NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd expressed some uneasiness over Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate pick, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn.
During a segment of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on Tuesday, the pundit praised Walz for his ability to appear folksy and relatable to the common American, but worried aloud that picking the progressive candidate means that Harris will be pushed around by the far left in her party.
“I have a yellow flag in my head going, ‘Huh, if you squeal loud enough, she hears and responds,’” Todd told Mitchell.
Todd began his remarks by focusing on the good elements of picking Walz.
“Look, I like to say, you know, sometimes people speak Washington and sometimes people speak American. Tim Walz speaks American, you know?” he said, adding, “He’s not going to tell you about his subcommittee chair, he’s not going to tell you about—I have a feeling he won’t talk about the Veterans Committee, he’ll talk about just helping veterans and things like that.”
“So, in that sense, it strikes me that’s what Harris is looking for.”
However, the NBC pundit felt compelled to voice his concerns about the pick, suggesting that the far left in the Democratic Party twisted Harris’ arm to pick Walz over more moderate choices like Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., or Gov. Josh Shapiro, D-Pa.
“You know, there’s going to be people that will come away from this experience thinking, ‘huh, the progressive backlash is what got her off of Shapiro or what got her off of Kelly,’” Todd said, though he added that maybe these other choices “didn’t vet,” or simply didn’t make the cut for more typical reasons.
Harris announced her vice presidential candidate pick on Tuesday, choosing the Minnesota governor with a progressive governing record over more moderate and well-known choices, like Shapiro.
Walz supports unlimited access to abortion, gender medical procedures for minors, and has been slammed by critics for slow response to the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, which caused much damage to Minneapolis.
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Many have wondered if Shapiro being Jewish was one of the main reasons that Harris passed over the governor, who many thought was a shoo-in for the vice-presidential nomination. The governor caught heat earlier this week after a pro-Israel op-ed he wrote over 30 years ago resurfaced and upset the anti-Israel portion of the Democratic base.
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CNN senior political analyst Van Jones wondered on Tuesday if Shapiro was passed up because of “anti-Jewish bigots” within the Democratic Party.
“Is it just because he’s a moderate or is there some anti-Jewish bias here?” he asked, later stating, “You also have antisemitism that has gotten marbled into this party. You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there. And there’s some disquiet now – and there has to be – how much of what just happened is caving in to some of these darker parts of the party?”
