Picking Governor Shapiro Is the Sister Souljah Moment Harris Needs

He's also the perfect cover for putting greater distance between America and Israel's extremist government

Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is expected to announce her own VP choice any day now. The assumption is that it is going to be a White man with a moderate image who is popular in a state or region that is likely to tip the election. I agree people like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias that the VP pick generally doesn’t matter much in terms of winning individual states, and that what matters more overall is how Harris positions herself in terms of both policy and vibes. Harris needs to lay out an agenda that is broadly popular with the electorate and reflective of her genuine priorities, and also demonstrate her independence from the pressure groups who increasingly behave as if they should be allowed to dictate the terms of debate.

Harris has done a bunch of this already, walking back basically everything she said in her 2020 campaign, putting out an ad touting her support for a border security bill that Republicans killed, talking about how she wants to help young people start families and build wealth, etc. I hope she’ll do more to lay out a focused, positive and moderate agenda that will help her draw a clear contrast with Trump’s own campaign.

But I also hope she avails herself of opportunities to distinguish herself in ways that aren’t policy-oriented. I think the Vice Presidential pick is one such opportunity, and that she should pick Governor Josh Shapiro for that reason.

The reasons to pick Shapiro on paper are obvious. He’s a successful and popular governor of a purple state that is absolutely crucial to Democratic hopes of victory. He has a broadly moderate and pragmatic reputation while also having strong views and being willing to fight. He’s widely viewed as a potential future president, and so would pass both the primary substantive requirement for a Vice President (could he become president in a pinch) and would establish Harris’s own confidence in herself, that she isn’t worried about having a genuine political talent as her #2.

The only problems with Shapiro are that he’s Jewish and that he’s become a target of anti-Israel protestors demanding that Harris not pick him. And that’s precisely why she should.

As Yair Rosenberg ably delineates, Shapiro’s actual policy views on both Israel and on the excesses of anti-Israel protest are essential identical to those of other top-tier VP contenders like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. They all oppose anathematizing Israel through divestment, they all believe Hamas is a terrorist organization that is an obstacle to peace, and they all have condemned antisemitic elements in campus protests. They all are also highly critical of the Netanyahu government and believe that Israel needs to bring the war in Gaza to an end. But only Shapiro has been deemed off-limits.

Rosenberg reasonably suggests that the reason is that Shapiro is Jewish and is therefore presumed to be more viscerally pro-Israel than the other contenders. And Shapiro does, in fact, have strong personal feelings about both Israel and about antisemitism in the ranks of anti-Israel protestors. But I think these facts are assets to him as a pick. Israel is a deeply emotional issue for Americans on both sides of the issue; Democrats have rightly pushed back when Republicans have impugned the patriotism of people like Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib because of their own strong feelings about the Palestinian cause. Picking Shapiro would be a powerful way to acknowledge the legitimacy of those kinds of emotions. And it would also be a powerful way of rebuking the notion that those kinds of emotions should be allowed to dictate policy—because all the anti-Shapiro protestors really have on their side is emotional blackmail; they aren’t even really trying to get a meaningful policy win. I can’t think of any better way for Harris to demonstrate to voters that she is not intimidated by the far left than by picking the person they have deemed unacceptable in that way for that kind of reason.

I think Shapiro would be an extremely useful pick for another reason, though. Harris’s positions with respect to Israel, both generally and in its current conflict, are no different from those of the rest of the Biden administration. But the broad impression around the world is that Biden has been played for a sucker by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—that he gave him unequivocal support in his country’s hour of need and has received nothing but contempt in exchange. Harris badly needs to change that impression, because it is doing profound diplomatic damage to America.

She, as Vice President as well as the presumptive nominee, also has to deal with the risk of a cascading escalation on Israel’s northern front into all-out war, something that seems increasingly likely in the wake of Hezbollah’s attack on a Druse village in the Golan Heights that killed twelve people, Israel’s successful retaliatory strike against a Hezbollah commander in the Beirut suburbs, and the assassination (presumably by Israel) of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. America has no interest in protecting Hezbollah, and no love for Iran. But America does have a profound interest in avoiding a wider war that could well draw us in whether we want to be or not. We also have an interest in easing Iran off its current path of increasingly strident confrontation and forestalling its transition to becoming a nuclear-armed adversary, all of which may seem unlikely despite Iran’s recent election, but which will be impossible if the war with Israel expands.

For both reasons, Harris needs to get tougher with Bibi than her boss has been. Israel has been pursuing its war with no conception of a political endgame, and that kind of warfare can at best end in an unstable stalemate, at worst in disaster. Biden has tread carefully with Netanyahu in part so as not to bolster his standing domestically, but ultimately Israel is a democracy and if its voters want to reward the most colossal failure in the country’s history because of spite, we can’t stop them from doing that. America needs to take a broader view—for cold-eyed practical reasons, not sentimental ones—and Israel needs to see that we are.

And for that, Shapiro—who called Netanyahu one of the worst leaders of all time—provides Harris with the best possible cover. Republicans—and likely the Israeli government as well—will be eager to attack Harris for being objectively pro-Hamas. It will be interesting to see them try to do that with Shapiro on the ticket. It also won’t do any harm for the cause of projecting moderation for the ticket to be vociferously attacked by extremists on both sides.

I think that’s also the answer to the genuine political risk that Shapiro does pose: the chance that it depresses Democratic turnout among Arab and Mulsim Americans, particularly in the electorally-crucial state of Michigan. I think, on balance, that tilting away from Israel for electoral reasons is foolish; it will cost Harris more than it will gain her. I also think that it is not politically tenable to rule out Jewish—or Arab or Muslim—Americans from a given office, even the Vice Presidency, because of these kinds of concerns, and any suggestion that that is what’s happening will backfire. Shapiro has longstanding ties to Pennsylvania’s Muslim community, ties that have been strained by the Israel-Gaza war, much as the Democratic Party has been strained. The situation can’t be papered over. The best way to tackle it is head-on, staking out positions that are right for America and putting the right people forward to advance those positions, both to pro-Israel and anti-Israel audiences. I think Shapiro would be a great person to put forward to do that.

Ultimately, I think any of the picks Harris is considering for VP have some validity to them; none of them strike me as obviously crazy or stupid. I’m encouraged by that fact in many ways—the last thing Harris needs is drama. But you can also go wrong by being too risk-averse and too conflict-averse. Strength attracts strength. Harris should pick someone who makes her look strong. I think Shapiro would do that, and by giving her cover to be more forceful with Israel’s government, would give her opportunities to look stronger still.