By now, the political powers that be have pretty thoroughly made the case against Kamala Harris’s choice of running mate—Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

For starters, in traditional running mate calculations, Walz brings very little to the ticket. He is not going to deliver any contested states. Indeed, his home state is an extreme outlier in the Midwest. Minnesota hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential contest in more than a half-century, and it wasn’t going to vote Republican this year. Walz also does not bring any semblance of ideological balance to the ticket. If anything, he is more openly and proudly leftist than Harris, who was herself among the most aggressively leftist senators during her short tenure there.

The Democratic brain trust that settled on Walz did so in part because they thought that his “folksy,” “down-home” mannerisms and colloquialisms would appeal to rural voters throughout the country and especially in Rust Belt swing states. Unfortunately for them, that assessment was based almost entirely on their own prejudices and presumptions that rural and blue-collar voters are so simple that they will naturally gravitate to any candidate who isn’t an obvious coastal liberal, regardless of his beliefs and policies. Walz’s electoral results in deep-blue Minnesota belie that assumption, as his support in his reelection campaign two years ago came almost exclusively from the state’s urban centers. Rural Minnesotans were just as turned off by his progressivism as rural Iowans, Nebraskans and Kansans will be.

Additionally, Walz comes with significant baggage. While the Republican vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, served in the Marines in Iraq, Walz’s military record has been the source of much speculation and criticism over the past several days. And while it may seem petty or unseemly to argue about the military record of a man who served in the National Guard for more than two decades, that’s the nature of politics today, and like it or not, this will almost certainly be an issue for the entirety of the campaign.

The question arises, given all of this, why Harris selected Walz. If the guy brings nothing to the ticket but baggage and fortification of the nominee’s leftism, then how, in any world, does his selection make sense?

The answer to this question is, obviously, complicated and multifaceted. As countless wags (myself included) have suggested, the decision to select Walz over Josh Shapiro was a concession to the Democratic Party’s progressive base, who would have likely had serious issues with the governor of Pennsylvania. The young and activist members of the party are far more comfortable with a Lutheran guy named Walz than they would be with Shapiro—for obvious and truly disturbing reasons.

That said, Shapiro was hardly the only other potential candidate for the VP slot. Gretchen Whitmer and Roy Cooper, the governors of Michigan and North Carolina, respectively, would have brought balance to the ticket and would likely have delivered purple swing-states. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear would have brought a proven ability to break partisan stereotypes and win in the otherwise strongly Republican South. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg would have brought significant name recognition as well as the diversity the Democratic Party champions so aggressively. Senator Mark Kelly, like Whitmer and Cooper, would likely have delivered a purple state. And the list goes on and on…

So again, why Walz?

A big part of the answer may lie in the expectations that most of the leaders in the Democratic Party—including those who bowed out of the running-mate selection process—have for the eventual outcome of this election.

During the early 1980’s, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego, Gary Jacobson, developed a theory about Congressional elections that was both revolutionary at the time and seemingly blindingly obvious in retrospect. In brief, Jacobson’s “strategic politicians hypothesis” posits that smart and talented politicians are most likely to run for office when their chances of winning are the greatest. In Congressional elections, this means that good candidates are more likely to get into a race when a national “wave” election appears to be building or when the incumbent in their district is not running for reelection or when they have a unique opportunity to raise campaign funds or…whatever. Good candidates don’t want to take any chance that they might be defeated, and so they will generally avoid contests in which the odds are stacked against them.

There is much more to Jacobson’s theory than just that, and the data he collected and analyzed were specific to U.S. House races. Nevertheless, the basic premise of his model makes logical sense in any election: candidates want to win, not lose, and they will pick their opportunities based on that calculation.

It is quite possible, in other words, that Kamala Harris chose the manifestly flawed Tim Walz as her running mate because Tim Walz was the only person she asked who said “yes.” Whitmer, Cooper, and Beshear all took themselves out of the running for the VP slot more than a week ago. It is hardly unreasonable to assume that they did so for fear of being part of a disastrous presidential ticket. Harris appears to have momentum at the moment, but there is no telling whether that momentum is real or, more to the point, if it will last beyond a few weeks. Harris has never won a Democratic primary vote, having dropped out of the 2020 race before any voters ever went to the polls. She was, until a couple of weeks ago, generally considered a political liability. She is not especially likable, and whether she wants to or not, she will have to defend the Biden record on domestic and foreign policy. Momentum notwithstanding, she will not win this race easily.

To be sure, sometimes even strategic politicians miscalculate and miss great opportunities. It is entirely possible that some of the Democrats who resisted entreaties to join the Harris ticket will regret that decision. And, as I noted above, there are probably other explanations at work here as well.

Still, one has to wonder whether Democratic Party strategists and advisors are as confident in Kamala Harris’s chances to win in November as the media appears to be. Tim Walz suggests they may not be.