US elections: Walz leads Democratic rising stars targeting Trump during DNC

Walz will have help introducing himself and prosecuting his case against the GOP ticket. He’ll be preceded on stage by a trio of 2020 presidential candidates — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — who remain top draws among fellow Democrats for their willingness to bluntly criticise Trump. 

They’ll be joined by a group widely assumed to have presidential aspirations of their own, including Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

Convention organisers have also planned moments intending to highlight Trump’s role in the Supreme Court overturning national protections for abortion rights, as well as the Jan. 6, 2021 attack by his supporters on the Capitol.

Interspersed among the youth movement will be help from a couple of old hands.

Former President Bill Clinton — the original folksy Democrat who is able to offer cutting criticism with a smile — will be among the evening’s biggest draws. So too will former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seen as a chief instigator in the effort to force President Joe Biden from the race – paving the way for Harris’ ascension. 

“Whether on the economy, whether it’s on our fundamental rights and freedoms, I think the contrast is going to be very stark for the American people to see,” Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler told reporters on Wednesday. 

While highlighting some of Trump’s key vulnerabilities may be the guiding principle for convention organisers eager to exploit voter misgivings about the Republican nominee, Democrats also said they’re eager to introduce Walz to a bigger audience.

“He has a folksy way about himself,” Jim Clyburn, the longtime South Carolina congressman, said Wednesday at a convention event hosted by the Washington Post. “He knows how to just be himself. He doesn’t try to be anything else or anybody else. He just does it,” he added. “That is why he’s on this ticket.”

The race to define Walz has become particularly important as Republicans have seized on past misstatements by the Minnesota governor to paint him as a fabulist.

Walz’s 2006 campaign for Congress made false statements about his arrest in 1995 for drunk driving, while the governor himself appears to have overstated elements of his military record.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance also accused Walz of lying about having conceived his children via in vitro fertilisation, which has become a flashpoint in the campaign after the Alabama Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law.

Senate Republicans, including Vance, voted against a bill that would federalise protections for the fertility treatment. But despite some remarks suggesting his wife had undergone IVF, Walz’s children were conceived via a different treatment called intrauterine insemination.

Trump himself is notoriously prone to exaggeration and embellishment, and polls show Vance is viewed unfavourably by a plurality of Americans, complicating Republican efforts to hit Walz on the issue. But around four in 10 Americans surveyed earlier this month by the Associated Press said they didn’t know enough about Walz to have an opinion – underscoring why both sides are working hard to define him.

Trump, for his part, suggested that Democratic attacks would backfire. He told supporters in North Carolina on Wednesday that he thought the convention was focused far more on him than issues like the economy or the border.

“You know, they always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy, don’t get personal,’” Trump said. “And yet they are getting personal all night long, these people.”

First Published: Aug 22 2024 | 7:56 AM IST