Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is reportedly concerned about “asshole” Pennsylvanians voicing displeasure over the selection of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) instead of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as her running mate.
Shortly after it was revealed Walz would be the pick over Shapiro and other finalists, Philadelphia Inquirer national political reporter Julia Terruso spoke with a Harris campaign staffer who expressed worry about Pennsylvanians voicing anger over the pick at Tuesday night’s Harris-Walz rally in Philadelphia. The staffer reportedly wondered if “some asshole” would boo at the rally, which Shapiro said he would attend.
Harris campaign staffer I just talked to: Relieved the decision is in, now just worried about what happens later today in Philly on Shapiro’s home turf: “Is some asshole gonna boo?”
— Julia Terruso (@JuliaTerruso) August 6, 2024
“Harris campaign staffer I just talked to: Relieved the decision is in, now just worried about what happens later today in Philly on Shapiro’s home turf: ‘Is some asshole gonna boo?’” Terruso wrote in a post on X.
Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung shared Terruso’s post and called out the Harris campaign’s X account.
.@KamalaHQ calling Pennsylvania voters assholes.
This is how the Left views the American people. https://t.co/b2oRQ1DFJe
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) August 6, 2024
“@KamalaHQ calling Pennsylvania voters assholes,” he wrote. “This is how the Left views the American people.”
Walz, Shapiro, and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) seemed to be the finalists in the competition to be Harris’s running mate, with Harris interviewing all three on Sunday at her residence in Washington, DC, as Reuters noted.
Shapiro is well-liked in Pennsylvania, a state that will be monumental in deciding the presidential election. An Emerson College/Hill survey taken July 22-23, 2024, in the days after President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race, found Shapiro with a +18 approval rating, with 49 percent approving and 31 percent disapproving.
Despite his popularity in the purple state, Harris instead went for Walz. Minnesota has notably gone blue in every presidential election over the past 50 years.
As Breitbart News Senior Editor Joel Pollak pointed out, Shapiro’s pro-Israel views and Jewish religion may have been factors in Harris’s choice of Walz, considering the sizeable anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian population of the party:
In the week leading up to the pick, as Shapiro emerged as the frontrunner, there were reports of internal rebellions within the Democratic Party, largely due to his strong pro-Israel views, which included skepticism of peace talks.
In a year when Democrats have struggled to contain anti-Israel — and antisemitic — sentiments within the left-wing base of their party, suspicion began to emerge that prejudice was the real reason for the objections to Shapiro.
After all, more than half a million Democrat primary voters selected variations of “uncommitted” on 2024 ballots in protest of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the war, conveying the threat that they would sit out the election in November, barring major policy change.
Looking at the race through this lens, while Shapiro may have helped in Pennsylvania, he could have compromised other swing states — such as Michigan and Wisconsin, where the pro-Palestianian uncommitted movement mobilized voters in numbers that either approached or eclipsed the margins by which Biden won the 2020 election.
