Anika Begay
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris applauds as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaks at the Liacouras Center at Temple University in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images
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Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images
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Welcome to the presidential race, Tim Walz.
It’s a name that few, if any, thought would be Vice President Harris’s running mate two weeks ago, after President Biden stepped aside.
Harris didn’t know the Minnesota governor and former congresswoman well, if at all, before this trial. But her speech with Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday, introducing the Harris-Walz ticket to the country, made her appeal clear.
Here are some insights from what he said and what it means for the race:
1. It is a clear messenger that balances the ticket.
He coined the term “weird” to attack former President Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, but he didn’t dwell on it in his speech.
He certainly took it out on Trump and Vance, but a vice president should also make the top of the ticket look better and bring balance. Walz certainly did that. He said, for example, that Harris brings “joy,” but he’s the one who’s known for being joyful. He’s giving it to her by proxy.
2. He spoke for the heart of America – and for “white boys”
Walz is not from San Francisco. He made that clear Tuesday night. And in an off-the-cuff comment, he hit the nail on the head, what might be considered the elephant in the room.
He is a white man. Harris is a black woman, and part of her job, the job of all running candidates, is to testify, to reassure groups that might be skeptical of the person at the top of the ticket. It might be ideological, or when there hasn’t been a woman president, let alone a black or South Asian woman in office, it might be the white man’s job to reassure other white men.
“I see you over there. I see those old white guys,” he said, jokingly pointing to others in the front rows before delivering a rather progressive message:
“Some of us are old enough to remember when Republicans talked about freedom. Now it turns out they meant the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there is a golden rule: ‘Mind your own business.'”
3. He doesn’t come across as an elitist, which has always been a big problem for the Democratic Party.
Walz said he was a good shot, one of the best, when he was in Congress. In fact, he was wearing a camouflage hat in the video when he got the call from Harris to be her vice president.
He talked about what it means to grow up in a rural community, how neighbors treat each other, how to appreciate compromise without compromising your values, he said.
And he talked about being a high school teacher and a football coach. One of his former football players was on CNN after the speech, talking about how Walz helped him and how he was a father figure, given that he was raised by a single mother.
The Democratic Party has had an elitist problem. It started before Trump, with Republicans calling them “limo liberals” and “latte-drinking liberals.” But it’s become more acute in the Trump era. Democrats haven’t been able to connect with white, working-class voters the way the party did decades ago. Walz provided a roadmap for how to speak to them, perhaps even saying the same words as others, but in a more authentic way.
4. It has proven to be an effective attack dog
All the rest is well and good. But one of the main tasks of a vice president running during a campaign is to serve as an effective attack dog.
And Walz has shown that he has this potential, and that he knows how to demonstrate it with a smile.
He said of Trump: “He froze in the face of COVID.”
He joked: “Make no mistake, violent crime was on the rise under Donald Trump. And that’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”
And he saved the best for his counterpart, Vance.
“Like all the normal people I grew up with in the American heartland, JD went to Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best-selling book destroying that community. Come on. That’s not what middle America is like. And I have to tell you. I can’t wait to have a conversation with him. If he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
