Good morning. It's August 8th. It is another chilly and rainy day in New York City. 15 degrees off the old sweltering weather, but still sinister in its own way. The remains of Tropical Storm Debbie are supposed to be coming in behind this. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news space is taken up by chewing over the old news that Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate under the headline “extraordinarily ordinary, Walz's path to prominence.” The right -hand news column is the New York Times explaining, as only the New York Times can, what a regular person is and how Tim Walz is one. “Tim Walz never attended an Ivy League school. He never wrote a political memoir. He once worked at a tanning bed factory in Jonesboro, Arkansas. And until he was 40, he never showed much interest in a career in politics.” The times is fascinated by the idea that somebody has not spent their life trying to claw to the top. “In selecting Mr. Walz, the paper continues, Ms. Harris has picked a one -man rejoinder to the idea that the Democrats are the party of the cultural and coastal elite.” The piece also notes his “broad smile and unpolished style,” but adds, “for all his affability, Mr. Walls has displayed at times shrewd political instincts.” Wow, the guy who got elected governor and then became the vice presidential nominee has got a knack for politics, who'da thunk?

Next to that as news analysis “A swing state plan clad in plain talk and Carhartt.” The lead on this one, not to be confused with the lead on the other one is “in selecting governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, vice president Kamala Harris has picked a partner who is many things she is not. A product of small town America a union member known to campaign in a t -shirt and camo hat, a white guy who exudes Midwestern dad energy.” The piece continues, “and, perhaps most important, a politician who has had to rely on the support of independent or even Republican voters to win elections.” It goes on to explain “Ms. Harris, a California Democrat, has never won an election as a solo candidate outside the liberal bastion of California, where races often hinge not on winning swing voters, but on successfully navigating intra -party fights. This has left her with limited experience, acquiring a political skill Mr. Walz honed over his nearly two decades in politics, talking to conservatives.” Once again, the analysis is trying to package an experienced candidate as an inexperienced one by defining the terms of experience incredibly narrowly. Harris has never won a national election as a solo candidate. It is way of writing around the inconvenient fact that she has won a national election. You just have to hope the readers don't pause to recollect that there are no solo national offices except the presidency. Nobody works their way up by running for US Attorney General. The only electoral positions underneath the presidency and vice presidency are state or local ones. Also, while it's true that a Democrat does not need to appeal to voters who identify as conservatives to win in democratic controlled states, a newspaper based in New York ought to understand that when the Democratic Party dominates statewide politics, what you get is a bunch of people who, in a different state, with a different political setup, would identify as Republicans, operating within the Democratic Party and needing to be pandered to. In California, many plutocratic reactionaries even call themselves liberals, but they still want politicians to service them like the plutocratic reactionaries they are. 

Below those stories, there's a piece about Trump running around offering tax breaks to anyone he can think of, whether it's taxes on tips or taxes on corporations. There's a lot of discussion of how this can overlap with democratic priorities, especially cutting taxes on social security benefits. But the story can't really summon the conviction to paint Trump as genuinely developing a top to bottom populist line of policy. It ends with a Republican consultant saying, “this feels like an answer to democratic attacks that Trump is protecting corporate America. If there is another debate, he can pull these out of his back pocket to say he's fighting for seniors and he's fighting for workers who count on tips every day. It does help politically.” It helps politically if you grant that Trump will reverse his backing out of the next debate and that if he were to debate, he would strategically deploy policy talking points instead of rambling on about Hannibal Lecter. 

On page A6, Taylor Swift has canceled her Vienna concerts on the Eras tour after the arrest of two people allegedly plotting terrorism against the shows. 

Above that, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is angry at Elon Musk about Musk's efforts to use his social media platform to escalate the race riots in Britain into a race war. 

And on page A7, the Great Barrier Reef still looks doomed by global warming. Although what does “doomed” really mean in geological time? One coral expert told the Times that “reefs will crash to very low levels but will come back in hundreds or thousands of years.” So eventually, it'll work itself out. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we'll talk again tomorrow.