The News
Critics of Israel claimed a victory when Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. It wasn’t entirely clear yet what they had won.
“Dear White Staffers,” a social media account run by an employee of Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee, had spent days posting anti-Shapiro stories focused on Gaza. It spent Tuesday posting celebratory images of Walz: “WE FUCKING DID IT WE FUCKING WON LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO!!!!!”
The choice between Shapiro and Walz had been elevated by pro-Palestinian progressives as a referendum on whether Harris would antagonize young Gaza activists. This was done without encouragement from Walz, who didn’t comment much on Israel as governor and had amassed a relatively ordinary pro-Israel voting record in the House. The main point of distinction was Shapiro’s harsher words about campus protests.
“I am now more hopeful that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will listen to the 83% of Democrats who want a ceasefire,” said Rami Al-Kabra, a Palestinian-American city councilor in Washington state, and an uncommitted delegate to the DNC, in a statement. “They have an opportunity right now to bring the party together to defeat Trump in November.”
Watching this dispute play out from the sidelines, Republicans acted quickly to blame the vice presidential choice on antisemitism within the Democratic Party.
“Kamala Harris listened to the Hamas wing of the party,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance told reporters in Philadelphia. “She selected Tim Walz.”
In an interview with the Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Shapiro’s “heritage” was a non-starter for Harris: “They have a pro-Palestinian, in some cases pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.” In a statement, New York Rep. Mike Lawler claimed that the Pennsylvanian was simply “too Jewish and too moderate” for the modern Democratic Party.
Shapiro’s Democratic advocates knew that was coming, and saw the criticism as inevitable. Republicans had previewed it for days, as some Gaza ceasefire activists labeled Shapiro “Genocide Josh,” and warned that he would alienate anti-war voters.
The lead-up to the choice put Democrats in an awkward position. Few had any issue with Walz, who drew early praise on Tuesday from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Joe Manchin alike. But some also saw little difference in how the two governors approached the Jewish state, and its war with Hamas, and wondered aloud if Shapiro was being singled out for his last name. Progressive Democrats had also urged supporters in the days leading up to the selection not to reinforce that perception.
“Tim is a great pick, and will reinforce the Vice President’s normal, pragmatic approach,” said Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman, a Jewish Democrat. “Plus, Tim is funny and we could use a little more joy in all of this. That doesn’t mean that some of the pushback against Josh wasn’t low key antisemitic. Both things can be true.”
Mark Mellman, the chairman of Democratic Majority for Israel, put out a memo moments after the Walz pick about the governor’s record — a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, flying state flags at half-mast after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. It was “partisan poppycock,” he said, to suggest that Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, had made an anti-Israel choice.
“She’s selected Jewish men for powerful roles in her personal and professional life,” Mellman said. “To suggest that she’s anti-semitic is just absurd.”
At the same time, he didn’t absolve some of Shapiro’s critics. “Vice President Harris had a lot of good choices,” said Mellman. “She had to pick one. But the level of antisemitic invective around this decision was extraordinary and extremely dangerous. People of good conscience should be condemning that antisemitism.”
Know More
The sped-up Democratic veepstakes weren’t all about Israel. Walz quickly emerged as the favorite of the party’s left; only he and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had squeezed progressive agendas through swing-state legislatures, and Whitmer took herself out of the running. Shapiro’s (never-passed) voucher proposal worried some labor organizers, as did his advocacy for business tax cuts. Opponents raised more personal questions, about a top Shapiro aide’s sexual harassment settlement and a grisly killing investigation that the victim’s family accused Shapiro of sitting on as AG before recusing himself.
But Shapiro had differentiated himself from the field by wading into Israel politics, before anyone knew there’d be an opening for vice president. He condemned University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill for evading a question about whether “calls for the genocide of Jews” would violate university codes; he asked whether universities would tolerate Gaza protests that violate code “if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits.”
Those statements stuck with Israel critics; Shapiro calling Israel’s prime minister “one of the worst leaders of all time” well before Biden dropped out didn’t move them. They stepped up their campaign against Shapiro after the Philadelphia Inquirer resurfaced a 1993 column he’d written for a college newspaper, calling Palestinians “too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.” Jonathan Chait, a center-left commentator who supported Shapiro as the VP pick, wrote a column arguing the concerns about him on the left were nonetheless legitimate on their own terms.
At a Friday press conference, Shapiro walked his college writings back, saying his views had changed and he wanted “Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side-by-side.” That got blowback, too: conservative pundit Ben Shapiro claimed that the governor was “desperately trying to un-Jewish himself” and win over his party’s “Hamas wing,” a sentiment that traveled widely on the right.
“For days, maybe even weeks, the guy actually had to run away from his Jewish heritage,” Vance snarked at his Philadelphia press conference.
The View From Gaza Protestors
With Shapiro out of the mix, the left was back to advocating for policy instead of a symbolic victory.
“Governor Walz has demonstrated a remarkable ability to evolve as a public leader, uniting Democrats’ diverse coalition to achieve significant milestones for Minnesota families, regardless of their background,” said Elianne Farhat, a senior advisor to the Uncommitted delegates protesting the Biden administration’s approach to Israel. “It’s crucial he continues this evolution by supporting an arms embargo on Israel in an effort to unite our party to defeat authoritarianism in the fall.”
David and Kadia’s View
Democrats had a fight about identity politics, in public, as they often do. Republicans took advantage of it. This might be more complicated than that, but not very.
Shapiro’s advocates supported him for a number of reasons — his personal popularity in a must-win swing state, and a few points of agreement with him on the overall direction of the party. Those advocates frequently thought Shapiro was the obvious choice and wanted the left to back off from attacks that would make it harder to unite the party around him if he ended up on the ticket. That provided an easy entrypoint for Republicans: When Adam Schiff is accusing a party faction of antisemitism, why not amplify it?
But Republicans also weren’t wrong that Israel politics were at the center of Democratic conversations around Shapiro. Democrats outside of the campaign that we talked to in the final days of the veepstakes debated the potential risks of losing Arab American voters in Michigan even as they weighed Shapiro’s potential benefits in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t the only topic — one source saw his downfall as national media catching up to his local baggage — but it was discussed in blunt terms.
Notable
- The Israel debates are part of a larger race to define Walz in both parties, our team reports. Democrats see him as a unifying pick whose small town teaching roots appeal to swing voters; Republicans are looking to portray his progressive record in Minnesota as a “cornucopia of liberal psychosis,” as one Trump world source put it.
- The Israeli consul celebrated Walz’s elevation to the ticket, citing his supportive words after the October 7 attack on Southern Israel by hamas.