Conservative Sohrab Ahmari is warning Republicans not to pop champagne corks after Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
In an analysis of Harris's choice of Walz on the website Compact, the site's founder Ahmari said that she has "gone a long way toward bolstering her left-populist flank" with the Walz pick, and he thinks that traditional MAGA culture warring against "wokeness" won't be enough to overcome what he describes as a "big threat."
Ahmari argues that Walz will be bolstered by his record as Minnesota's governor, where he has enacted multiple progressive populist measures aimed at benefiting working-class families.
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"Last year, he led his state legislature’s enactment of a sweeping pro-worker law, which Steven Greenhouse, the veteran labor reporter, described as 'one of the most pro-worker packages... that any U.S. state has passed in decades.' And rightly so," he argued.
"On the pro-family front, meanwhile, Walz marshaled a bill, the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, which 'allows Minnesota workers to take up to 12 weeks a year with partial pay to care for a newborn or sick family member and also allows workers 12 weeks to recover from a serious illness or health problem,' as Greenhouse reported. It’s the sort of legislation that self-proclaimed pro-family Republicans have too long resisted, even as they have lamented declining marriage and birth rates."
Walz's accomplishments, argued Ahmari, should be a "wakeup call" to the Trump-Vance campaign, which could now be outflanked in terms of populist economic proposals.
"The Democrats have assembled a team that can appeal to their party’s diversity-obsessed professional class while stopping — or at least, slowing down — the hemorrhage of working-class voters," he wrote.
"... Just labeling Harris-Walz 'left-wing' won’t do. Nor will it suffice, without more, to hammer Walz’s woeful response to the rioting of 2020. The reset Trump-Vance is looking for will come from combining border security and law and order in the streets with a concrete pro-worker, pro-family agenda."
