Hollywood Elsewhere is underwhelmed and frankly depressed by Kamala Harris’s choice of Vice-presidential running mate — the four-eyed, verbally vigorous but staunchly unglammy Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who looks like a dull middle-management guy, a bit overfed and a cross between a hardware store clerk and an owner of an upstate New York diner.
He could be played in a forthcoming Walz biopic by Will Patton with black hornrims and white hair dye.
He doesn’t even have that Paul Schrader glint-of-madness, soul-of-a-poet thing going on…Walz’s squinty eyes have nothing behind them, and his teeth appear small and worn down, and perhaps his soul is too…in his own quiet way he’s almost horrifying. Look at that homely face! His bland, greenish-gray suits and ties! Jesus, I’m freaking out here!
I would have been much, much happier with Sen. Mark Kelly (i.e., “Gollum).
I was looking for a little excitement and youthful urban pizazz from Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, but Harris wimped…apparently afraid of pissing off the pro-Gaza progressives (Josh is too pro-Israel?) and with femme militants irate over his having stood by a colleague who was accused of sexual harassment.
Harris, in short, has failed to stand up to pressure from hardcore purist lefties. She needed to lean away from those loons and at least pretend to think and act like a sensible left-moderate, and now she’s blown her first test in that regard. Not cool!
Walz is apparently a good, reliable, highly regarded dude on his own terms but my God, why does his selection make me feel so badly?
He looks like a fringe character actor in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche — your vaguely schlumpy, retirement-age uncle from Hartford or Richmond or Tampa, nothing close to a leading man type, a guy who exudes the very opposite of that Gavin Newsom-y quality, that vibe that seems to fit or fulfill that old JFK notion of an ace-level vote-getter…
He’s another Tim Kaine, whose selection as Hillary’s vp in ‘16 lit no fires and quickened no one’s pulse. In short Walz is an unthreatening No. 2 type, strictly backup, and right now I feel very flat and de-energized.
Walz’s two kids are named Hope and Gus — what does that tell you?
Nate Silver:
