Walz is the Holy Trinity of Normal, Walz welcomes Harris when the vice president visited Minnesota in March
The 2024 presidential campaign has been anything but normal, between incumbent
Joe Biden dropping out late in the cycle and convicted felon Donald Trump
gaining the Republicans' nomination. And yet, as Joshua Green writes, that word
"normal" will see a resurgence with the Democrats' vice presidential pick, Tim
Walz. Plus: Made-in-China goods are something different now, and a breaking
pioneer offers some history of the new Olympic competition. If this email was
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In a presidential campaign that's become all about who's "weird," Kamala Harris' just-announced running mate on the Democratic ticket, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, comes across as entirely almost suspiciously normal.
That was my impression when we first met way back in 2005, when I wrote a profile of him during his first run for Congress. Even then, national politics was becoming so warped that "normal" seemed like an exotic quality, and Walz exuded it.
At the time, the Iraq War was ongoing (and going badly), and he stood out as Command Sergeant Major Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, recently returned from serving in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He'd retired to teach high school and coach football.
In 2005, Democrats were reeling, laid low by the previous three elections: George W. Bush's Supreme Court-aided presidential win in 2000; Republicans' history-defying 2002 midterms, when the party in power gained congressional seats; and Bush's 2004 reelection, in which he'd transformed the popular image of his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, from famous Vietnam War veteran to rich windsurfing snob who ate pizza with a knife and fork.
To counter the impression that they were effete, Democrats, with Rahm Emanuel leading the congressional campaign committee, went out and recruited dozens of young veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Walz was one of them.
Although the focus of my profile and much of the subsequent news coverage was on Walz's military background, what stood out about his candidate skills as we traveled around Minnesota's 1st Congressional District was that he possessed a sort of Holy Trinity of Normal. As a coach, teacher and veteran he could talk to anybody about anything (even reporters!) and relate to them not as a grasping, needy pol angling for their vote, but as something like the opposite: an amiable guy you might meet at a barbecue who just happened to be running for the US House.
Walz's normal guy superpowers won him that race over a six-term Republican representative, got him reelected five times and then, after he retired in 2019, put him in the Minnesota governor's mansion. It's almost certainly why Harris picked him to run for vice president by her side.
Walz welcomes Harris when the vice president visited Minnesota in March. Photographer: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
As such, her choice is an interesting strategic move that's somewhat at odds with how nominees have chosen their running mates in the past.
Anyone who's followed the veep-selection debates over the past couple of weeks knows that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was seen as the odds-on favorite until about 24 hours ago. The Democratic strategist-pollster class loved him because he's young, dynamic and popular in a critical swing state that could well decide the election. Choosing a running mate to help win an important state has a long lineage: Election forecaster Nate Silver calculated that Shapiro would've boosted Harris by 0.4 percentage point in Pennsylvania, which could easily be decisive in November.
But over the two decades since Walz emerged on the scene, national politics has become ever more polarized and calcified. People vote less on affinity for home-state pols and more on the national political climate and how they perceive the presidential tickets.
Here's where Walz stands out.
In her brief time as her party's nominee, Harris and Democrats have done their utmost to portray the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance as creepy and weird. The line of attack appears to be bearing fruit, as Trump is suddenly struggling in polls and Vance faces a backlash over his comments about "childless cat ladies" and, um, other bizarre memes.
Walz was the guy who first made "weird" go viral two weeks ago in an MSNBC hit. Since then, "weird" has become a catchall attack for Democrats on everything from Republican misogyny and GOP efforts to outlaw abortion to Trump's rambling praise for Hannibal Lecter at rallies and oddball digressions about electrocuting sharks. It's helped Harris open a narrow lead over Trump in most recent polls.
Harris appears to have decided that she'll get more of a political boost in November by pursuing this line of attack against Trump and Vance with Walz as her running mate than she would by drilling down on a particular swing state.
For all Shapiro's political skills, a Harris-Shapiro ticket would've offered voters two lawyers heavy on coastal appeal but perhaps not so much to swing voters in the Midwest. There were lurking fears among a couple of Democratic strategists I spoke with that Harris-Shapiro was more prone to Republican attacks about cultural elitism than another running mate would be.
Walz, as a coach-teacher-veteran Midwesterner and nonlawyer, and as someone who had no problem getting and staying elected back when Democrats like Kerry were routinely getting swift-boated on cultural grounds, doesn't run nearly that same risk.
To the contrary, he's already shown that he can bring a noteworthy benefit. If you're Harris, and your whole campaign message is that the other guys are weirdos, who better to help drive that message home than the guy who, perhaps more than anybody in Democratic politics, comes across as the epitome of normal?
In a presidential campaign that's become all about who's "weird," Kamala Harris' just-announced running mate on the Democratic ticket, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, comes across as entirely almost suspiciously normal.
That was my impression when we first met way back in 2005, when I wrote a profile of him during his first run for Congress. Even then, national politics was becoming so warped that "normal" seemed like an exotic quality, and Walz exuded it.
At the time, the Iraq War was ongoing (and going badly), and he stood out as Command Sergeant Major Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, recently returned from serving in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He'd retired to teach high school and coach football.
In 2005, Democrats were reeling, laid low by the previous three elections: George W. Bush's Supreme Court-aided presidential win in 2000; Republicans' history-defying 2002 midterms, when the party in power gained congressional seats; and Bush's 2004 reelection, in which he'd transformed the popular image of his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, from famous Vietnam War veteran to rich windsurfing snob who ate pizza with a knife and fork.
To counter the impression that they were effete, Democrats, with Rahm Emanuel leading the congressional campaign committee, went out and recruited dozens of young veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Walz was one of them.
Although the focus of my profile and much of the subsequent news coverage was on Walz's military background, what stood out about his candidate skills as we traveled around Minnesota's 1st Congressional District was that he possessed a sort of Holy Trinity of Normal. As a coach, teacher and veteran he could talk to anybody about anything (even reporters!) and relate to them not as a grasping, needy pol angling for their vote, but as something like the opposite: an amiable guy you might meet at a barbecue who just happened to be running for the US House.
Walz's normal guy superpowers won him that race over a six-term Republican representative, got him reelected five times and then, after he retired in 2019, put him in the Minnesota governor's mansion. It's almost certainly why Harris picked him to run for vice president by her side.
Walz welcomes Harris when the vice president visited Minnesota in March. Photographer: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
As such, her choice is an interesting strategic move that's somewhat at odds with how nominees have chosen their running mates in the past.
Anyone who's followed the veep-selection debates over the past couple of weeks knows that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was seen as the odds-on favorite until about 24 hours ago. The Democratic strategist-pollster class loved him because he's young, dynamic and popular in a critical swing state that could well decide the election. Choosing a running mate to help win an important state has a long lineage: Election forecaster Nate Silver calculated that Shapiro would've boosted Harris by 0.4 percentage point in Pennsylvania, which could easily be decisive in November.
But over the two decades since Walz emerged on the scene, national politics has become ever more polarized and calcified. People vote less on affinity for home-state pols and more on the national political climate and how they perceive the presidential tickets.
Here's where Walz stands out.
In her brief time as her party's nominee, Harris and Democrats have done their utmost to portray the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance as creepy and weird. The line of attack appears to be bearing fruit, as Trump is suddenly struggling in polls and Vance faces a backlash over his comments about "childless cat ladies" and, um, other bizarre memes.
Walz was the guy who first made "weird" go viral two weeks ago in an MSNBC hit. Since then, "weird" has become a catchall attack for Democrats on everything from Republican misogyny and GOP efforts to outlaw abortion to Trump's rambling praise for Hannibal Lecter at rallies and oddball digressions about electrocuting sharks. It's helped Harris open a narrow lead over Trump in most recent polls.
Harris appears to have decided that she'll get more of a political boost in November by pursuing this line of attack against Trump and Vance with Walz as her running mate than she would by drilling down on a particular swing state.
For all Shapiro's political skills, a Harris-Shapiro ticket would've offered voters two lawyers heavy on coastal appeal but perhaps not so much to swing voters in the Midwest. There were lurking fears among a couple of Democratic strategists I spoke with that Harris-Shapiro was more prone to Republican attacks about cultural elitism than another running mate would be.
Walz, as a coach-teacher-veteran Midwesterner and nonlawyer, and as someone who had no problem getting and staying elected back when Democrats like Kerry were routinely getting swift-boated on cultural grounds, doesn't run nearly that same risk.
To the contrary, he's already shown that he can bring a noteworthy benefit. If you're Harris, and your whole campaign message is that the other guys are weirdos, who better to help drive that message home than the guy who, perhaps more than anybody in Democratic politics, comes across as the epitome of normal?
It appears you've taken this story from Bloomberg and reposted it, Bloomberg has gone back and corrected false claims made here. Tim Walz never served in combat and was not in Iraq, they've now chaged it to served in Italy. 😂
ReplyDeleteOk. Thankyou
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