Tim Walz is the real-life definition of an MSNBC dad

Well, we knew it would only take so long for even a media-ensconced, Hollywood-produced, consultant stage-managed Kamala Harris to make the kind of mistake that reveals how out of touch she’s been with the nation’s politics for her entire career. You can dodge every question and interview and rely on the spin to do you all the favors, but you still have to make choices that reveal who you are. And the choice of Tim Walz is MSNBC’s idea of what a Midwestern centrist looks like, as if being a Carhartt-clad coach makes up for all the policy prescriptions that play on the smug sympathies of sanctimonious simpletons in the Sauvignon Blanc-socialist set. 

The choice is bizarre for a number of obvious reasons, though as a miscalculation it makes sense as an insight into Harris’s understanding of America in this moment. For an election where the economy, immigration and crime are paramount voter concerns, Harris has just added a blue-state governor who is weak on all three. Minnesota has seen a shrinking workforce with residents fleeing the state at record levels during Walz’s tenure, his record on border security is marked by little more than unserious flippancy — and as for crime, well… Walz’s record during the summer of George Floyd will be central to Republican attacks. Even Walz himself admitted in a press conference the response to the rioters was an “abject failure”; his slow action in that moment — combined with Harris’s promotion of a bailout fund for those same rioters — hands the Trump-Vance campaign a viscerally powerful attack line at just the moment they needed it.

In a vibes-based election, apparently Democrats think picking a white bespectacled “I would have voted for Obama for a third term” guy who happens to wear a field jacket is all it takes to transform a politician who makes fellow Minnesotans Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale look conservative into a “moderate.” Moderation is a label rendered particularly ridiculous when assigned to one of the most radical culture-war governors in America. Ask yourself, really: is this what a moderate sounds like on abortion? 

Walz is big on getting rid of any limits for any leftist priorities. He signed an extreme bill with no age limit on transgender treatment for minors — consistent with the Biden administration’s advice, but utterly at odds with the scientific treatment trends out of Europe. He signed abortion policies into law that have no gestational limits; even Planned Parenthood itself officially agrees this is the most pro-abortion ticket ever. And that’s before you get to all the other issues — education, energy, guns and more. It’s impossible to find an issue where Walz can conceivably be described as in the political middle of the nation — which is probably why even though he’s from the same state as Amy Klobuchar, his winning cohort was completely different.

If you buy the idea that Walz’s appearance will lend itself to a veneer of centrism, disguising his DSA-friendly leftism as folksy and familiar instead of radical, there are plenty of media partisans willing to sell that line to you. But for the Harris campaign, this seems like a selection with massive potential to backfire. Choosing Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly might not have inspired the progressive activists, but they would absolutely come around in an election waged against Trump and Vance. Picking the VP choice backed to the hilt by Squad members like Ilhan Omar the same day that their compatriot Cori Bush goes down to primary defeat against a pro-Israel candidate has a certain “mark the date” element to it for future lookback articles. If you want to win, maybe pick a politician that people who don’t have “In This House” signs in their yard find appealing — just an idea.

It’s telling that a major factor for Harris elevating Walz was reportedly his performance on Pod Save America — where he talked about J.D. Vance being “weird” and referred to himself on LGBT issues by saying “you gotta have an ally who looks like this” — and a “white men for Kamala” Zoom where he called Trump a “bastard.” It continued last night in his choice to repeat an online lefty joke about Vance having sex with a couch in his announcement speech. So instead of picking a popular swing-state politician who would appeal to normie Independent voters, Harris is doubling down on progressive left energy in a way that seems, in a repeat of the nature of her presidential campaign failed in 2020, way too online. And that’s who Tim Walz seems to be: the real-life political version of Shane Gillis’s typical MSNBC dad.