Ex-Obama aide frets over Walz pick: 'You see a lot of rejoicing on the right'
August 06, 2024
CNN's Van Jones was surprised by Kamala Harris choosing Tim Walz as her running mate, and he's worried that she should have chosen a vice presidential candidate from a swing state.
The final choices reportedly included Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and many commentators, including Jones and some Republicans, believe the vice president would have been better served by a running mate from a state that remains in play.
"This guy comes out of nowhere two weeks ago, nobody even knew his name, yeah, and he lit up the grassroots, he lit up the internet," Jones said. "He was the first person to come out and define Donald Trump as weird, and suddenly people had a way to talk about him. We were all like, 'He's a fascist, he's a dictator,' we were actually giving him more power. This guy punctured the Donald Trump balloon and comes out of nowhere, the ultimate dark horse candidate, so it extends the honeymoon, a lot of people are excited."
But Jones suggested Republicans are genuinely relieved that Harris didn't choose Shapiro or Kelly because they're aren't scared of Walz, who they have already sought to define as a left-wing radical.
"What worries me is you see a lot of relief from the conservatives," Jones said. "They were scared of Josh Shapiro, they were scared of a Mark Kelly. They thought that would help define kind of more to the middle. You see a lot of rejoicing on the right, that's not good."
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"Also, you've got some disquiet in the Jewish community. Some people had their hopes up, maybe you're going to get another shot at a Jewish vice president. We haven't had that for two decades and now that gets pulled away. Is it just because he's a moderate or is there some anti-Jewish bias here? So the party is still digesting this. I think if you're a young Muslim or young Arab or someone who's concerned about Gaza, it gives you a reason to stay excited about Kamala because that was going to be hard for the party to digest."
"So you've got a party now trying to figure out, is this good, is this bad?" Jones added. "What does it mean for the young people? They stay excited, but the most important thing I can say is only in America can somebody who nobody literally heard of two weeks ago be on his way to being possibly the vice president of the United States, second to the most powerful person in the world, because he made the argument for himself. He made the case against Donald Trump, made the case against Republicans in a fresh way, and here we are. It's just, this is the most unpredictable race that you've seen, I think in the past 50 years – it's just nuts, yeah."
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