Normal versus weird in the USA

Dear reader,

You don’t necessarily have to get up at night in Europe because of this TV duel. But watching it at some point in time should be informative for everyone who is interested in the USA: On Wednesday night, at 3 a.m. CEST, the US vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz will meet.

The matter has a special kind of entertainment value, completely independent of any political content. This is due to the unusually strong socio-cultural tensions in the 2024 US election campaign: Vance and Walz are figures as if from different planets.

Vance, 40, a senator from Ohio and Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, is a dark right-wing maverick. Childless women in the USA are referred to as “cat ladies” who do not contribute enough to society and should ideally remain silent in politics. And he has recently been instrumental in spreading the urban legend of Haitian immigrants eating the locals’ dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. Things got really bad when Vance affirmed that only by “creating” stories like this can you really get through to the voters.

Walz, 60, governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’ vice presidential candidate, is an art counterpart. He is absolutely “down to earth”, as the Americans say, worked as a teacher for a long time and was coach of the football team at Mankato West High School.

Tim Walz at a campaign event in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Source: Action Press

Walz is difficult to squeeze into the ideological grid. On the one hand, he goes hunting with his own rifle and understands the views and way of life of the country people, who often lean towards Republicans. At the same time, the socially committed Democrat introduced a free lunch for all students in his state – and in doing so is overtaking many from his own party on the left who talk about more social cohesion but do little about it.

A new Vance video raises questions

Walz will present himself in the TV duel as the normal guy who is surprised by the weirdo Vance. This approach fits with the Weird campaign with which Harris headquarters responded to Vance from the start.

The Democrats are ungraciously pulling up another Vance video: In a Senate committee meeting in 2023, Vance complained in front of the cameras that the costs of legally required child seats in the car often lead to families foregoing the second or third child – as a result, America has then too few offspring. People on social networks are now shaking their heads and asking why Vance sees child seats at the center of the demographic problems in the USA. This was “beyond strange,” wrote one user. Another speaks of a “sockshot”.

“Weird”: The magic word against Donald Trump

Kamala Harris is changing gears in the fight against the right. Instead of describing the Republicans as a threat to democracy, she ridicules them personally: Donald Trump is “weird,” and his deputy JD Vance is even worse. PR experts find the new style effective. Trump himself was now becoming increasingly nervous.

Vance’s popularity has waned in recent weeks as his notoriety gradually increased. This is indeed strange and historically completely unusual. The normal course of the curve for American vice presidential candidates leads to a simultaneous increase in awareness and popularity. Why doesn’t this work for Vance? At this point you come across one of ten pieces of bad news for Trump that is currently having a negative impact on his election campaign.

A new person is starting at NATO

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s term of office ended on Tuesday after ten years. His successor will be former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. There will be a handover ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

From Tuesday he will be the new Secretary General of NATO: Mark Rutte.

Source: IMAGO/Agencia EFE

The 65-year-old Stoltenberg, a stoic Norwegian, has a lot to thank NATO for. He has helped to constantly calm the Western alliance and keep a cool head – both in the internal crises triggered by Donald Trump and in the external crises triggered by Vladimir Putin. It remains to be seen whether the 57-year-old Rutte can have a similarly integrative effect. Lucky for Rutte: Two new members, Finland and Sweden, have now joined the alliance. Firstly, they are very professional and secondly, they rely on team spirit.

Second costume on German Unity Day

The celebration around October 3rd is being organized by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania this year. A ceremony with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier begins at 12.15 p.m. in the Schwerin State Theater. A “meeting with the citizen delegations of the states” follows in Schwerin Castle.

Lights off, spots on: Schwerin is getting ready for German Unity Day.

Source: Jens Büttner/dpa

However, Steinmeier must expect that other political figures will steal the show from him on this day. The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance has called for a nationwide peace demonstration. With the motto “Never again war,” Wagenknecht is not speaking against Vladimir Putin, but rather against aid for Ukraine and against the stationing of American medium-range missiles in Germany announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz for 2026.

The prospect of this demonstration alone is sowing discord these days. Among those who came under pressure was the Social Democrat Ralf Stegner, who did not want to miss the opportunity to also speak at this event. The Moscow-friendly CSU politician Peter Gauweiler will also appear. What does all this teach us? First: The desire for peace, of course, exists in all camps. Secondly: Weirdos who ignore who exactly is endangering the peace are also everywhere.

We wish you a nice Sunday evening!

Your Matthias Koch

The day

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Who will be important this week

Former US President Jimmy Carter turns 100 on Tuesday. Family and friends had hardly dared to hope that he would live to see this day: Carter, who suffers from a brain tumor, has been in palliative care since 2023. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reports, Carter has now set a new goal: “I’m trying to hold on to vote for Kamala Harris on November 5th.”

Jimmy Carter in a recording from 2019.

Source: John Amis/AP/dpa

Carter, a Georgia native, was an international peacemaker. The treaty between Israel and Egypt negotiated at Camp David in 1978 is linked to Carter. Unlike today’s American president, the American president at the time was able to exert enough influence to create a rules-based coexistence, at least in parts of the Middle East, that no one initially wanted to believe in.

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