Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, the frozen bear meat of the American political icebox.

This week, Democrats filled out their presidential ticket and were all happy and joyous and hopeful. Disturbing stuff. Former President Donald Trump spent all week at Mar-a-Lago, sitting and seething at television networks showing Vice President Kamala Harris’ crowd sizes, and has officially lost whatever modest control he had over himself. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on a media tour to discuss her new book and her recent defeat of President Joe Biden in the presidential race.

Let us begin with the newest entrant to national politics, “Walleye” Walz.

By Jim Newell

The first couple of days of the Kamala Harris–Tim Walz rollout were an unquestionable success. The selection of Walz was welcomed from left to center, from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. The Surge attended their first rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday and can confirm that Democratic excitement registered at ear-damaging levels. That was followed by several blockbuster rallies, one of which included a (Trumpesque, honestly) showy pull-up-the-plane-to-15,000-screaming-fans power visual. Then came, of course, the fun part of being introduced to a national audience, as Walz was met with scrutiny of his military record. There’s a few different threads of criticism, some thinner gruel than others. (The one in which Walz does appear to have gone a step too far, in a clip shared by the Harris campaign itself, features Waltz talking about restricting access to “those weapons of war, that I carried in war.” He was never deployed to a theater of combat.) The Harris campaign reportedly knew that these criticisms were coming and that Walz was upfront about them during the vetting process. Walz could do an interview to attempt to clear all this up, though the campaign is probably waiting to see if this just goes away. Speaking of interviews …

Excitement! Energy! Memes! Crowds! Hope! Everything has been going Harris’ way since she entered the race. What else is there for her to do? Well, she hasn’t spoken extemporaneously in public for more than about two total minutes since Biden passed her the torch three weeks ago, and we don’t know much about how she would lead the most powerful country in the world beyond the generalities of her stump speech. The Surge understands why her campaign........

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