(End of the American Dream)—What in the world was Kamala Harris thinking? There is a reason why the Trump campaign is so giddy right now. Kamala Harris could have had Josh Shapiro, but instead she picked Tim Walz. When I wrote that “Kamala Harris has a tendency to really mess things up”, I was not exaggerating one bit. This election is going to be decided by the swing states, and the most critical swing state by far is Pennsylvania. Whoever wins Pennsylvania is almost certainly going to win the presidency. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has a 61 percent favorability rating in his state, and so he was seemingly the obvious pick. The following comes from CNN…
Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is almost certainly a must-win state for Harris if she wants to be president. In fact, it is probably the most important swing state this cycle, and the polling there has been very tight.
Shapiro currently holds a 61% favorable rating in Pennsylvania and outperformed Biden’s 2020 baseline by 14 points in 2022.
Whether that would have been enough to propel a Harris-Shapiro ticket in Pennsylvania this fall is a question mark, though political science literature suggests it very well