Borkowski Media Trends: Tim Walz & Elon Musk
Harris' shrewd VP nomination and Elon Musk's misinformation
The unremarkable Power of Tim Walz
Balancing a ticket is a delicate art and, as we’ve seen in hundreds of Veep memes over the past two weeks, being Vice President is a thankless task. The ideal VP choice compensates for a candidate’s weaknesses, shoring up a demographic, or a state, they might not otherwise win, and in return is rewarded with four to eight years of political sidelining. But a candidate with baggage can quickly become a liability - the most famous example is John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008, mercilessly parodied by Tina Fey back when Saturday Night Live still retained some cultural capital, and this year’s Republican choice of JD Vance has also proved problematic. With little government experience, a deep-red state background, and a history of questionable statements, he doesn’t reach out to the evangelicals that Mike Pence so easily courted, and has done little but provide Democrats with easy attack lines.
The Democrats are not immune from bad choices in the Veep-stakes, although those picks are mostly confined to a long and not-so-illustrious list of unremarkable white men, from 2016’s Tim Kaine (remember him?), to the scandal-dogged John Edwards in 2004, and Joe Liebermann in 2000, a conservative choice who arguably drove many progressives to Ralph Nader, and, ultimately, Al Gore’s doom. But with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, conventional wisdom held that the Democrats needed an unremarkable white man for balance. Enter Tim Walz.
To call Tim Walz unremarkable would be to highlight his greatest strength. He is normal. He loves his dog, his kids, turkey meat, and Bob Seger. He served in the National Guard, worked as a geography teacher and a football coach, and will be the first Democrat on a Presidential ticket without a law degree since Jimmy Carter. When he spoke to Harris on Monday to receive the nomination, he told her he had never read from a teleprompter before.Walz’s normality has allowed him to communicate the most effective attack line of the campaign so far, one coined by him – that the Republicans, and Vance in particular, are “weird”. Harris’ campaign has already effectively utilised social media, leaning into the Brat summer meme in particular, and Walz is a perfect fit for the format – plain-spoken and funny, he can effectively do the much-vaunted “America’s dad” schtick, without it ever actually feeling like a schtick. For Harris, whose gaffes, although meme’d into eternity, are gaffes nonetheless, a communicator this effective was the only choice she could have made.
It also helps that Walz is to the left of Harris, a Bernie without the baggage, and commands the affection of seemingly the entire Democratic party – as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, her admiration of him is essentially the only thing she has in common with conservative Senator Joe Manchin. The Harris campaign has smartly ascertained that they aren’t going to win over Republicans, and likely not Independents either, but what they can do is keep the 2020 coalition together, and energise a base that was deeply apathetic just a month ago. Walz’s Midwest credentials and everyman appeal have made him a social media sensation – all he has to do now is prove he can win.
X’s downward spiral under Musk
It’s a clichéd comparison, but it’s hard not to compare Musk’s Twitter era to a drawn-out Black Mirror episode, particularly apt this week, given we might be approaching the part just before things crumble. On the surface, there’s little sign to suggest breaking point given a lawsuit filed by Musk/X has quashed the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a nonprofit created by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in 2019 responding to the mass shooting in Christchurch that was livestreamed on Facebook. GARM was a steering group of companies as large as Unilever to help advertisers avoid having their work show up alongside nefarious content. Musk’s heavyweight antitrust lawsuit proved too much for GARM to fight - the WFA confirmed yesterday that it had halted operations.
A win for Musk? Perhaps, but it hasn’t stopped him from opening another can of worms. This week Musk has faced fierce criticism for espousing dangerous misinformation about UK riots, which saw him delete his own post sharing a fake Telegraph headline claiming that Starmer was considering detaining rioters in detainment camps in the Falkland Islands. For someone with such an influential platform, urgent action is required to enforce a degree of editorial oversight. The lack of regulation is frightening given a recent report published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate that Musk’s misleading election claims have been viewed over 1.2 billion times on X, with no fact checks.
Many X users will be familiar with Community Notes - a feature accelerated by Musk where contributors can submit ‘context’ like fact-checks under a post. In theory, it is a positive feature that targets misinformation, but it is a curious one considering that most of Musk’s posts are immune to such fact-checking.
With Musk weighing into the debate on UK politics, it’s worth looking at YouGov data, showing 86% of the British public see social media as a critical driving force for these riots. X is a particularly fierce breeding ground for views taken to the streets thanks to Musk’s flagship action upon buying Twitter to reinstate banned accounts like Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and Donald Trump. There is an undeniable shift to he right with studies showing that the platform is attracting far more right-leaning users. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in far right rhetoric with X quickly becoming a haven for extreme views and hate speech. Behind the scenes, Musk’s leadership over X is forcing governments to take action. While this is proving difficult for leaders, with every controversy surrounding Musk, the further this issue is likely pushed up the agenda of global leaders.