This week started with Kamala Harris selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. The former high school teacher and union member is a welcome change for a party that typically prefers “Ivy-matriculated coastal knowledge professionals,” as Chris Lehmann puts it. “After a decade’s worth of conspicuous fretting over the party’s ability to connect with members of the heartland’s white working class,” Lehmann writes that with Walz, “the Democrats now can point to a leader who knows something of that community’s daily struggles.”

The selection of Walz is also a win for those who feared that Harris would choose Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro who, Emily Tamkin reminds us, called for a university president to be fired over pro-Palestinian campus protests, appeared to liken student demonstrators to the KKK, and urged that law enforcement be sent in to break up rallies. Despite accusations by many Republicans, there is no evidence that Shapiro’s Jewishness is why Harris picked Walz, Tamkin argues, and it is “counterproductive to the fight against antisemitism to pretend otherwise.”

Shapiro was an insider favorite, John Nichols explains, but eventually Harris realized how significant it is “when a candidate, who begins a race with limited name recognition and even less in the way of a national organization, quickly takes off and excites the base,” and “Tim Walz did that in a way none of his rivals were able to.” This was possible only because Harris had the confidence to launch “a two-week ‘virtual campaign’” in which candidates could present themselves to her and the public. Instead of quickly selecting a running mate from a “predictable pool of prominent Democrats,” she opened herself up to a different kind of candidate, one like Walz.

As our editor D.D. Guttenplan wrote from the Harris-Walz rally in Philadelphia, there is a new energy in the Democratic Party. Whenever Harris mentioned a Trump-era policy that curtailed freedom, the crowd roared, “We’re not going back!” Here’s hoping they’re right.

-Alana Pockros

Engagement Editor, The Nation