Okay. I got one wrong. Or somewhat wrong.
Regular readers of this column likely recall that, at the beginning of this fateful week where
Democrat nominee Kamala Harris was to reveal her choice for a running mate, I forecasted that Joe Biden’s replacement would settle on Arizona Senator Mark Kelly over a pair of Democrat governors -- Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Minnesota’s obscure 60-year-old Gov. Tim Walz, a man whose name most Americans had never encountered before. (Note: Walz is about six months older than Harris but looks like senile Joe Biden’s number.)
And if they’d heard of Walz prior to Tuesday, it’s probably due to the Minnesotan’s steadfast refusal to immediately call out his state’s National Guard to quell the riots and complete social mayhem that ensued after the well-publicized (thanks to social media and ridiculous “woke” celebrities like LeBron James bashing all police) aftermath of the fentanyl-inspired death of George Floyd in the early summer of 2020.
By the time Walz acted, much of the damage had already been done. Great guy.
For those with short memories, renowned local felon Floyd was apprehended in late May, 2020, by members of the Minneapolis police department for a fairly petty crime -- at least by today’s standards -- and subsequently perished while subdued under the knee of one of the officers attempting to get the unresponsive career criminal to obey the orders of the police present.
No need to rehash, but the left’s reaction to the well-documented (by phone video) incident was swift and pervasive, encompassing the entire country and causing pent-up frustration from America’s COVID locked-down population to reveal itself. Leftist miscreants and racist opportunists seemed to emerge from every cockroach crevice of every deteriorating Democrat-run city, and the rest is history.
At any rate, Gopher State governor Tim Walz was in the middle of the storm four years ago and easily could have dampened at least some of the outrage by calling for calm, deploying sufficient law enforcement resources to deal with the severest of violent outbreaks and issued the perfunctory, “We support our police officers and will conduct a thorough investigation and any violations of police conduct policy or procedures broken will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.”
You know, just like the Democrats did after January 6, 2021. Not.
None of this would matter within the scheme of national politics if cackling Kamala hadn’t narrowed her veep shortlist to one this week and selected Walz to be her number two on Tuesday. So here we are, with notorious Walz, unknown by decent people for anything but his state’s farm economy, outdoor recreation, Vikings NFL football team and ten thousand (or more) lakes – and its recent violent past -- being boosted into a position that no one had ever thought he’d be just a month ago.
If the scenario sounds too impossible to believe, it’s because it is. In an article titled, “Harris taps Walz as her vice presidential pick”, Naomi Lim reported at the Washington Examiner the other day:
“Harris’s calculus was reportedly predicated on whether the presumptive vice presidential nominee could help her win before helping her govern, with the desire to avoid negative press like that generated by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) for the Trump campaign over his ‘childless cat ladies’ comments. Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, and brother-in-law Tony West, who worked under Holder at the Obama Justice Department, were trusted advisers throughout, as were former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, before she called Walz with the news on Tuesday morning.
“’As governor, Tim helped families and businesses recover from the pandemic, established paid family leave, guaranteed the right to an abortion, and put common sense gun safety measures in place to keep communities safe,’ Obama wrote. ‘But Tim’s signature is his ability to talk like a human being and treat everyone with decency and respect — not all that surprising considering the fact that he served in the National Guard for 24 years and worked as a high school social studies teacher and football coach before being elected to Congress.’"
Just like senile Joe Biden, right? Sounds pretty “average”, doesn’t it? Do you get the impression that Kamala and her henchman wanted an otherwise unassuming bald white dude to run beside her to present the appearance of them being, well, balanced? Not many Americans know who the heck Tim Walz is. His anonymous status apparently wasn’t a deterrent to the Democrat brain trust, however.
Lim further reported,
“Walz, 60, a former Army National Guardsman and social studies teacher before he ran for the House of Representatives in 2006, was thought to bring executive experience rather than a battleground state, having been Minnesota‘s governor since 2018. Folksy Midwestern Walz, who was favored by Biden, House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, was behind the Harris campaign beginning to undermine Trump and Vance as ‘weird,’ with comparisons drawn between him and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s running mate.”
Funny, I also thought of Kaine when the Walz pick was announced, seeing as the two appear to have a similar condescending combative style that I don’t believe will play well to a national audience hungry to hear more about policies rather than enduring another aggressive aging liberal spouting about how Trump and Vance are deplorables (racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc.) and a threat to democracy.
Or something like that.
After the announcement, Both Harris and Walz set out on a five-day, six-battleground state tour. Can’t you hardly wait to see them tout how great they are! Should be entertaining, to say the least.
Though I’m not overly familiar with Walz personally, I am pretty well-versed in where he’s from. Both of my parents were born in Minnesota and my mother lived there until she married my dad and the young family decided to relocate west to California in the early 1960’s.
Having visited there myself about a dozen times in my younger years, I know the state to be chock full of salt-of-the-earth-type people who work hard, love their towns and communities and contributed wholeheartedly to the midwestern reputation as simple folk who obey laws and don’t generally rock the boat too much as they pass decades living quiet lives and raising the next generation to try and leave the world a better place than they found it.
Or at least that’s the way it was the last time I was there, which admittedly was about three decades ago.
Kamala’s right-hand white dude Tim Walz is originally from Nebraska but moved to Minnesota, attended my mother’s alma mater – Mankato State University – and eventually became a high school teacher. My mom said that Mankato State used to be a teacher’s college, so it would follow that that’s how Walz might’ve selected his vocation.
Walz was eventually elected to Congress representing the district where my family roots are from, encompassing the southcentral and eastern part of the state bordering Iowa. I remember seemingly endless corn and soybean fields and the landscape dotted by small towns there, some of which displayed signs suggesting they only had about a hundred residents.
Not to get too far off topic, but I recently watched J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” on Netflix (Directed by Ron Howard), and the towns depicted in the movie reminded me of those I used to visit in my youth in southern Minnesota. Not in Appalachia, obviously, and a good bit less infested with social ills, either. At least not back then, though I was once told by a cousin of mine that the high school kids used to gather on weekend evenings to partake in all sorts of illegal substance activity.
Here’s a little-known fact – or at least I haven’t heard it mentioned recently – but Jimmy Carter’s veep, Walter Mondale, was from Elmore, Minnesota, which borders Iowa. Elmore is a stone’s throw away from the town where my mother grew up. So to have two potential American vice presidents stem from such an “ordinary” place is pretty remarkable.
But make no mistake, Tim Walz isn’t “ordinary” by any measure, unless you favor modern “progressive” policies like marijuana legalization, allowing youths to change their gender without parental notification or advocating for abortion on demand. That’s not the Minnesota that I remembered from the 1970’s and 80’s, but my small business owner, self-made grandfather loved Ronald Reagan and was about as devoted to the Republican Party as one could get in those days.
No doubt the Democrats will attempt to claim that Walz’s midwestern values are compatible with cackling Kamala’s California kook leftism, but is it true? I argued that Walz wouldn’t be the final name on Harris’s shortlist because he wasn’t well-known, and his aura doesn’t scream “leadership” to those searching for an alternative to today’s broken-down old goat in the White House.
To put it succinctly, the balding bespectacled Walz looks more like the kind of man who’s a retired former social studies teacher, someone who’s living off of his public school teacher pension while taking up a second career in the local public library. He’s a far cry from the telegenic – and young – Republican J.D. Vance, whose authentic military service easily outshines Walz’s and whose ability to speak and fight for the American Dream is no doubt superior.
The national political scene is a far cry from the confines of St. Paul, Minnesota (the state’s capital), where Democrats hold narrow majorities in both legislative chambers and liberal policies are palatable to Minnesota’s socially progressive population. Don’t forget that Keith Ellison and Ilhan Omar are also from Minnesota. Enough said.
From a non-Democrat’s standpoint, it’s hard to see how Walz will benefit the 2024 Democrat ticket, especially with Kamala Harris as its standard bearer. If it could be argued that J.D. Vance was too “MAGA” to expand the GOP tent, then Walz is definitely too Bernie Sanders-like wingnut liberal to do so for the Democrats. All anyone has to do is harken back to those turbulent months of 2020 to get a read on what type of man Walz is – and how he governs in action.
There’s no question that a Minnesota that would produce a governor like Tim Walz is worlds apart from the one I recall experiencing decades ago. And not in a good way. The Democrat brains may surmise they picked a pasty white dude who will complement cackling Kamala to America’s starving-for-leadership voters.
I was somewhat wrong in pinpointing who Kamala Harris would pick. But I’m not wrong about Tim Walz. To paraphrase Donald Trump, Walz is a loser.
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