who are weird. It's not the people whose jobs were outsourced to China
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who are weird. It's not the long-haul truck drivers who want a better job who are weird. It's not
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the conservative Christians who are weird. It's specifically Donald Trump and JD Vance and their
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suck ups and hangers on who are just weird. You heard Governor Waltz talk about it there. It's
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like, why is it so hard to just go to Thanksgiving and talk to your uncle because his brain has been
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contaminated by just this weird stuff? It's just another way. It's what we would call being
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too online, essentially. It's the offline way of saying that you're too online. It's to just say
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that you are weird. The last way in which I am super, super excited about this after having
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talked about the implications for the left and the implications for Donald Trump, both in terms
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of Trump's internal psychology and in terms of the public's perception of him being an emperor
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with no clothes, is what this pick tells us about Kamala Harris as a candidate and as a potential
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president, the danger of Harris' being the candidate has always been that there's a perception
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that she is wishy-washy. She doesn't really know who exactly who she is. She was this stern harsh,
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anti-tuff on crime prosecutor in California and then all of a sudden when she was running during
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the George Floyd summer of riots, she was like, oh, I'm actually a softie and I'm really, you know,
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I'm cool with this stuff and, you know, I want compassion for criminals and yeah, yeah, go like,
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you know, defund the police. That has been tricky for her. You know, navigating the woke
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waters has certainly made her seem in my eye as like someone who's disingenuous and doesn't have
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a backbone. But the fact that she's picked this person, she's picked this person against the
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advice of most political pundits who say, listen, you need Pennsylvania. There's almost no way to
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get to 270 electoral college votes without Pennsylvania. Just nominate the governor of Pennsylvania
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and be done with it. He's good in every other respect and he's very popular.
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The fact that, look, you could argue on sort of grounds of political calculus that that's just not
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true. Paul Ryan didn't win Wisconsin when he was a vice presidential candidate. But I think
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there's something deeper going on, which is that we're getting a glimpse of a person. I hope we're
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getting a glimpse of a person who trusts her gut and is willing to go out on a limb and be defiant
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and run counter to the impression of her being easily manipulable. And that gives me hope not
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just for her ability to win the election, but her ability to govern and be a decent president.
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It reassures me that she'll be less captive than I feared she would be to social justice activists,
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mock activist mobs. And that she'll be less of a weathervane just flipping and flopping,
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depending on what her advisors tell her. And that maybe that was just an unfair characterization
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of a political novice at a time that was very disorienting to everybody. And if I'm willing to
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reevaluate my previously harsh judgments of Kamala Harris, and look, this may be motivated
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reasoning because I just want to believe in her because I don't want another Trump term. But
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I don't think it is. I think if I'm willing to be honest with myself and give her the benefit of
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the doubt, I didn't know very much about her. None of us really did. We saw what she was able to
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cut through in the media cycle when she tried to run against Joe Biden the first time and failed.
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But now she has made one big decision that makes it clear that she's willing to go against
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political advice. Look someone in the eye, make a judgment call about them, trust her gut,
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and once she's done trusting her gut, end up siding with the person who I think best embodies
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the anti-woke, super-woke beyond the culture war mandate of what the left actually needs to be if
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it's going to win elections in the future. So I'm feeling pretty chipper today. I hope that's
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been useful just hearing what my thoughts are. I can't wait. You know, I've previously been dreading
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the pre-election period. Now I'm super excited about it. I hope you're excited too. We'll get back to
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regular programming next week. Take care. Lots of love. See you soon.