While you are going to hear a lot about “weird” during the Democratic National Convention – <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-black-color">as discussed by Mark Jenkins in an </mark><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/tim-walz-obsession-with-the-so-called-weirdness-aka-catholicism-of-jd-vance/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">article</mark></a><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-black-color"> earlier today</mark> – you likely won’t hear as much about Josh Shapiro.
The current governor of Pennsylvania was, until recently, one of the favourites to become Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate for the US presidential election in November. Hence many expected to see him take the stage at the DNC, running from 19 - 22 August, to accept the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nomination.
Young, dynamic, photogenic, a very popular governor from one of the key "battleground" states that could swing the US election, as well as progressively left-wing, Shapiro seemed a pretty ideal match for what the Democratic Party could hope for in a vice-presidential running mate.
Apart from the fact that Shapiro is Jewish. And he has been outspoken, not surprisingly, in his support for Israel as it engages in an existential fight with Hamas in Gaza.
That evidently wasn’t going to work for the more leftist elements of the Democratic Party – and it appears that Kamala Harris decided to make the subsequent calculation and suddenly changed her mind, opting for Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a relative unknown in Democrat circles, as her running mate.
“I think this was a last-minute switch,” Gerard Baker, Editor-at-Large of the Wall Street Journal, told the <em>Spectator’s</em> deputy editor, Freddy Gray, in the magazine's <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-trump-having-a-meltdown/id1157627091?i=1000664615855"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">7 August "Americano" podcast</mark></a>.
While Baker acknowledges that he is not deeply embedded with the Democratic Party, he notes that he knows a few sources who are “very close” to Harris, one of whom had told Baker that he was “90 per cent” sure that the vice presidential nomination "was going to be Shapiro”.
But the source also told Baker there was “tremendous pushback against that [Shapiro] from the Left of the Party, especially the pro-Hamas wing of the Party”.
Baker adds: “They [the Democrats] are now kind of making up stories that Shapiro wanted too much of a role, [or it was] about policy, and so they couldn’t give [the nomination] to him, and that’s why [Harris] changed her mind."
Baker says he doesn't buy that and he is “absolutely convinced” Shapiro didn't get the nod because of his identification with such a pro-Israel position; though he goes on to note that Tim Walz’s position on Israel isn’t actually that different to Shapiro's, which then begs the question of what was the problem then with picking Shapiro.
“You’re left with the inevitable conclusion that it is because he’s Jewish," Baker says, adding “this is why we are getting these cover stories from the Harris campaign”, which he “doesn’t believe for a second”.
“I believe they are making up stories to cover for the fact he didn’t get the role primarily because he is Jewish," Baker says.<br><br>It's unlikely we'll get the truth of the matter from the Democrats' side anytime soon. Admittedly Shapiro looked pretty happy about things on 6 August when he appeared at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania for Harris and Walz. But he would have to. The Democratic Party has shown how effective it is at closing ranks – effective enough to get a sitting president, Joe Biden, to pull out of the presidential race against his own wishes.
The point about Shapiro and his inconvenient Jewishness was echoed by former President Donald Trump at a recent campaign event he held in Pennsylvania, <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/usa/trump-claims-the-usa-is-like-pre-holocaust-germany-for-american-jews-ef2risd0">reports</a> the <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>.
“They turned him down because he’s Jewish,” Trump told the crowds. "They turned him down for other reasons, but the primary reason is because he’s Jewish."
Trump also said during the rally that “any Jewish person that votes for [Harris] or a Democrat has to go out and have their head examined".
It’s a similar point the former president has made in relation to US Catholics. Trump has warned US Catholics against voting Democrat in the forthcoming US presidential election, saying “they’re after the Catholics almost as much as they’re after me”.
He says that Catholics would face severe restrictions on their civil and religious liberties if Kamala Harris is confirmed as the Democrat nominee – as she is expected to be during the convention in Chicago – and goes on to win come November.
<strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-warns-of-anti-religious-democrat-policies-theyre-really-after-the-catholics/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Trump warns of anti-religious Democrat policies: ‘They’re really after the Catholics’</mark></a></strong>
Given how tight this November’s election is looking like it will be, the former president is clearly after as many votes as he can get. Based on a 2023 Gallup poll, about 2 per cent of the US population identify as Jewish, while a relatively whopping 22 per cent identify as Catholic. Combine the two, and that’s nearly a quarter of the country represented by Jews and Catholics.
Leaving aside such potential political calculations on the part of the former president, there is an argument that picking a Catholic convert as a running mate, and one who is outspoken about issues relating to his faith, is not helping Trump, certainly not in the short term.
Currently Vance is attracting enormous amounts of bad publicity. He is being endlessly slammed by mainstream media, along with by the Democrats, for being “weird” and holding so-called toxic views around the likes of abortion and women that more often than not stem from what Freddy Gray notes is "Vance's very Catholic, conservative theology". <br><br>While as the Catholic commentator Tim Stanley <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/19/kamalas-coronation-is-a-blow-for-us-democracy/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">writes</mark></a> for the <em>Daily Telegraph</em>, in comparison, Walz is being presented as a non-"weird" wholesome paragon of normality and "has been crowned 'America’s dad', albeit a dad who takes a weirdo position on trans rights, abortion and illegal immigration". <br><br>At the same time, as Baker notes, there is little attention or acknowledgement being given to the fact that, arguably, Vance embodies the American Dream given the tough background of poverty that he endured and was able to break out from and the successes he subsequently had and which have taken him to, now, the top tier of US politics.
"I think JD Vance is increasingly becoming one of the most unfairly maligned politicians in American history," Baker says.
As the US election campaign plays out, it's increasingly hard not to conclude that if you are a Jewish or Catholic public figure, and you deign to speak out on matters according to your religion or conscience but that go against mainstream or ideological narratives, you'll be slapped down for it. <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/tim-walz-obsession-with-the-so-called-weirdness-aka-catholicism-of-jd-vance/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Tim Walz’s obsession with the so-called ‘weirdness’ (aka Catholicism) of JD Vance</mark></a></strong><br><br><em>Photo: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a campaign rally with Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at the Liacouras Center at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 August 2024. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.)</em>
