DNC 2024 live updates: Tim Walz, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Josh Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg to speak | US elections 2024

Midwestern guys: Vance and Walz’s opposing views of being from the US heartland

Stephen Starr

For 30 years, Michael Bailey worked at the former Armco steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, eventually becoming president of a union that represented thousands of workers. Among them was James Vance, grandfather and sometimes stand-in father of the Republican party’s current vice-presidential candidate, JD, who worked as a skilled tradesperson at the plant.

So Bailey, today a 71-year-old pastor at the Faith United church in downtown Middletown, says he’s confused by claims from Donald Trump’s running mate that he “grew up as a poor kid” in Middletown.

“As a rigger, [James Vance] made good money. Where he lived, on McKinley Street, he didn’t live in poverty,” he says. “JD came up in a middle-income family. He didn’t come up on the rough side of town.”

Politicians assuming working-class identities to attract votes is nothing new. But this year’s election pits vice-presidential candidates against each other – ostensibly picked for their “real American” chops – who hold contrasting views of what it means to be a boots-on-the-ground midwesterner.

Endless corn fields, small towns and wide-open highways are characteristics of life in the midwest that most can agree on. Beyond that, experts say the region is far more complex.

Cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati are home to millions of people that, for a time during the 20th century, were among the most innovative in the world.

“Midwesterners have historically been on the frontlines of progressive politics and education. Midwesterners also have been innovators in both an economic and cultural sense,” says Diane Mutti Burke, the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Lauren Gambino

Nancy Pelosi delighted a well-heeled crowd at the University Club of Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, sharing anecdotes about her extraordinary career arc that she described as “housewife, House member, House Speaker.”

Now considered one of the most powerful House speakers in modern political history, Pelosi said she faced doubts as she climbed the ranks in Congress from male colleagues who admonished her to wait her turn.

“I became interested in running [for leadership] because we kept losing the elections: 94, 96, 98, and then it was 2000 I thought, ‘I’m so tired of losing … for the children,’” she said, using a Pelosi-ism, that everything she does is “for the children”.

When she made her decision to run for Democratic leadership known, Pelosi said she was immediately met with skepticism, especially among her male colleagues. “Who said she could run?” Pelosi recalled them saying. Their incredulity only encouraged her further.

“Light my fire, why don’t you, poor babies?” Pelosi said, drawing laughs. In an aside to the audience, she emphasized that she was telling a story that occured “this century.”

Pelosi continued, saying she was told there was a “pecking order” and she wasn’t in it.

“They said, ‘These people have been waiting a long time,” Pelosi recounted. “So I said: ‘Was it over 200 years?’”

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, is tonight’s keynote speaker, and will deliver a speech focused on telling American voters about his life and career, the Biden-Harris campaign said.

“In his remarks at the Democratic national convention, Governor Tim Walz will introduce himself to the American people. He will highlight the values that he learned growing up in a small town in Nebraska, which shaped his service in the national guard, as a teacher, football coach, member of Congress, and governor, and that he will bring to the White House. Governor Walz will lay out what Vice-President Harris will do for working families and call on the American people to work together to elect Kamala Harris president,” according to the campaign.

Musicians John Legend and Sheila E will introduce Walz, who will be nominated by Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ingman, a former student of the governor.

Gaza solidarity protesters interrupted an environment and climate crisis council meeting at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.

“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, who was speaking. “We’re organizing against Trump, we’re organizing against the reactionary autocrats, plutocrats and kleptocrats.”

“Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump and Tim Walz,” Raskin continued, mistakenly naming Harris’s vice-presidential pick instead of Trump’s. “So cut it out,” he added before the protestors were escorted away.

Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by backing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement, the influential youth-led environmental justice group who spearheaded the push for a Green New Deal.

“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, a Sunrise Movement spokesperson. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.”

Lauren Gambino

The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred and deflected when asked by the Democratic strategist David Axelrod to share how difficult it was to have “that conversation” with the president.

Pelosi, who pushed subtly but forcefully in public and private for the president to step aside, said it was ultimately Joe Biden’s decision to make but one that ultimately set the party on a path to winning that they had not been on when he led the ticket.

“A great sacrifice was made here,” she said. But the rupture between Biden and Pelosi, two devout Catholics who have known each other for decades has been hard on her, she said. “I’ve cried over this. I’m sad about this,” she said.

Her highest priority then and now was to win – and not just the White House, but the House and the Senate. She said the prospect of a second Trump term was too dangerous.

“Thank God I was the speaker on January 6, last time,” she said, suggesting the assault on the US Capitol would have been far worse if Republicans had been in charge that day. She said:

You have to make the decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning.

Donald Trump, in an interview yesterday, said he would “certainly” be open to appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr to a role in his administration, if the independent presidential candidate drops out of the race and backs him.

“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN after a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.

He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time. I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.

Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.

Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump replied:

I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy – a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.