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      JD Vance pleads sarcasm in latest effort to clean up ‘childless cat ladies’ remark

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      The Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, claimed that calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” was merely a “sarcastic remark”, as he attempted to deflect charges of misogyny and redirect fire at Harris’s own running mate, Tim Walz, on Tuesday.“The media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate,” the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee told reporters in Philadelphia.In response, a spokesperson for Harris said Vance and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, were “not pro-family, they are anti-women”, adding: “Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls.”Vance was in Philadelphia in direct opposition to Harris and Walz, as the vice-president and the Minnesota governor prepared to host their first joint rally in the Pennsylvania city.Calling Walz “a joke” and “one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government at any level”, Vance accused the governor of “wanting to ship more manufacturing jobs to China” and of being weak in the face of protests for racial justice in Minneapolis in summer 2020.Nonetheless, Vance continued to face questions about his “childless cat ladies” comment, in which he named Harris.Speaking in 2021 to the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vance called senior Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.“It’s just a basic fact – you look at Kamala Harris, [transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”Harris is stepmother to two children. In 2021, Buttigieg adopted two children with his husband, Chasten. Ocasio-Cortez does not have children.Vance’s remarks – and other controversial statements – resurfaced after Trump picked him as his running mate last month.Democrats, and outside voices including the actor Jennifer Aniston, have branded the “childless cat ladies” comments as offensive. Polling shows the public agrees. On Tuesday a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll showed 64% of respondents saying they disapproved of the statement that not having biological children hindered Harris’s ability to be president. Only 15% of Republicans approved.Vance addressed the “childless cat ladies” controversy a day after his wife, Usha Vance, the mother of his three children, claimed the comment was merely a “quip”.Usha Vance told Fox News her husband “was really saying … that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country and sometimes our policies … make it even harder”.She did not mention that JD Vance recently helped block a bill to establish the right to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), treatment that helps millions who might otherwise not have children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Philadelphia, the “childless cat ladies” comment was brought up towards the end of an event in which Vance repeatedly disparaged the media.He told a reporter: “Now, you asked about the remarks that I made that you said were offensive to millions of women. Well, here’s what I’d say – ”A woman in the audience shouted: “This cat lady loves you.”“Thank you, ma’am,” Vance said, amid cheers, adding: “We love you too.”He continued: “What I said is very simple. I think American families are good and government policy should be more pro-family. Now if the media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate, then the media is entitled to get offended.”He then reeled off reasons he said he was offended by Harris, from her role in immigration and border policy to her not having given any interviews since becoming the Democratic nominee.Contacted for comment, Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told the Guardian: “This might come as a surprise to Vance and Trump, but women don’t appreciate their personal choices and freedoms being attacked by politicians butting into their bedrooms and doctor’s offices, trying to tell them if and when to have kids.“It’s particularly weird from the same man who voted against protections for IVF and called universal daycare ‘class war against normal people’.“Vance’s comments make it clear: he and Donald Trump are not pro-family, they are anti-women. Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls to elect Vice-President Harris this November.” More

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      Kamala Harris’ VP pick may signal a shift away from pivoting to the center | Moira Donegan

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      “Historically, the vice-president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Donald Trump told the National Association of Black Journalists last week. “I mean, virtually no impact … virtually never has it mattered.” The former US president may have been engaged in a bit of wishful thinking. If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that vice-presidential running mates do, in fact, matter. His, the Ohio senator JD Vance, has quickly become a centerpiece of the race, which has shifted to become in part a referendum on Vance’s regressive and hateful views of women.The VP choice is not a superficial one, not merely an ornament to the presidential nominee or a bit of tactical cosmetic maneuvering to balance his or her weaknesses. A decision that is ultimately left entirely in the hands of the presidential nominee, it is a signal of that person’s perspectives and priorities, and one of the most influential choices he or she can make to shape the future of their party.What sort of future for the Democratic party does Kamala Harris see in her choice of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz? The move may reflect a shift away from the strategy of pivoting to the center that the Democrats have been pursuing for decades and towards a new policy and messaging strategy that seeks to attack the sadism and bigotry of Republicans and make an affirmative case for progressive values. Because frankly, if they were doing things the old way, they would have picked Josh Shapiro.Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, was the early favorite for the VP slot. There are few paths to victory for the Harris campaign that do not require her to win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, and Shapiro was thought to be the safest bet to secure them. But Shapiro is a relatively untested politician. He only ascended to national notice in 2022, when he ran for governor against an election-denying quack who barely mounted a campaign. In the quick but comparatively much more thorough vetting process of Harris’s vice-presidential search, an array of liabilities emerged. Shapiro, who volunteered with the Israeli army as a young man, wrote a piece when he was in college that suggested that Palestinians were racially incapable of peace. More recently, he has spoken with uncommon contempt about anti-genocide protestors on college campuses. His appointment would have reinvigorated divisions within the Democratic base over Israel’s war on Palestinians just as college semesters are set to begin.Shapiro, too, seems to have some problems with gender issues, a unique liability in a campaign that is set to be defined by them: he is alleged to have tolerated and helped cover up harassment and sexual harassment of women by one of his closest aides, has antagonized the woman-dominated teachers’ union with his support of private school vouchers, and came under scrutiny while attorney general for his office’s classification of a woman’s death – in which she was stabbed multiple times, including in the head, neck and chest – as a suicide.Shapiro is what other versions of the Democratic party would have been considered the safe choice: a moderate, seen as antagonizing the party’s left, who could appeal to white male conservative voters in a swing state. That’s what Hillary Clinton chose when she selected Tim Kaine as her running mate in 2016; that was the political theory of change that had been advocated by Bill Clinton and his Democratic party successors in every election since 1992. But cumulatively, Shapiro’s liabilities threatened to divide the base, alienate the left and weaken the Democratic party’s claim to be advocates of gender equality. Placed against Vance, his contrast would have been minimal: the VP contenders would have been two elite lawyers from fancy schools, slick and ambitious and weird about women. The Democratic party has changed. What might have seemed safe in 2016 ultimately appeared too risky in 2024.Walz, by contrast, offers a long record of policy accomplishments, experience both in Congress and as an executive, an amazing absence of scandal, and an almost relentless midwestern cheerfulness. A former history teacher and champion high school football coach, Walz volunteered to serve as the first faculty advisor to his public school’s gay-straight alliance – back in the 90s, when gay acceptance was still years away and Minnesota still had criminal bans on gay sex on the books.He later served 12 years in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, representing Minnesota’s first district – a vast rural expanse, spanning the whole southern width of the state along the Iowa border – becoming the first Democrat elected to that seat in years. A veteran, Walz was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer to ever serve in Congress; in a body made up overwhelmingly of the rich, where other veterans often entered the military as officers from elite service academies, Walz was a public college graduate who had joined the Minnesota national guard as an enlisted soldier.While in Congress, Walz was a consistent advocate for labor unions and abortion rights, while still earning a reputation for bipartisanship. But it is in his role as Minnesota’s governor, an office he was first elected to in 2018, that Walz has distinguished himself. His administration has racked up multiple wins for progressive policy priorities in the state, even as Democrats have held only an extremely slim majority in the state house. As governor, he has signed laws providing free school lunches for all children, decriminalizing marijuana, assuring paid family and medical leave for workers, advancing common-sense gun control like universal background checks and red flag protections, codifying abortion rights in the Minnesota state constitution and protecting those who travel to the state for reproductive or gender-affirming care, and advancing labor and union protections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese progressive policy wins have been coupled in Walz’s persona, a cheerful, folksy wholesomeness that contrasts nicely with Harris’s public posture of competent self-assurance. Walz is aggressively normal; his public persona is the human embodiment of a dad joke. This non-threatening masculinity allows him to posit his own progressive values as normative American values – and to contrast the Republicans’ maximalist social conservative agenda as a creepy intrusion on the American way of life. It was Walz, in a television appearance he made while auditioning for the VP job, who famously first described the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird”, a playful pejorative that the Harris campaign quickly seized on.For decades, Democrats have feared seeming “weird”, feared that too robust a commitment to their policy positions would alienate an America that they imagined as fundamentally conservative. But times have changed. It is the Democrats, now under the banner of Harris and Walz, who can argue that their progressive vision represents the American mainstream.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The Guardian view on Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick: Tim Walz is a smart choice for Democrats | Editorial

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      Kamala Harris’s own ascension to the top of the ticket has shone a brighter spotlight than usual on the Democrats’ choice of vice-presidential nominee, underlining why the second slot on the ticket matters. The impact of the running mate is usually limited unless they prove extraordinarily popular or unpopular. Growing concerns about the state of the US economy are likely to be far more consequential. But Ms Harris’s selection of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, on Tuesday, and the enthusiasm it is engendering, contribute to the sense of a rejuvenated campaign. Democrats are not taking poll improvements for granted, but now believe that it is possible to beat Donald Trump.Ms Harris stressed Mr Walz’s record of “fighting for middle-class families”. Originally from rural Nebraska, he is a former teacher and high school football coach who served in the army national guard for 24 years. As governor he has overseen – with Minnesota’s Democratic legislature – progressive policies including free school meals, abortion protections, pro-worker policies and gun restrictions. He has a better record on facing the climate crisis than rivals.He has been adept at winning over moderate Republicans, but also at attacking Donald Trump; Ms Harris’s description of the former president as “weird” was borrowed from him. The right has already argued that he should have been swifter to call in the national guard when protests following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis turned violent. But the Trump campaign will surely find that the tag of “dangerously liberal extremist” is harder to pin on a folksy white Midwestern man who loves hunting than on a black woman from California. Critically, Mr Walz also has significant political experience and ties, having first been elected to Congress in 2006; friends there rallied behind him.Vice-presidential nominees tend to be important primarily in how they reflect on their boss and balance the ticket. JD Vance was meant to bring a shot of youthful energy when Mr Trump was running against Mr Biden; with Ms Harris as the de facto Democratic nominee, it is his extreme stance on abortion and remarks on “childless cat ladies” that grab attention. The disastrous bet on Sarah Palin threw doubt on John McCain’s judgment, experience and leadership. People need to believe that, in a crisis, the running mate would be capable of running the show: around one in five US vice-presidents have taken over under such circumstances.While some suggested that other candidates – notably Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor and reportedly the other finalist for the role – would bring a swing state with them, political scientists suggest that is a myth. Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko, who analysed election data going back to the late 19th century, suggested that “the vice presidential home state advantage is, essentially, zero”.What vice-presidential picks can do is enthuse the party and help to establish a sense of unity and direction. Mr Walz was the most progressive of the Democratic politicians seriously considered for the role. While activists lobbied against other candidates, there appears to be real enthusiasm about both what he stands for and his ability to communicate that straightforwardly. Ms Harris’s pick contributes to a renewed sense of purpose, and is another welcome step in a campaign that still has a long way to run. More

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      Kamala Harris bets on Tim Walz as running mate: ‘We are going to win’

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      Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for US president, has named Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate ahead of the November election.The decision ends intense speculation over which candidate Harris would pick to go up against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, and his choice for vice-president, the Ohio senator JD Vance.Walz first ran for office in 2006 in a Republican-leaning congressional district, upsetting the incumbent. He kept the seat until he won the Minnesota governorship in 2018, then again in 2022. Under his leadership, the state has seen significant progressive legislative wins in recent years, including universal school meals, legalized marijuana, abortion protections and gun control measures.Before he entered public office, he was a school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, teaching geography to high school students. He also served in the army national guard for 24 years.In an Instagram post announcing the pick, Harris said: “One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal.”She cited his upbringing in Nebraska, and how after his father’s death to cancer, his family relied on social security survivor benefits to make ends meet. He used the GI bill to attend college. He coached high school football and advised the high school’s gay-straight alliance. His background is “impressive in its own right”, but also informs his governing, she said.Minnesota Democrats’ legislative record played into her choice – she noted a law that constitutionally protects access to abortion and one requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.“But what impressed me most about Tim is his deep commitment to his family,” she added.“We are going to build a great partnership. We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”Walz posted a short statement to X on Tuesday. “Vice-President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school,” he said.His midwesterner dad charm and straight-talk propelled him up the list as a potential vice-presidential pick, though, and as the head of the Democratic Governors Association, he has been stumping for Biden and Harris for the past year.It was his simple retort against Trump and his allies that caught national Democrats’ attention most: he called them weird. His clips on TV shows went viral, showing him pushing back on Republicans’ “weird behavior” while showcasing a list of what he had accomplished as a Democratic governor and how Democrats would govern if they win the White House again.Walz explained in a TV interview why he had started calling Trump weird. It’s true that Trump’s policy would put women’s lives on the line and that he’s a threat to constitutional values, Walz said. But he’s also on the campaign trail “talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind”.“Have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me, that an adult can go through six and a half years of being in the public eye. If he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior,” Walz said of Trump.Walz grew up in small-town Nebraska, giving him rural bona fides that will help voters who have moved away from Democrats in recent years.“The golden rule that makes small towns work so we’re not at each others’ throats all the time in a little town is: mind your own damn business,” Walz said in one TV spot.His former colleagues praised his ability to connect with those crucial voters in the Rust belt, and to not only explain what’s bad about Republicans, but what Democrats would actually do in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTim Ryan, a former Democratic US representative and Walz’s friend, called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”Some political commentators had suggested that, as the first woman of color nominated by a major party, Harris was mostly likely to pick a white man to balance the ticket.The 59-year-old former California senator is looking to build on a successful campaign launch after stepping in to replace Joe Biden, who bowed to pressure from Democratic colleagues and dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Harris and Walz can expect a rapturous welcome at the Democratic national convention in Chicago starting on 19 August. She has been endorsed by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.A New York Times/Siena College national opinion poll published on 25 July found that Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with a lead of 49% to 41% over Biden in early July.Republicans immediately began attacking Walz as a “radical leftist” and claimed that picking Walz was “a massive gift to Republicans”, suggesting his presence on the ticket will tank the Harris campaign.In a statement, the Trump campaign called Walz a “west coast wannabe” who has “spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden state”. The campaign brought up a clip from 2017 where Walz talks about electoral maps that show broad swathes of red, saying those areas are “mostly cows and rocks”.“If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare,” the Trump campaign said.Speaking in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Vance first told reporters he could not “say a lot about who Tim Walz is because the Democrats have shown a willingness to put a little switcheroo on us”, by switching presidential candidate from Biden to Harris.Vance said he had called Walz to congratulate him on his selection and would debate him, but only after the Democratic convention later this month.“So that’s the first reason,” for not commenting too much about Walz, Vance said – though he subsequently attacked Walz freely in terms he himself indicated: “The second reason is that Tim Walz’s record is a joke. He’s one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government, at any level.” More

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      How could Tim Walz’s political record help and hurt Harris?

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      The presumptive Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, has chosen the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate in the presidential race, elevating a popular although relatively unknown leader who has attracted the support of progressive voters in recent days.Walz has served as Minnesota’s governor since 2019 after 12 years in the House of Representatives and now leads the Democratic Governors Association. He has built a reputation as a folksy politician who can get things done, as Minnesota has adopted a number of progressive laws during his tenure. According to a poll conducted earlier this year, Walz enjoys an approval rating of 55% among Minnesotans.Since Minnesota Democrats achieved a legislative trifecta in the 2022 elections, Walz and his allies have used their power to push a slate of progressive policies. The governor signed bills protecting abortion access, expanding background checks for prospective gun owners and legalizing recreational marijuana.“Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said last year. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”That philosophy has endeared him to progressives, who threw their support behind him as the veepstakes kicked into high gear over the past two weeks. They reshared clips of Walz lightly mocking his daughter’s vegetarianism and tinkering with his car to paint him as the dad that America needs right now. But as the running mate, Walz will need to introduce himself to a much wider audience. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.The other finalist in Harris’s running mate search was the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, whose popularity with his constituents could have helped Democrats in a key battleground state. Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just one point in 2020, while he enjoyed a more comfortable seven-point victory in Minnesota. But Democrats are confident that Walz’s record will mobilize voters across the country.Last year, Walz signed a bill that provided free breakfast and lunch for all students attending public and charter schools in Minnesota. The program allows students to receive one free breakfast and lunch a day, regardless of their income, according to the Minnesota Reformer. Through the first few months it was in effect, the state saw a significant jump in the number of meals requested.When he was running for Congress in 2010, Walz received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. At the time, the group cited his support for legislation allowing people to carry guns in national parks, as well as his decision to sign on to a pro-gun amicus brief in District of Columbia v Heller, a 2008 supreme court case, that significantly expanded the second amendment.But since then, Walz has spoken out in favor of gun control measures. Last year, he approved a measure to enact a “red flag” law to remove guns from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. He also expanded background checks for gun purchases to include private transactions. And he has said he favors an assault weapons ban. When he ran for governor in 2018, Walz celebrated that the NRA gave him an “F” rating, and donated the $18,000 the group had given him throughout his congressional career to a veterans group, according to CNBC.After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Walz was the first governor to enshrine abortion protections in state law. He has also taken executive action to protect gender-affirming care in his state and enacted paid family leave supported by a 0.7% payroll tax on employers, according to CBS News.He has also approved legislation that requires Minnesota to generate all of its energy from carbon-free sources by 2040.Walz enacted a swath of expansive voting rights measures.He signed a bill last year making it easier for people with a felony conviction to vote in Minnesota. The measure automatically allows people with felonies to vote once they leave prison – they previously had to also complete probation as well as parole. The bill allowed at least 55,000 people to vote. He has also approved a state-level Voting Rights Act, cementing protections for minority voters at the state level as the US supreme court chips away at the federal version of the law. Walz also enacted legislation that allows for automatic voter registration, permits 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, and lets Minnesotans sign up to automatically receive a mail-in ballot.Walz also legalized marijuana in the state, though his cannabis tsar was forced to resign after it emerged that she had sold illegal marijuana products in the state. He also approved a bill that allows undocumented people to get a driver’s license.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWalz hasn’t been without criticism during his time in office. A state audit of his department of education found that it “failed to act on warning signs” that could have prevented a giant $250m non-profit fraud related to pandemic funds, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Walz’s office has also clashed with the prosecutor in Hennepin county over some high-profile cases, CBS News reported.Republicans wasted no time in beginning to attack Walz.“It’s no surprise that San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris wants west coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden state. While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks’,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide. If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”“The most liberal ‘nominee’ to ever appear on a presidential ballot has now chosen a progressive running mate who has voiced support for socialism, supports sanctuary cities and wants to give driver’s licenses to the millions of illegal aliens Kamala Harris has allowed into our country. No amount of spin from the campaign or the media can distract from the objective facts and the disastrous records of Harris and Walz,” Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said in a statement on Tuesday.Walz also received criticism in May 2020, when the city of Minneapolis was engulfed in unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer. After a police station was set on fire, Walz criticized the city’s response to the unrest as an “abject failure”.After days of increasing tensions, the state took over the response to the protests. Walz said he had followed the correct protocol by waiting for city leaders to request assistance before sending in the national guard, but some critics dismissed the governor’s action as too little too late.“Above all else, this is a failure in leadership, and that leadership rests on Governor Walz’s shoulders. The governor cannot blame the mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul,” Paul Gazelka, who was then the Republican state senate majority leader, said at the time.With Walz now back in the news as Harris’s running mate, he can expect that every piece of his résumé will be subject to the strictest scrutiny in the weeks ahead. More