VPs and vibes: Walz vs. Vance in an election where reality doesn’t matter

Vice presidents get selected for all sorts of reasons. Some are picked to fill a need and serve a constituency, as when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris in 2020 or Donald Trump picked Mike Pence in 2016. Some are chosen to make a big splash and shake up a race, like John McCain picking Sarah Palin in 2008. Some are meant to coast under the radar, like Hillary Clinton picking Tim Kaine in 2016.

But in 2024, you might get picked as VP because you said the word “weird” on MSNBC.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) was named Vice President Harris’s running mate this week — a shocking rise for a politician who barely had a national footprint a few weeks ago. But it’s been a ridiculously chaotic month, between Biden’s debate debacle, the assassination attempt against Trump, the president dropping out, and the anointment of Harris, all of which occurred in less than 30 days.

Then, suddenly, Walz was on stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and throughout the rest of his swing-state tour with Harris, to introduce himself to the Democratic Party and the country.

How did we get here? The reason is that Walz is the person we can thank for the Democratic narrative about Trump and his running mate JD Vance that enjoyed a brief news cycle last week — that they’re “weird.” He initially said it in an offhand comment on “Morning Joe” on July 23, and later that night in a more fully formed, made-for-TikTok, 40-second rant on Jen Psaki’s primetime show. He posted it on X shortly thereafter, with the brief copy: “I’m telling you: these guys are weird.”

And that, according to reporting in multiple outlets, actually played a factor in why he was ultimately named Harris’s running mate. He came up with the “weird” talking point that people seemed to enjoy on social media, so now he has a shot at being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

It wasn’t “revolutionary or sophisticated,” admits the Associated Press, but it was a “new framing” that just seemed to take off. He’s hired!

That’s where we seem to be landing  as a culture during this absurd electoral cycle — coasting on vibes and vibes alone. A one “progressive Hill aide” told the liberal publication Talking Points Memo, “elections are about energy, and they’re about networks, and they’re about vibes. Walz was clearly the vibes candidate.” Politico declared that “Tim Walz passed the vibe check” in an email newsletter. “The Tim Walz vibe shift,” announced the Columbia Journalism Review.

Walz isn’t just running on vibes to work his way into the position of VP candidate, he’s embracing more artificially manufactured vibes too. During his first campaign event with Harris, he talked about how he “can’t wait to debate” Vance, before adding “that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

The crowd erupted knowingly, recognizing this wasn’t just a bit of trash talk but a nod to the bizarre but effective Extremely Online push to associate JD Vance with couches. It’s something the “Kamala HQ” X account has been embracing as well, posting recently, “JD Vance does not couch his hatred of women.”

For those who aren’t familiar, the couch reference relates to the implication that JD Vance likes to have sex with couches, and that this revelation was contained in his bestselling 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy.” It’s not true, of course, there is no such passage in his book. None of it is even remotely factual — it’s all completely made up.

So where did this get started? Well a guy who goes by the X handle “Rick Rude’s Calves” (a reference to the famous WWE wrestler from the 1980s and his…calves), who had about 1,000 followers, posted a few hours after Vance was named Trump’s running mate that Vance wrote about how he “admitted” to “f‑‑‑ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions” on page 179 of his memoir.

A random anonymous X account literally just posted some nonsense he thought was funny. Then that post got more than 1.8 million views. Eventually, Rick Rude’s Calves deleted his account — but not before an entirely new reality-free smear had emerged.

“Rick” talked to Business Insider last week, and told them he was enjoying the ride. “I have really enjoyed thinking about his team and all of the idiots associated with him having to grapple with this,” he said of the GOP campaign.

Ah yes, it’s the idiots in the campaigns that are important here — not the thousands, perhaps millions, of idiots who actually believed the story. Or, whether they believe it or not, those who continue to push the ridiculous misinformation — people like, you know, the governor of Minnesota and now vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz.

The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer was one of the few mainstream journalists to recognize that this line of attack may be self-defeating, if not a bit, well, weird.

“Does Walz really want to make jokes about baseless online slanders? That couch cushion has two sides,” he posted.

His colleague Tyler Pager was more in line with the rest of the partisans who masquerade as intellectually honest media members. He quoted the Walz line based on a defamatory tweet and added, “Tim Walz goes there.”

Yeah man, Tim Walz went there. What a vibe, that Tim Walz. That’s going to go viral on TikTok! He creates the “weird” meme in a cable news hit, and then leans into that couch trend — the guy just gets it.

It’s all pathetic, of course, but also clarifying. Nothing matters, and we’re in a vibe shift to nowhere in American politics.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.