The fanfare and publicity surrounding Tim Walz for his first fortnight as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick has sparked renewed interest as to whether the second person on the ticket makes any difference when it comes to the result of the election. The conventional wisdom on the role and significance of the US vice-presidential office – in the words of Franklin D Roosevelt’s VP, John Nance Garner – is that it’s “not worth a bucket of warm spit”.

Garner’s experience is also instructive. Having previously been speaker of the House of Representatives he felt frustrated and sidelined being FDR’s vice-president for eight years, eventually resigning to go back to Texas in 1941. Yet had he stuck with the job his reward would have been to become president when Roosevelt died in office in 1945.

Indeed, the chances of such a succession are actually quite high. Out of America’s 45 presidents, nine assumed office unexpectedly: eight on the death of the sitting president (four of them due to the assassination of the incumbent). One, Gerald Ford, took office when the incumbent, Richard Nixon, resigned over Watergate in 1974.

Indeed, the dramatic and relatively late withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 race also propelled his vice-president, Kamala Harris, into her party’s position as presidential candidate without a contested process, precisely because of her heir-in-waiting status.

So the position of VP can be an important stepping stone to the presidency and has been throughout US history. In total, 15 vice-presidents, roughly one-third of the 46 presidents, went on to the top job (and even more assumed their party’s nomination to run for president). In the Democratic party, all their recent democratic vice-presidents: Harris, Biden, Al Gore and Walter Mondale subsequently became their party’s choice to top the ticket.

Team Conservative

The fuss about the 2024 nominations of J.D. Vance and Tim Walz however, also speaks to the divided nature of America at this pivotal time in its history. In choosing Vance as his running mate, Donald Trump was doubling down on his America First populist message. Vance’s anti-internationalist, anti-abortion, pro-natalist stances represent an attempt to appeal to core Trump supporters.

Remarks such as his attacks on “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” are aimed squarely at Trump’s base and the usually non-voting third of the American electorate who turned out to give him victory in 2016.

By contrast, Harris’s pick represents the more traditional strategy of choosing someone to balance the ticket. As a cosmopolitan, multiracial lawyer from California, she picked a midwestern, gun-owning, pheasant-shooting, army veteran who has spent nearly all of his life as a social studies teacher in Minnesota.

And yet importantly Walz is much more than these headlining credentials. He is a choice designed to appeal to Trump voters from midwestern states like his own. People who feel they have been left behind by the growing inequalities of 21st-century America.

His record as governor has been to legislate for tax reform credits for childcare worth up to US$1,750 (£1,362) for each child of medium income families. He has also introduced universal free school meals as well as paid sick and medical leave and workplace protections for Amazon workers and Uber drivers. To pay for these things he imposed a statewide surtax of 1% on investment income and raised cooperation tax on foreign-based revenues.

For Trump and Vance, these policies are seen as dangerous examples of socialism – but in Minnesota they succeeded in getting Walz reelected as governor in 2022. In fact, the Democratic party is now so popular there that it also controls the offices of secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature.

Uncle Veep

Not only is Walz the avuncular and popular midwestern everyman, he is also in some ways a representative of an effective policy response to the grievances and frustrations that led to the growth of Trumpian populism in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. In choosing Walz, Harris was signalling her support for his form of progressive policies. Not only has his selection helped to unify the democratic party coalition, it has also signalled how Harris would govern as president.

It is a choice which has so far not only proved popular right across social media, but is has also helped to build on the energy and enthusiasm of Harris’s own honeymoon period at the top of the democratic ticket.

In choosing Walz, Harris made a calculation that this little known governor could appeal to enough mid-western voters to swing the key rust belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in November’s election. If she fails in this task, she may well have inadvertently also selected the future of the Democratic party for the next election in 2028.