The "Kamala Sneak" Play Of Replacing Biden With An Electrifying New Ticket
My thoughts on Tim Walz and the Democratic masterstroke that has left the Trump-Vance campaign flailing.
Tim Walz. What a VP candidate rollout. Democrats haven’t been this excited since 2008, and I am joining in the fun happily. I wrote a short endorsement of Pete Buttigieg a week ago acknowledging he wasn’t in Kamala Harris’s top three, and I still think he’s the best communicator in politics today, but I agree with Harris that Walz makes more sense for her. A rural, red district Democrat who is a former soldier and governor is a pretty perfect complement for a San Francisco Democrat who was an attorney general and senator. Walz is also a virally popular bulldog for normal politics in an election where the most salient framing of the election has been (courtesy of Walz himself) that Donald Trump is a wannabe dictator and J.D. Vance is really weird. Buttigieg likely has presidential aspirations (and I’m totally behind them!), so Harris isn’t unwise to pick a potential VP less likely to stray from her administration’s messaging to better position himself for a future White House run. Buttigieg being such a political talent might overshadow her a bit too, which is fair for her to want to avoid. Walz seems right for Harris, and maybe Buttigieg will stay on as Transportation Secretary? Hopefully!
I absolutely love Democrats’ “Kamala Sneak” play in this election. Joe Biden took four years of arrows so that all of the Trump campaign’s attacks and conspiracies against the Democratic candidate could be spectacularly cast aside like a beat up chrysalis releasing a fresh and exciting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ready to destroy old and senile Donald Trump. If Kamala Harris wins, she should decide in June 2028 she’s not running again so Democrats can do this candidate flip again. Let Republicans beat the crap out of each other in a post-Trump civil war primary to get a hand on the wheel of the clown car of unpatriotic conflicts of interest, corrupt self-dealing, and showboating prima donnas the GOP has become. The Republican Party does not act like a normal, serious, professional political party, and the next GOP primary will be insane because it’ll be a jump ball on a court full of dumpster fire wreckage Trump will have left after becoming the biggest loser in US history (surpassing Hoover’s loss of the White House and both chambers of Congress, and only ONE reelection loss.)
If Trump loses, he’s going to devolve like a psychopath. He knows he will go to jail if he loses because karma and his life of crime have finally caught up to him, and he’s delaying his upcoming very tough trials past the election thanks to herculean judicial machinations of regrettable judges he appointed. He’s also psychologically incapable of self-esteem and dignity because of not getting childhood love, so Trump is going to get real nasty as Kamala Harris’s poll numbers keep going up, and we cannot begin to imagine the sociopathic depths he will descend into. But I’m very excited to hear Tim Walz talk about it! Trump is certainly going to try another coup, either with brown-nosing governors and House members sabotaging the Electoral College vote, or another mob of insurrectionists, and let’s insist the Biden-Harris Administration prepare security measures appropriately.
I hope Republicans lose big so everyone can enjoy the most satisfying schadenfreude in American history of Lindsey Graham having to eat his prophetic words, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it.” It’ll be orgasmic if Harris-Walz win a landslide. Take a huff of hopium with me and get high for a moment imagining the Trump-Vance ticket collapsing like a white dwarf, and the Harris-Walz ticket shutting up all the pedantic cartographic ignoramuses who routinely point at all the barren red land on electoral maps and demand someone explain to them how Republicans can lose when the wilderness Western states vote Republican.
But, back to the idea of repeating the “Kamala Sneak,” primaries are maybe a bad idea, and Democrats are particularly self-destructive in them tearing down impressive candidates for not being unelectably liberal, and then boycotting the eventual election because the nominee isn’t who they wanted, and giving Republicans control of all the cabinet departments and agencies, and letting Republicans fill out the federal judiciary, and giving Republicans a 6–3 majority on the Supreme Court because they were too pure of moral absolutism to vote for Hillary Clinton… but I digress. Let’s have another truncated nominating process in 2028 so Democrats fall in love and honeymoon with their nominee between August and November, and Republicans again flail around incapable of adapting their bad-faith smears and toxic campaign strategies.
I get that repeating the Kamala Sneak would inhibit the democratic element of the primary where voters can decide which candidates they like best, but maybe it wouldn’t be too crazy to morph the Democratic Party back into the somewhat parliamentarian process of voters picking the party’s convention delegates, and the delegates picking the candidates. We used to do that — many of our presidents were chosen in smokey backroom deals at the convention — and it’s still somewhat small-D democratic — albeit more small-R republican — because the convention delegates are elected. I’m not gonna die on this hill, but I think it’s something worth considering and debating the merits of! If Harris wins after months of Joe Biden’s approval ratings unfairly cratering and voter perception of his ability to continue governing another four years fairly cratering, the Kamala Sneak will go down in history as a Democratic masterstroke.
I want to quibble just a tad with the phrasing I heard a lot on cable news yesterday about VP nominee Tim Walz being a great candidate because of his appeal on kitchen table issues, and because he was a teacher and football coach. Don’t get me wrong, I think Walz is a great and powerful VP choice (and I cannot wait to see him in a debate with J.D. Vance), and I definitely respect his executive experience as a successful governor of a pretty big state. But to slightly critique the media’s framing of Walz’s candidacy, I think the aesthetic of “Coach Walz” undersells his resumé and 24-year career in the National Guard. It’s awesome to have a vice president so committed to service he was a highschool teacher and coach, but leading off with that when he could someday be entrusted with the nuclear codes, and have to decide every Monday morning which terrorists get droned that week, and whether or not we should risk escalation of armed conflict with Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea into potentially a third world war among nuclear powers is a little awkward. Trump’s background as a gameshow host and bankrupt pretend businessman gave him absolutely no experience or aptitude in foreign policy, but Republicans give him a total pass on his four years of incompetence and disrespect for American values and commitments to our allies because he’s allegedly good on kitchen table issues with MAGA constituents who believe his ludicrous narcissism and preposterous self-aggrandizement. I guess my point is that the political focus in America is increasingly disassociating from the rest of the world and our decades-long alliances and maintenance of an American-led global order to the point that Trump voters just shrug off the idea of Trump pulling the US out of NATO, defunding the UN, and ripping up every trade deal with every country and replacing them with willy-nilly tariffs. International diplomacy, national security, and war are part of the job responsibilities, so I’m not picking “Coach Walz” because he taught social studies and geography and won a football championship. Although, considering Donald Trump never wins anything without cheating and bitching about everything being rigged against him, and he knows nothing about either social studies or geography… actually, scratch that, Coach Walz all the way.
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Trumpers are such sore losers. And sore winners, come to think of it. They are breaking out their fine whine since Joe Biden did one of the rarest things in politics, walking away from power gracefully. So they cry foul. Losers