Good morning. This is one of those days where you tell yourself to make sure you’re right and don’t worry if you’re not first.
The almost unthinkable ride of Gov. Tim Walz either ends today or carries forward. He’s gone from being a jocular Midwestern politician who was a local bigshot to someone in the national political conversation almost instantly. Two weeks and two days ago, President Joe Biden upended the 2024 race by leaving it. That put Kamala Harris in the Democratic driver’s seat and she’s about to take on a passenger. All reports are that it’s likely down to Walz and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The pick could be known maybe before you read this newsletter. A video should drop this morning from the Harris campaign. The new Democratic duo takes the stage together for the first time this afternoon in Philadelphia. Mark Zdechlik is on scene for us.
The Democratic National Committee cleared the way for Harris to make the selection after declaring her the nominee late last night. The party announced the end of a virtual roll call and said Harris had received 99 percent of delegate votes. She'll formally accept in about two weeks in Chicago at the party convention. But the step also means the vice presidential pick is officially hers to make.
Walz made a final pre-announcement fundraising lap in Minneapolis last night. The event was at a North Loop event space where people entered in a downpour but their mood was almost giddy. Dana Ferguson was allowed in for part of it. She says the crowd cheered the speeches and laughed at the jokes from Democratic Party leaders in the state before Walz took the microphone and reflected on his “life comes at you fast” journey through politics. He didn’t disclose or really even acknowledge his possible ascent. He spoke more about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump than himself, which is understandable given that most in the room are quite familiar with him already. His task, if picked, would be to introduce himself to the rest of the country. A new NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll out today shows just how much work he has to do there. These stats prove the point: 17 percent of Americans view Walz positively, 12 percent view him unfavorably and 71 percent don't know enough about him to render a verdict yet.
We’re big fans of factoids, so consider this one. If Walz is picked and the ticket wins in November — a big if — Minnesota will have accounted for three of the last six Democratic vice presidents. ( Credit to J. Miles Coleman of the Crystal Ball). I’ll spare you the search. The Minnesotans to hold the title were Hubert H. Humphrey and Walter Mondale, both senators prior to their elevation. The three who weren’t? Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Al Gore — also Senate alums. A Minnesota-adjacent Twitter figure, Tim Hogan, had this observatio n: "Whoever gets picked, they will be Obama’s VP’s VP’s VP: the Great Grand VP of America."
As the new Democratic ticket hits the battleground states this week, so will GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The Ohio senator is basically following the same travel path, including a visit to Eau Claire, Wis., on Wednesday. Vance will hold a rally in the western Wisconsin city on the same day that Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris stops there as part of a battleground state tour with her new VP pick. Vance is also scheduled to campaign in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania this week.
JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is defending her husband’s viral “childless cat ladies” comment. But Usha Vance mischaracterized her husband’s past comment deriding women without children as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives” as she defended him in a Fox News interview that aired Monday. Vance’s comments from a 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson resurfaced earlier this summer. Usha Vance said that her husband was actually saying, “It can be really hard to be a parent in this country. And sometimes our policies are designed in a way that makes it even harder.” While JD Vance did call for more support for people with children, his comments were part of a larger argument that childless Americans aren’t as invested in the success of the country, an argument that also came up in his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio. A volatile phase of the stock market is upon us. Stocks fell sharply yesterday as worries about the U.S. economy started an international sell-off, but some global stock indexes rose today. It was the U.S. stock market’s biggest daily drop in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 1,0000 points on Monday, or 2.6 percent, while the broader S&P 500 index fell 3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei average fell more than 12 percent its worst day since 1987. The Nikkei rebounded today and rose more than 10 percent. (European markets were also rising in early trading and U.S. stock futures pointed to a climb today.) Still, the markets falloff to start the week was immediate fodder for former President Donald J. Trump. “Stock markets are crashing, job numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “This is not good.” Economic health and messaging will be pivotal for both candidates in the final sprint to the presidential election.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is urging X owner Elon Musk to fix an AI chatbot over election misinformation. Simon is one of five secretaries of state that signed a letter to Musk urging the platform to ensure users get accurate information on elections. After President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the platform’s AI chatbot provided inaccurate information about election rules, incorrectly saying Kamala Harris had missed a ballot deadline in several states. In their letter, the secretaries of state asked Musk to redirect questions about election administration to CanIVote.org, a nonpartisan resource run by election officials.
A reminder that we are one week away from the primaries. Minnesotans will head to the polls on Aug. 13 to vote for their party’s preferred candidate in state and congressional House races and, for a few districts, their favorites for state and U.S. Senate races. Primary campaigns show us that there can even be divides between candidates for the same party. The Minnesota Reformer’s Michelle Griffith reports on one such divide as three DFL candidates seek to replace retiring Rep. Frank Hornstein in House District 61A (a deep blue Minneapolis seat). One of the candidates is Will Stancil, one of the most well-known online pugilists who regularly posts his opinions of authoritarianism, the economy and the modern conservative movement. The other candidates, Katie Jones and Isabel Rolfes, have taken more of a “Midwestern nice” approach and have steered clear of openly attacking Stancil for some of his more provocative tweets.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates Minnesota overpaid about $430 million in unemployment benefits during the pandemic. That’s based on an audit of a sample of more than 1,400 claims from July 2020 through June 2023. While the figure is notable, the Department of Labor also estimated that Minnesota’s unemployment insurance overpayment and fraud rates were among the lowest in the country. Nearly three dozen states had overpayments in the hundreds of millions of dollars and some reached into the billions. Read the Star Tribune story here. | 
