Mahoney on Harris-Walz Ticket
Mahoney on Harris-Walz Ticket
Featured contributor Prof. Josef Mahoney joined #cgtn World Insight with Tian Wei to discuss the Harris-Walz campaign and its implications for Trump-Vance.
Featured contributor Prof. Josef Mahoney joined #cgtn World Insight with Tian Wei along with Peter Kuznick of American University and Shen Dingli of Fudan University to discuss the Harris-Walz campaign and its implications for Trump-Vance.
Talking points:
Will Walz's experience teaching in #china as a young man help bring amore nuanced view about #china to the White House if Harris wins?
Probably not. One of the narratives brokered by anti-China hawks in theUS is that China "changed," became more aggressive, etc., so whatWalz thought before wouldn't necessarily carry today Plus, Vance's wife, a woman of South Asian descent, also spent timein #guangzhou as a Yale-China teaching fellow, and this by no means softened Vance's view.
In all likelihood a Trump win would be more of the same but even more assertive he can't run again so that means he has nothing to lose and will go all in from day-one. One can expect a stack of executive orders targeting China, e.g., pointing to what he'll describe as Beijing's failure to stick to the terms he negotiated regarding trade imbalances.
In Harris' case it's probably "Biden 2.0" on #foreignpolicy with some adjustment, but it's possible that she and Walz could represent a generational shift, one that's less inclined to the sort of #coldwar views common to #trump and Biden.
First, he's a good choice for the progressive base, which was fragmenting under Biden. Now Harris can run towards the center.
Second, this required avoiding centrists like Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, even though he could help her win that key swing state, and also perhaps because he is Jewish, which could complicate the delicate need to avoid alienating voters furious with Biden's support for Israel's conflict in #gaza.
Third, #harris is a product of the California Democratic Party machine. She owes a great deal to Pelosi, who not only promoted her to Biden as a running mate, it was also Pelosi who turned against Biden in the last few weeks, opening the door for Harris. By some accounts Pelosi was pushing Harris to choose Walz.
What should we expect from Harris-Walz?
This ticket's main selling point is that it's neither Trump nor Biden. This will be enough for many. The Labour Party recently won in the UK without putting forward a significant platform other than replacing the Tories, but Harris will certainly have to offer credible proposals to secure swing voters and even to assuage her own frazzled base."Hope springs eternal," as Obama understood, but she'll have to offer more. No doubt we'll see a substantial and likely positive platform at the Convention.
Trump will hammer Harris on security: economic security, border security, cultural security, crime, problems like fentanyl, trade security and great power competition. He'll play to anxieties as he did in the past, anxieties that he'll amplify but are nonetheless valid for many voters. Harris will have to offer proposals that address such concerns...
