Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate options — whom she will pick, whom she should pick, the Electoral College landscape for her and for Donald Trump, and what surprises and worries them about Harris, the Democrats, Trump and JD Vance. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Patrick Healy: Kamala Harris will announce her running mate very soon. In your view, who should she choose, and who will she choose? First, who do you think she should choose?
Michelle Goldberg: Like a lot of progressives, I barely knew who Tim Walz was two weeks ago. Now I love him, even though I worry that his normal Midwestern guy affect is starting to border on shtick. So I’m hoping it’s either him or Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky.
Healy: Michelle, what do you love about Walz?
Goldberg: He reads like an all-American heartland normie — a hunter and former high school football coach — who can articulate progressive priorities in a plain-spoken, unapologetic way. And branding Republicans “weird” was a stroke of genius, capturing the large part of the Venn diagram where sinister authoritarianism and ridiculous online subcultural tics overlap.
Ross Douthat: I appreciate the Walz phenomenon, too, but I suspect that Walz’s appeal to Democrats is a bit like the appeal of conservative African American politicians to some Republicans: Here’s a guy who shares my worldview but looks or talks like a member of the other coalition! And just as Trump picking Tim Scott probably wouldn’t have delivered many more African American votes to the G.O.P., I’m skeptical that Harris picking a heartland white guy would achieve all that much for the Democrats.
Jamelle Bouie: The evidence that a vice-presidential selection has any meaningful impact on state-by-state vote share is slim to none. The high estimate for impact on national vote share is somewhere around a single percentage point. There hasn’t been a vice-presidential nominee who you could plausibly say delivered a state since Lyndon Johnson in 1960.
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