Once again, Kamala Harris is correcting the proposal of the Democratic Party’s top brass. In this case, when it comes to selecting the person who will complete her electoral formula, as candidate for vice president. The profile of the Democratic teams presented three electoral requirements: male, white and of centrist political thought. Kamala has accepted two of those three characteristics. His vice president had to be a man because a two-woman ticket would have been too progressive for the American public. He had to be white because the racial majority could not be excluded from the presidential ticket. And he was preferably moderate and centrist in thought to offset Harris’s California progressive leanings.

By selecting Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala has accepted two of the electoral requirements: he is a man, rabidly white and with a martial background, tied for 25 years to the National Guard. True, those two characteristics, male and white, were also present in the last five candidates who were finally reduced to three. But the one who fully met the third condition (centrist thinking) was not Waltz but the Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, who was at the top of the pools until the end. A friend and colleague of Harris (he was attorney general of Pennsylvania just as Harris was of California), he is a popular figure nationally and has significant electoral pull: three out of ten Donald Trump supporters would back him.

But Shapiro presents a controversial point. He is a confessional Jew. In fact, he would be the first Jew to hold a vice-presidential post in the country. And that, at the current juncture, has made him a collateral victim of the military conflict in the Middle East. His unrestricted defense of Israel did not sit well with the more favorable position of Kamala — and other Democratic sectors — in favor of a negotiation between all parties. In addition, Shapiro also presents another dissonant characteristic: he has his own political weight at the federal level, also within the party, something Harris has considered a drawback, although she has put it in code: “I don’t want someone who will just win me elections, but also someone who shares my values and in whom I have personal confidence”. Some Democrats have added: “and who won’t overshadow me too much.”

The final choice, Tim Walz, clearly meets the third parameter that Kamala wanted. He fully shares the progressive approaches of his boss and, in fact, is the favorite of the various progressive and left-wing groups within the party, especially regarding the high points of the program (sexual and reproductive rights, migration, social services, etc.). On the other hand, Walz, who does not have as much political capital as Shapiro, has a reputation for reliability in his political life and meets the level of loyalty that Harris has required.

However, having established an entirely progressive formula, Harris places the American electorate in a stark political contrast. It is difficult to find a more contrasting picture of what each of the candidates for president present. The question is whether that polarized choice favors Harris or Trump. As one Democratic observer has said, “it doesn’t matter so much how likable and progressive we find Kamala, but whether that’s what we really need to stop Trump from returning to the U.S. government.” In that perspective, Kamala’s phrasing in choosing Walz as a running mate could be reversed: someone who could share her values and gives her personal confidence may not help her enough to win the election.

In any case, Harris has selected a different path from the one preferred by the Democratic leadership, which sought to avoid the polarized scenario, in which the stakes are high, and an easy flank is offered, which Trump’s team has immediately attacked: “it is the formula of radical leftism” said one of his spokespersons; while Trump assured: “I am delighted by Kamala’s decision to select Walz because it shows her true degree of leftism”. Harris has definitely managed to drag her followers along the path of enthusiasm, but there is no doubt that she has opted for a risky electoral gamble. Let’s hope it works out.

_{*Translated by Janaína Ruviaro da Silva from the original in Spanish.}