Q Toon: 107 Days

Former Vice President Kamala Harris published a memoir of her thwarted dash for the Oval Office last week, and it caused quite the hubbub in Washington (until our Felon In Chief and his Martini Martinet bombed in front of a command audience of every general, admiral, and space marshall  in the U.S. military).

No doubt, books like 107 Days will be of great value to future historians trying to figure out how American democracy came to a tragic end. But for now, it joins a select few literary tomes by presidential runners-up — Hilary Clinton's What Happened and Richard Nixon's Six Crises come to mind — laboring to deflect the blame for coming up short in the Electoral College.

In so doing, Harris steps on a few toes.

Would we be better off had President Biden recognized his declining faculties? Well, duh. Nearly everybody in the Democratic Party wishes that Dean Phillips and Jason Palmer weren't the only ones willing to step up and advocate for a little age discrimination.

Would it have helped if Tim Walz had gone more forcefully for JD Vance's jugular in their televised debate? Well, maybe. But if you pick the Governor of Minnesota as your running mate, don't be surprised if you get a heap o' Minnesota Nice.

Harris explains that she passed over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro because he was too interested in the top job someday. Which is a hoot, because Harris herself was a rival to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Besides, I don't know where she could possibly have found a Democrat qualified to be Vice President with no interest in redecorating the Oval Office.

Her reasoning against naming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate was that while she likes him personally and politically, she didn't think U.S. voters were ready to elect the ticket of a Black-Asian woman with a Jewish husband and a gay man with a husband of his own.

Buttigieg has responded that he was surprised by Harris's reasoning, and believes in "giving Americans more credit" in accepting the possibility of having a First and Second Gentleman at the same time. Harris might have had a point, however; the Trump campaign was able to successfully attack Harris as being "for they/them" even without Buttigieg on the ticket.

107 Days also includes swipes at Democrats Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. Pritzger, and Mark Kelly. Since just about every Democrat I've named in these paragraphs is considering a run for the presidency in 2028 (maybe not Joe Biden — I sure hope not), I'm pretty sure that Kamala Harris is not on their short lists for their own running mate.

Not that she'd be interested in the vice presidency.

Thomas Marshall, John Nance Garner, and Selina Meyer could tell you why.

Toon: Hocus Pocus

This year's vice presidential candidates more or less held their own during their debate performance the other evening, or at least that's the conventional wisdom so far. They voiced agreement with each other several times and mostly avoided patently obvious lies on a Trumpian scale.

Which, since Trump got his whopper about Haitian immigrant petivores from his running mate, is remarkable.

For vice presidential candidates, Job Number One is not to fnck up. Check, and check.

Job Number Two is to brown-nose the boss. For JD BH Vance, that meant pretending that the Corrupt Trump Administration™ was a halcyon quadrennium of universal peace, bipartisan comity, and economic miracles. (Pay no attention to Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan, impeachments I and II, Nancy Pelosi tearing up a state of the union speech, cramming dogmatic right-wingers onto the Supreme Court, and a nation struggling to find toilet paper, diapers, infant formula, and places to bury COVID fatalities.) 

Why, Trump even saved Obamacare, and we didn't even notice it at the time! It just goes to show what a modest fellow Donald J. Trump truly is.

Late in the debate, after Vance risibly claimed that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th,” Tim Walz tried to get Vance to confess that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. But Vance refused to take the bait, replying instead, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

His focus on the past is mighty gauzy, that's for sure.

You Know You’re Governor of Minnesota When…

Time photo: Dan McCoy. The Week illustration: Jason Seiler. 

Q Toon: Is This a Dad Joke?

The buzz around Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, now that he's been tapped by Vice President Kamala Harris to take over her job in 2025, is that he has that "Midwestern Dad Vibe."

For the last few days, those who know him personally have been sharing their stories, including how helpful he’s been with fixing other people’s cars, how much of a delight he was in a decade-long group chat called “Sports Buddies,” and how inspiring he was as a teacher and coach. One former coworker told a story to the Washington Post in which they tried to prank him by giving Walz a fake gift certificate for a free turkey at the local grocery store, and that Walz managed to still leave with a free turkey. “That’s just Tim Walz,” she said.

At the turn of the millennium, Walz and his wife, Gwen, were faculty advisers to the Gay-Straight Student Alliance at Mankato West High School in south central Minnesota. The future Congressman and Governor has said — I'm paraphrasing here — that he felt called to bring his straight-cred as the coach of the football team to the group.

As one former student put it, "Dare I say, there's a lot of toxic masculinity in the whole football team. And to see someone who was a football coach, but also saying, 'Hey, we're going to respect everyone. And I absolutely won't put up with any of that crap' — that was really bold."

Contrast that attitude with that of the Republican Veep-Wannabe, J.D. Vance. You might catch him in a dress; but that wasn't solidarity, it was cultural appropriation.

The Ohio senator opposed the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which codified same-sex marriage as the law of the land, and introduced legislation that would have banned gender-affirming care for trans youth at a federal level. He has also endorsed the notion that the existence of queer and trans people in public life is inherently predatory, writing on Twitter, now X, in 2022: “I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children.”

Republicans are trying to attack Walz for signing a Minnesota bill guaranteeing families of transgender youth the right to pursue gender-affirming care. Their epithet for him, "Tampon Tim" for signing a bill okaying (not, it must be pointed out, mandating) feminine hygiene dispensers in boys' bathrooms, was meant as an insult, but Walz has embraced it as a badge of honor. 

Because, really now. If you are asked to think of all the dangerous things we need our kids protected from in public schools, tampons are way, way down the list.