Did Barack Obama help Harris select Tim Walz as her running mate?

Progressives were some of the loudest Democrats cheering on Twitter after Kamala Harris announced her selection of Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday. But they weren’t the only winners in the party.

Some of the biggest political victors as the Minnesota governor joined the presidential ticket were the biggest power players in the Democratic Party, whose influence has now been solidified after their involvement on the winning side of two monumental battles that have taken place in Democratic politics over the past month and a half.

At the top of the list: Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. The former president and speaker of the House were both reported to have been involved — in Pelosi’s case, very directly — in both the efforts to convince President Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 ticket and for his replacement, Kamala Harris, to select Walz as her running mate.

Harris named Walz as her vice presidential nominee on Tuesday, ending weeks of speculation and a shadow campaign which had come down Walz, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.

Neither of the party’s two biggest kingmakers have been particularly eager to claim any glory in public. Pelosi, for her part, attempted to tamp down on speculation surrounding her role in the former discussion when asked about it by Lesley Stahl this past weekend on CBS Sunday Morning. She did not, however, deny Stahl’s assertion that Biden was “furious” over her perceived betrayal.

“He knows I love him very much,” Pelosi said. She went on: “I wasn’t the leader of any pressure [campaign]… Let me say things that I didn’t do: I didn’t call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to him: ’I did not call anybody.’”

Obama remains largely