AOC wouldn't win Harris the swing vote. I love AOC, don't get me wrong, but with two women on the ticket, it's too easy for conservatives to paint the duo as "crazy" or "radical." Sexism remains alive and well here. People still believe the stereotypes and are easily influenced by dog whistles, especially here in the Midwest.

I hope that we get to the point where this isn't a concern, but as it stands now, we have never had a woman in charge, and a lot of people are afraid of the unknown, so they wouldn't like the idea of something new on both the presidential front as well as the VP front.

That's on top of the fact that AOC is from NY and Harris is from CA. We are already irritated that a majority of people in office (and the country) ignore the "flyover" states even though we do a lot for the country (and have really cool cultural and fun places to visit, but this addendum is clearly biased). It really does matter a lot that Walz is one of us. He gets us in a way that people from the coast states don't. That will influence a lot of votes, and two midwestern states are considered swing states - i.e. states that Harris absolutely NEEDS on her side.

Swing voters here don't care as much about deploying the national guard. In fact, it's lauded by a lot of people, including liberals/democrats. Midwesterners are okay with civil disobedience, but only if it's not unnecessarily destructive or if there isn't an attempt to gain simply for yourself (ex: looting). I'm not saying that that is what happened when the guard was deployed or that it's a realistic or correct belief, but in reality, the media painted it that way, so people believe what they were told. So, very few here are holding something like that against him.

I don't know of anyone in my region who would consider Walz to be truly controversial, and certainly, they think of him as way less controversial than AOC. They might disagree with Walz's policies or opinions, but they don't think he's controversial. Here, AOC's painted as a pot stirrer and a crazy lady. To reiterate, I don't agree with this view of AOC, and I respect her immensely, but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that a lot of other people do agree with it. Walz, because of his race, age, cultural background, and experience, is a thousand times more electable than AOC when you're looking at it from a national perspective.