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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

The presidential race has changed dramatically in the past month. Joe Biden stepped aside from the campaign as the result of age-related issues, and his delegates quickly and joyfully lined up behind Kamala Harris, who is in Chicago this week to accept the Democratic nomination for president.

Harris is a historic choice, the first woman of Asian descent at the top of a major party ticket. She is only the second woman and second person of African descent to be the standard bearer for a major party.

And Harris made a terrific choice for her running mate, our own governor, Tim Walz. Hundreds of Midwest dad memes flooded social media, and dozens of my friends posted pictures on social media of themselves with Walz when he was our First District congressman.

I knew Walz’s chances of making the ticket were rising fast when Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, signaled his preference for Walz or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Walz is a friend of workers and unions, and he has stood on the picket line with nurses in Albert Lea. Unions are foundational to a prosperous and democratic society, and the median wealth of union member households surpasses that of nonunion households in every education category.

As expected, Republicans immediately attempted to launch Swift Boat Attack 2.0 against Walz and were quickly thwarted by fact checkers who debunked their claims. Republicans around Trump demonstrated who they are —people willing to throw garbage upon a veteran’s good military record for their own political gain.

The most recent rancid attack against Walz appears to be James Comer opening up a House Oversight Committee investigation into Walz leading student groups to China in the 1990s and early 2000s when he was a high school teacher. It is pathetic, destined to go nowhere and wasteful of public resources, but Comer’s goal is FOX hits, not facts.

Walz is effusive, gracious and well-versed in geopolitics around the world, not just China. He is going to be a great vice president.

Meanwhile, Trump is openly fantasizing about Biden re-entering the presidential race and seizing the nomination from Harris in Chicago this week. Trump is plainly on his heels about Harris. He is preoccupied with her Time cover and is rambling like an oddball that he is “much better looking than her.”

In contrast to Harris, Trump has picked a running mate who is increasingly unpopular. It has come to light that Vance, like Trump, has a habit of making odious remarks about women.

Instead of sexualizing them or insulting their intelligence like Trump does, though, Vance fixates on their role in bearing and raising children. Vance has previously picked on “childless cat ladies” and stated that leaders without children don’t have a “direct stake” in the country and are “sociopathic.”

Once a never-Trumper, Vance has refashioned his political outlook over the past eight years thanks in part to his time as a junior venture capitalist in California’s Silicon Valley and the financial backing of tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Close company with billionaires, though, doesn’t translate to votes, and Vance keeps saying things that are off-putting to the majority of voters.

Trump recently claimed his Jan. 6 insurrection rally drew more people than Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech” during the March on Washington, but the reality is that the Harris-Walz ticket is probably going to defeat the foundering Trump-Vance ticket.

Now Trump is the oldest candidate in the race by far, and he can’t articulate a single thought without the help of reporters tidying up his messy word slaw and arranging it into legible sentences. Here is what Trump actually said as he meandered in the middle of answering a question from Maria Bartiromo on FOX News a couple weeks ago about Mark Zuckerberg and malfunctioning AI:

“One of the things I do in a show like yours, you, you show, you know, you see it on FOX but what you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you’re doing right now with me, and if I do a good job they’re going to vote for me. They’re going to vote for me because it’s not just on FOX, it’s on FOX is a smaller part of it. You’re on all over this, those little beautiful cell phones you’re on, you’re all over the place. You have a product, you have a great product, you have a great brand. So you have to get out. You have to get out, you have to do things like your show and other shows.”

Even friendly FOX hits aren’t going to save Trump this time. He’s resentful and absurd.

The Harris-Walz ticket is full of energy and joy, and our shared future is full of possibility.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.