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Tim Walz: The Rise of a New Political Contender

• Darrell McClain • Season 1 • Episode 421

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Discover the untold story of Tim Walz, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate who has captured national attention with his authentic and compelling narrative. From transforming a struggling high school football team into state champions to his military service and teaching career, Walz’s journey is a testament to resilience and leadership. Join us as we explore the electrifying atmosphere of the Philadelphia rally, where Walz stood beside Kamala Harris, and dive into the contrasting speeches from both political camps. Learn how Walz’s humble oratory and bipartisan appeal might just be the key to uniting a divided nation.

In this episode, we dissect Walz's campaign strategy and the broader themes of optimism versus chaos in American politics. Drawing parallels to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, we analyze how Walz's background and policies resonate with voters across the country. We’ll also take you behind the scenes of his recent rise to prominence, including his impactful appearance on Morning Joe. As the campaign heats up, we discuss evolving Democratic strategies and how Walz’s candidacy is framed against a backdrop of divisive politics.

Lastly, get a front-row seat to the political implications of Kamala Harris’s choice in Walz as her running mate. From Ben Shapiro's criticisms to Mark Cuban’s endorsements, we present a wide range of perspectives and strategic analyses. Hear personal anecdotes from Walz's former students that paint a picture of a genuine and caring individual. We also scrutinize his stance on educational policies and the intra-party dynamics sparked by Josh Shapiro’s role. Insights from political analysts like Nate Silver, Steve Kornacki, and Van Jones provide a comprehensive look at what this means for the upcoming election.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one plan and nobody is leaving, and let us reason together. I'm your host. Darrell McLean, today is 8 as her running mate in the campaign to try to defeat Donald Trump, and the pundits are saying this is going to be fun. That was the message from Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate as they took to the stage together for the first time in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. First time in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. The glittering rally was intended to introduce a heretofore obscure Midwestern governor and hype up Americans for the spirit into November. So Kamala Harris goes on to say in the speech we've got 91 days. My God, that's easy. That was coming from Waltz. During a zesty debut which he marveled at, the crowd joyfully collapsed his hands and went for the juggler, at least where the Trump, his running mate, were concerned. We'll sleep when we are dead, he said. The night was aimed at electrifying voters and banishing, for once and all the doldrums that gripped the Democratic Party during the doomed reelection effort of President Biden, who was not mentioned by either candidate, but that also highlighted some of the challenges Harris and Laws will face in the race that Trump is still favored to win.

Speaker 1:

Here are a few takeaways from the rankest night in Philly. So Walt showed why Harris picked him. It was only this morning that the vice president took call Walt 60 and asked him to join the ticket. As he took to the stage it seemed as if he could not quite believe he was there, but after a two shared the spotlight for 50 minutes, their chemistry seemed obvious. Thank you, walt said directly addressing Harris in the opening moments of his speech, for bringing back to joy. Walsh, who bowed towards Harris before beginning his speech, came off as delighted to speak on her behalf, with no reservations about playing second fiddle. His oratory never soared, but Harris reacted with obvious delight as he rattled off plain-spoken zingers In Minnesota we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn't make them choices ourselves. Waltz says, as Harris cheered him there's a golden rule Mind your own, damn business.

Speaker 1:

Waltz went directly after the former President Trump, and yes, he went there. Waltz rocketed from being a relatively political unknown to a candidate for vice president on a strength of a single word weird he used in his speech on tuesday night. To go even further, waltz announced trump for his handling of covid, the economy and crime, but he saved his harshest words for trump's running mate, senator jd vance of oh, whose background he sarcastically compared with his own. Like all regular people, I grew up in the heartland. Jd studied at Yale, had a career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. While said, he added that he couldn't wait to debate Vance if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. The last line was cheeky, was a cheeky reference to a false online rumor that could open Waltz up to criticism at the moment when the Harris campaign is working hard to fight disinformation. Still, waltz seemed proud of the joke. See what I did there as Harris appeared struggling to keep a straight face. But it's not clear that the imagery of the couch will make another appearance on the campaign trail. So of course, that goes back to the analysis that Caliklinski let us know on a previous show where, for some reason, the online there's an online meme that JD Vance had sex with a couch, and so it's just been something very online. I don't know if that's about his personality or what, but that's what he said. If he can get off the couch, so anyway, the couch waltz to you.

Speaker 1:

The Harris campaign went in Tuesday night. One big challenge turning a little-known Democrat into a star. They're going to do it by telling the story of a coach, and so the coach is Harris, describing a man who had a small-town upbringing in Nebraska before becoming a high school teacher and a football coach, who turned a winless team into state championships. Then his students encouraged him to run for office. His remarkable tale. That could be a Friday night's light plot, and the crowd loved it. Expect to hear Harris' campaign talk about Coach Waltz a lot more between now and November. The time spent on Waltz' biography during the rally, though, was a reminder of how few Americans know it, and the campaign doesn't have a lot of time to explain it. They sought to highlight Waltz' bipartisan appeal.

Speaker 1:

Harris' California liberal whose political asset never depended on conservative voters. On Tuesday, sheehan Walls made a point telling voters that he that his hand, walls, spoke off running in congressional districts that had Democrats, that didn't have a Democrats is 1962. I'm sorry, 1892. Harris described him as a hunter, a gun owner and the best marksman in Congress, and she sought to use him as evidence for the campaign that says she is intended to reach americans in the red blue states alike. All the republicans are already working overtime to to depict him as too liberal for the country.

Speaker 1:

Uh, governor, josh shapiro, pennsylvania was passed over for vice president, but one might be forgiving for thinking he was delivering his own campaign speech. All the same, shapiro took to the stage with the main character energy that showed both how he galvanized Pennsylvania Democrats and how he might have struggled to be number two. He praised Wallace as a great man and promised to deliver Pennsylvania for the ticket. As a crowd yelled preach, he spoke of his optimism about the nation's future and seemed to be signaling that he wouldn't be leaving the national stage anytime soon. Now let me address something that I didn't plan to but I uh talk about. So Josh Shapiro seemed like a very obvious pick and for all intents and purposes, he would have been a a a decent pick.

Speaker 1:

The reason why that it's my belief that they moved away from him was because there was a case that came up where it was labeled as a suicide. There were questions raised about the case and people believe that it was a homicide, and the one of the people that was the primary suspect who had been said to have done homicide that was labeled suicide was somebody who had given money to Shapiro's campaign and that came up around the last few days and I think that started to give the Harris campaign pause. Then you had a bringing up of the fight that is a very continuous issue on the left between Israel and Palestine, between Israel and Palestine, and Shapiro had called the protesters. College protesters said that there was no difference between the host protesters and the Ku Klux Klan. And so when you're in a campaign where you're trying to get the youth excited, don't think that you are going to get them excited especially the college people who may vote excited by putting someone on the ticket who's calling them the Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 1:

And then, last but certainly not least, the other reigning power in Pennsylvania is Fetterman, and Fetterman started to come out and really throw a lot of cold water on Governor Shapiro, saying he was pretty much just career-driven, ambitious, bringing up things like when they worked on a panel together for police reform and stuff like that, how he never made the correct, brave decisions, etc. They did for the whole police and put peace about it in Politico, and I think that, and being said and that being done, is what made her go with Tim Walz. Instead, I'm going to go to some of the media here talking about what they think about the pick, and so we can further define who he is Tim Walz, that is.

Speaker 2:

So this is the fun part of the show where you get to listen to some audio At Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3:

I know you know this walls that is so. This is the fun part of the show where you get to listen to some audio At Pennsylvania. I know you know this, but my God, what a treasure you have in Josh Piro. Holy hell, can this guy bring the fire? He can bring the fire. This is a visionary leader. Also, I have to tell you, everybody in America knows when you need a bridge fixed, call that guy, and I think sometimes we forget and you see people a little one-dimensional. But seeing a guy who cares so deeply about his family, a man with compassion, vision and I have to tell you this, I know this from experience there is no one you would rather go to a spring skiing concert in Jersey with than him.

Speaker 4:

To those who know him best, to those who know him best, tim is more than a governor. To his wife, gwen, he is a husband To his kids, hope and Gus. He is a dad To his fellow veterans. He is Sergeant Major Walz To the people of southern Minnesota. For 12 years he was congressman. To his former high school students he was Mr Walls, and to his former high school football players he was Coach, coach, coach.

Speaker 3:

And in 91 days the nation will know Coach Waltz by another name. Vice President of the United States. Donald Trump sees the world a little differently than us. First of all, he doesn't know the first thing about service. He doesn't have time for it because he's too busy serving himself. Again and again and again, Trump weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand. He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division, and that's to say nothing of his record as president. He froze in the face of the COVID crisis. He drove our economy into the ground and, make no mistake, violent crime was up under donald trump.

Speaker 4:

that's not even counting the crimes he committed and so now we got some work to do. We need to move to the general election and win that. And to all the friends, listen, we also need to level set. We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum, and I know exactly what we are up against. When we look at folks, we see in our fellow americans neighbors, not enemies, not enemies, not enemies, not enemies. And so my promise to you is this Our campaign will reach out to everyone, from red states to blue states, from the heartland to the coast, in rural, urban, suburban and tribal communities. We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans and, when elected, we will govern on behalf of all Americans.

Speaker 1:

So according to the campaign after the rally and as I woke up this morning, the campaign had already brought in $20 million since the rally last night in Pennsylvania. I'm going to head over to Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough to get a little see what the people at Morning Joe thought about this.

Speaker 2:

I think it was a really great, strong start. There was a real contrast. From the get-go. You could really see joy and exuberance versus grievance and retribution, which would be the Trump campaign Love versus hate. If I can. A lot of people on Twitter, ted Lasso was trending, as it's the Ted Lasso campaign, and it's interesting because I think we both have expressed that. Josh Shapiro is supremely talented and was an incredible choice as well, and at the same time, I can see the strategy, because he will stay in Pennsylvania for the next three months and he will campaign his heart out across that state. And Tim Walz, I think, proved himself to be pretty talented as well on the main stage and had an authentic touch that really could break through. What did you think? A very formidable politician.

Speaker 3:

There are a lot of people who just shrink on the big stage. He did not. He did not. He remained a big presence there. They both did. I've got to say Kamala Harris, it's just in these events, one event after another after another, that she has exceeded just about everybody's expectations, at least in American politics and in the media. She did it again last night. The way she carries herself, the confidence that she shows, there's just a lot of people that did not. If you look what they were saying about Kamala Harris the day before Joe Biden dropped out, most Democrats were fretting that she couldn't carry it. She couldn't handle it on the big stage. I'll tell you why. She has transformed herself in a way that even Republicans that would be voting for Donald Trump have admitted. She has, and he did very well.

Speaker 3:

It was again a very folksy address, mike Barnicle. Real digs in there. Yeah, real folksy address. It has a great biography, one that I've long wondered why Democrats didn't get out front more often. A guy that was born on a farm in Nebraska, a guy that was raised in a town of 400, talking about understanding community served in the military, just like his dad got his college degree with a GI Bill. All this very, very positive, and you actually have a contrast of two campaigns here.

Speaker 3:

It does remind me 1980, reagan. In large part, people looked past Reagan's ideology when he was seen as being more conservative than where America was at that time. Ronald Reagan was a dramatic break from the FDR coalition that had ruled America since 1933. But it was optimism, sunniness, hope, ronald Reagan always talking about how he truly believed America's greatest days were ahead of them, and there was on the other side Jimmy Carter and Malay, so ideology didn't count for that much that year. I think it's the same thing here. Tim Walz the governor not the House member, but the governor has some issues that I think Republicans are going to try to exploit and we'll get to those in a little bit.

Speaker 3:

But first I was struck, mike, that you could turn down the volume and watch that rally last night and you could turn down the volume on any Trump rally, and it would just be obvious you have on one side hope, optimism and joy. You do, you do, it's evident, just the visuals. Evident Hope, optimism, joy. And on the other side, with the volume turned down, you see anger, chaos and of of retribution and campaigns like this. It's always surprised people like me that sometimes ideology just doesn't matter.

Speaker 3:

Americans in 2008 did not care that Barack Obama was the second or the third most liberal senator in the United States Senate. They cared about hope and change and they carried him across the finish line in dramatic fashion. You know, joe, that's a very interesting observation that you just pointed out the Reagan campaign of 1980. Watching the coach and I'm going to call him the coach from now until Election Day but watching the coach yesterday and watching the vice president yesterday, it was mesmerizing in the sense that it's been a while since I've seen a rally like that, either on TV or in person, and watching it, you could just sense the power in the hall, and it was the power of joy, the power of laughter, the power of hope for the future, but especially the power of those who were in the hall and those who are thinking or considering voting for this ticket the vice president and the coach for those considering voting for the ticket, giving them the power to think that they're participating in something that will put a smile on your face.

Speaker 1:

So look guys, if you want to hear the rest of Morning Joe, that show's like four hours long. Sometimes, I admit, it does give me a massive headache because their takes are a lot of the times ridiculous.

Speaker 1:

But I think I feel that way about most of the media. But either way, a lot of people in Washington DC, a lot of the people in power, watch Morning Joe, so that's why I wanted to see what they were at least saying about the issue. I want us to spend the rest of the episode getting to know more about who Tim Walz is, and that's how we're going to get this done. So if you've kind of heard all you needed to hear, you can check out at this point, I suppose, on the show that I do tomorrow I'm going to go through some of the weekly news Cory Bush, justice Thomas, a lot of other stuff, pete Buttigieg everywhere. Where is he going to be in the administration? And, um, just some things I want to highlight.

Speaker 1:

But, uh, as far as this one goes, we're going to keep defining, uh, introducing, uh, who Tim Walz. We're going to get a lot of reactions from the left, from the right, from the center, um, about this At a high level. Tim Walz is a veteran, he's a former teacher. He's a state championship winning football coach. He's a faculty. He was a faculty advisor to the first Gay Straight Alliance at his school. He's a gun owner who's had different positions on gun rights over the years and he's the highest ranking retired enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress.

Speaker 3:

There's a lot here to go through, but I think a good starting point is starting where Waltz kind of entered the scene in terms of the national conversation recently and a lot of people attributed it to an appearance he made on the Morning Joe show on MSNBC. Let's go to this clip. I think what Kamala Harris knows is bringing people together around the shared values strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class health care that's affordable and accessible. Public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class health care that's affordable and accessible. Those are the things. You look what they're talking about. They went right to division. They did not give us a plan on health care.

Speaker 3:

Donald Trump talked about infrastructure. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris built bridges, built roads. So I think this is going back to the bread and butter getting away from this division. We're running for gay man women haters club or something. That's what they want. That's not what people are interested in, and so a lot of people are saying that Waltz is the person who kind of started this frame of weird where you know we've talked about on this podcast, where Democrats have increasingly been tagging JE Vance, trump and the sort of MAGA world as weird, and a lot of people say that Waltz was.

Speaker 5:

It's important to note that there is some reporting that Kamala Harris actually over the past few years in private with her advisors, had actually been pushing that very frame, and so the question about whether it was Wallace who came up with this frame, harris or probably others out there who have been probably making this argument. But I mention this because this, at least for him, was an entry point to the conversation nationally. But this is a guy who's been in public service for a long time. He was born in 1964 in West Point, nebraska, to Darlene Rose and James F. Waltz, who's a public school, was a public school administrator, so public schooling and education was in the family. He grew up in a town called Valentine, nebraska, which is a rural community in the northwestern part of Nebraska, and Waltz likes to say that he attended school where half of his classmates were his cousins. His father died of cancer the year after Waltz graduated from high school and after high school Waltz worked in agriculture and manufacturing and served in the National Guard. In 1989, he earned a BS in social science education from Chajun State College or Chajun Somebody can correct me on this. After graduating from college he accepted a teaching position at World Teach in China and he met his wife, gwen and married her in 1994. They moved two years later to Mankato, minnesota, which is his wife's home state, and it was there in Minnesota that he started working as a geography teacher and a coach at the mankato west high school. He and his wife had two children, have two children, and they had those children through in vitro fertilization. Waltz coached the football team at his high school to their first state championship in 1999. He also in 99 was the faculty advisor of the first gay straight alliance at mankato west high school. Waltz and his wife also ran an organization called education travel adventures which organized summer educational trips for high school students to China. Apparently he speaks some Mandarin. In 1995, he, important to note, was arrested for driving under the influence and, by all accounts, has been a bit of a teetotaler ever since.

Speaker 5:

He also is a veteran. With his father's encouragement he enlisted in the Army National Guard when he turned 17. His father served in the Korean War and paid for his degree with the GI Bill Walt served in the National Guard for 24 years, enlisting in 1981. During his military career he had postings in Arkansas, texas, the Arctic Circle, new Elm, minnesota and elsewhere. He's trained in heavy artillery. He worked in various responses to crises, including to floods, tornadoes. He was deployed overseas for a few months never saw combat. In 1989, he earned the title of Nebraska Citizen Soldier of the Year. He was deployed post-9-11 for a year and a half to Europe in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and he's earned the Army Accommodation Medal and two Army Achievement Medals. He attained the rank of Command Sergeant Major during the end of his service, retired as a Master Sergeant in 2005.

Speaker 5:

He entered politics in 2004 during the Bush-Carrie campaign. According to Walsh, he got his start in politics when he took a group of students to a Bush rally. Some of the students were wearing Carrie T-shirts and were refused entry into that rally and Waltz says that that motivated him to run. He attended a training camp called Camp Wellstone where he learned how to run for office and he wound up eventually running for office in 2006. He ran for Congress as a moderate in the Minnesota 1st District, which is a heavily rural area covered south of Minnesota, where only one other Democrat had won the seat in the preceding century. He ran against a Republican, and a veteran political operative named Ken Martin at the time says he remembered hearing of Waltz's candidacy and saying there's no way in hell he's going to. Winz was reelected in 2008 with 62% of the vote, and he kept winning that seat over and over and over again.

Speaker 5:

While in Congress, he served on the Ag and Veterans Affairs Committees. He had a fairly moderate voting record for a Democrat, and I'll give you some numbers behind this or some data behind it, but he also had some pretty standard liberal positions as well. He had 100% reading from Planned Parenthood and ACLU. There are some exceptions to sort of his liberal voting record, which is why I think he at the time was given this moderate label. While in Congress, he was a strong supporter of gun rights and was endorsed by the NRA Political Victory Fund Multiple times. He earned their endorsement and received an A grade from the organization initially, but then, following the Parkland High School shooting in 2008, he denounced the NRA and basically flipped his position on the issue and started to support governor in 2023, signed into law a public safety bill that established universal background checks and red flag laws in Minnesota. He had some other idiosyncratic positions. He voted against TARP, which is the Troubled Asset Relief Program, basically a bailout to financial institutions during the financial crisis in 2008. He released a statement at the time of the bill's passage saying, quote the bill we voted on today passes the buck when it comes to recouping the losses taxpayers may suffer. I also voted against the auto bailout at the time for the same reasons, but he did vote for the 2009 Recovery Act.

Speaker 5:

In 2017, waltz co-sponsored a bill that would have repealed the 2001 and 2002 authorization of use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan and wanted to replace them with a new authorization of use of force that would only target al-Qaeda, isil and the Taliban. He was ranked seventh as the seventh most bipartisan member of Congress during the 114th Congress in the bipartisan index created by the Luther Center and the Court School of Public Policy, which is kind of a measure of how bipartisan members are. We'll link in the show notes to this other tracker called GovTrackus and you can actually see in the chart where Waltz has prepared to his colleagues. No-transcript.

Speaker 5:

Dayton, who was the incumbent Democratic governor, chose not to run for a third term, and in November of 2018, waltz was elected governor and during the campaign there was a little bit of a controversy. There were some noncommissioned officers of the Minnesota National Guard who accused Waltz of fabricating facts about his service and lying about his military rank. Those allegations were solidly debunked during that race, basically shortly after Waltz's governor, within a few years. He was truly tested during the George Floyd murder and aftermath. Obviously this happened in Waltz's home state.

Speaker 5:

Waltz's initial response to the protests was criticized by political opponents and other groups and continues to be criticized. This is going to be a common life attack from the right. When Minneapolis was hit by riots after Floyd, waltz waited a full day to call on the National Guard. After Jacob Frey, the city's mayor, asked for it. While Waltz hesitated, a police station was set on fire by a bomb. Waltz argued, and still argues, that the National Guard could not be deployed that quickly. But Republicans pinned that sort of disorder period on him. He later responded by ordering the Minnesota legislature to reconvene for special sessions on police reform and accountability. The initial reforms failed to pass in that June session but a special session was held in July and they passed a series of reforms which included a limited ban on the use of chokeholds and it banned the old warrior training program, which was regarded by some as encouraging aggressive police conduct. It required training police peace officers to deal with people with autism or other mental health issues. It also created a special independent unit at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for investigations of fatal police encounters, and so it was just a series of legislation meant to address certain reforms of the police.

Speaker 5:

You're going to hear a lot about that kind of stuff, but the sort of most meaningful year in terms of policy for Waltz was the 2023 session in the Minnesota legislature, where there was this sort of faction of the Democratic Party called the Democratic Farm Labor Party, which Waltz has been involved in, which passed several major reforms during that session. They basically had a majority in the legislature during that 2023 session, and it was then that they passed laws, including paid leave. They banned non-compete agreements, they legalized cannabis, they increased spending on infrastructure and environmental issues, they reformed the tax code, they codified abortion rights, they passed universal free school meals, which is something we covered on this podcast and that we'll link to in the show notes. They instituted universal background checks, and the Star Tribune called the session one of the most consequential ever in Minnesota, and Waltz called it the most productive session in Minnesota history and it was that session that actually gave Waltz this sort of reputation he has as a progressive, because up until then he was known as a fairly moderate guy. And it wasn't a totally moderate session, it was actually he vetoed a piece of legislation intended to increase pay for rideshare drivers at the time and this was his first veto of his gubernatorial administration and we'll link in the show notes to an article about this. But he at the time said quote rideshare drivers deserve fair wages and safe working conditions. I'm committed to finding solutions that balance the interests of all parties, including drivers and riders. And he says this is not the bill to achieve these goals and you can read about it. But essentially this would have dramatically driven up the made a pragmatic choice there and felt like even though he had been building himself up as a friend of labor, I think he felt that this bill was impractical.

Speaker 5:

But what I think makes Waltz a really interesting pick and really what sets him apart from Shapiro, who is obviously the other person on the short list for Harris for VP pick, is education, where I spent all day yesterday preparing a video and episode on Shapiro and talking through his strengths and weaknesses and one of the areas that made him a bit of an idiosyncratic Democrat, shapiro, was that he had supported educational savings accounts and vouchers in Pennsylvania educational vouchers which would put him more to the center or even to the right of most members of the Democratic Party and probably would have made it controversial amongst key Democratic constituencies like teachers' unions. Waltz is the exact opposite kind of pick. He is solidly blue on these issues. He obviously was a former educator. He opposes vouchers. He opposes vouchers. He opposes merit pay. He increased school spending and signed into law a $1,700 per child annual tax credit game to reduce child poverty. He passed a free universal school lunch bill, which again we'll put in the show notes. He created a paid family leave policy that's due to take effect in 2026. No-transcript reproductive rights, expanding collective bargaining, access to affordable child care and paid family and medical leave. Kamala Harris made a great choice. He does have some things to answer for on his education record a massive fraud perpetrated by the state department of education in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, where there was money that was supposed to be spent on feeding children that was stolen. The state's independent legislative auditor criticized Waltz's administration for quote denial or dismissiveness or excuses in the face of allegations that they mishandled money for that program.

Speaker 5:

Waltz saw re-election in 2022, and he faced a Republican nominee named Scott Jensen and defeated Jensen 52.3 to 44.6 percent of the vote. I'll come back to some of those results. And so that's Waltz. That's a little bit about his background. I want to now go through a bunch of different takes about Waltz. Now, these aren't necessarily takes I agree or disagree with. I want to give you the broad spectrum of how people feel about him. Let's start with Nate Silver, who recently wrote quote this was a choice designed to maintain the social fabric of the Democratic Party and avoid new cycles about a disappointed left and Democrats' internal swabbling over the war in Gaza, or at least that's what I think it was. We'll need to learn more about Harris's deliberation process. I'm not inclined to be too deferential to any political candidate, but it's plausible that there were vetting issues with the runaround Governor, josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Harris certainly has more information about the internal feeling within the Democratic caucus than I do, or she may just have thought the chemistry of a Harris-Shapiro ticket wouldn't work, so that's Nate Silver.

Speaker 6:

Steve Kornacki on MSNBC poured some cold water on the idea that Waltz is somebody who can appeal to rural voters. Let's go to a clip from Kornacki going through Waltz's performance in 2022. Now here's the key, because this county Democrats used to be much more competitive. Look at this In 2012, barack Obama won 43% of the vote in this county. It was only a little bit more than 10 points that he wants to rob me by here. The floor fell out for Democrats here when Trump came along in that Clinton race in 2016, and they haven't recovered in a sense. And that wall's performance here it's a little less than Biden's number, it's more than Clinton's and it's a far cry from what Obama was doing here. And again, I'm showing you one. This is a stand-in for dozens of counties in Minnesota where you saw the same thing. No-transcript owes his victory that big margin. He got eight points there statewide.

Speaker 5:

He owes it to the Twin Cities area here, the area Hillary performance in Minnesota, whereas people who've been advocating for Shapiro were pointing to numbers that show that Shapiro was performing dramatically better than Democrats have traditionally performed in Pennsylvania. For a more pointed reaction to the Waltz pick, let's go to Van Jones, who turned some heads with this.

Speaker 6:

take, hey, listen, the conservatives, the right-wing, the Republicans. They were chewing their fingernails down to the knuckle because they were afraid of a Josh Shapiro. They're afraid of a Mark Kelly. They're not as afraid of this new governor. They think they're going to find it. So here's the challenge you've got in this party and people don't want to talk about it. We got to talk about it. On the one hand, you have a lot of young people concerned about Gaza. You have a lot of they could feel comfortable with. This helps them in that regard. But you also have anti-Semitism that's gotten marbled into this party.

Speaker 5:

You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there and there's some just quiet now and there has caving into some of these darker parts in the party. So that's going to have to get worked out, it's going to have to get talked through. And so that's Jones. He's saying that hey, harris caved to some of the far-left forces of the party or the pro-Palestinian forces within the party or even anti-Semitic forces within the party. I'm not sure that's necessarily what happened here. I think so much of how you feel about doubt you're willing to give Harris. I'll come back to some of those arguments in a little bit. It is worth noting that Waltz earned some pretty glowing reviews from across the Democratic spectrum. So Ilhan Omar tweeted out praise of the Waltz pick, as did Joe Mitch. It is rare to see that kind of unity within the Democratic Party. Aoc tweeted something like you know, democrats are in array, you know, as a sort of knock on the Democrats in disarray meme, a gentleman named Anthony Michael Kreese tweeted I think the real value added of Waltz as Harris' pick is that he's the kind of guy who's able to go on sports radio and talk about college football and progressive policies in the same breath. It's a little different than the standard pattern of having a lawyer as a running mate. Matt Iglesias tweeted I think Tim Waltz was an excessively complacent, excessively risk-averse selection with very limited upside. Representing a missed All that said, do no harm is better than the average recent VP choice. My biggest take on the whole thing is that a flawed DEI for straight men framework led to an excessively narrow Shapiro or Waltz binary and that Democrats need to get less identitarian and especially less pessimistic about women in general. My friend Liam Kerr tweeted Klobuchar 60% and Waltz 53% share the ballot in 2018, meaning that Waltz underperformed Klobuchar. So a bit of a skeptical take from Liam.

Speaker 5:

Former Republican strategist Mike Murphy and host of Hats on Tap tweeted I think the Walz pick will force StumbleBurn Trump campaign into ideology, which could be a decent and sustainable message path for them. Very important that Harris now send loudest center vibe dog whistle vibes. Now the lefty stuff is a real narrative danger for her. So basically him saying I'm a little worried that now they're going to pep you as a lefty extreme progressive. Murphy was of the sort of tim miller variety, arguing that harris was smart to tack to the center and he seems like he's a little worried that that brand could be a danger here. Brian metzger tweeted.

Speaker 5:

Jd vance hit tim waltz as a san francisco style liberal during his remarks in philadelphia a while ago. A key irony here vance spent about four years living in san francisco, between 2013 and 2017, as a venture capitalist. Waltz visited san francisco for the first time just last month. Uh no. Blum tweeted weird dynamic here with people happy about the Waltz pick or the Hamas caucus and pretty much every Republican I know. Ginny Hogan tweeted sure Waltz and fans could debate, or they could be privately and fans could open up about how he's not sure why he went down such a dark path. Then Waltz could hug him, assure him everyone makes mistakes. Help him drop out. I loved a tweet that I saw earlier about how Waltz he did bus duty and how that could say a lot about Waltz. As somebody who did bus duty myself, I found that funny and I agree bus duty is revealing. Teddy S tweeted victory for lefty donors who've been circulating a memo for Waltz, so I first bit on this sort of donor beat for Democrats. We'll link in the show notes the memo from progressive donors that Teddy is referencing.

Speaker 5:

Jackie Henrick on Twitter tweeted two sources confirm on background the deciding factor in the VP's choice was what Senator Fetterman said publicly that there were concerns that Shapiro's own personal ambitions would cause him to upstage or override Harris. The video Shapiro produced with Philly Mayor Cheryl Parker's team solidified this sentiment on Friday. Now I'm not sure there's a video that they're referencing from the Philly Mayor saying that Shapiro was the pick. I'm not sure what Jackie knows about Shapiro's involvement in that, but as somebody who spent yesterday doing a deep dive in Shapiro, there's this element of Shapiro that reminds me of this really bad movie called Draft Day. It's a movie with Kevin Costner and in that movie there's like the obvious pick which is Bo Callaghan, the sort of stud quarterback, and then there's this other guy who's like a defensive end or something named Vontae Mack, and the whole movie is kind of centered around Costner struggling with what should be the obvious pick, which is Bo Callaghan. But crappy movies, don't worry about it. Costner wants to pick Vontae Mack, in part because there was in vetting Bo Callaghan.

Speaker 5:

There were these people around Bo Callaghan who just didn't seem to believe in the character of the man. And I don't want to go that far with Shapiro, but I'll say, as somebody who spent yesterday diving into Shapiro. There were these people along the way with Shapiro who felt like he had turned his back on them and there were some of that stuff really made it into the head of the Harris people like Costner in the movie who felt like when Bo Callahan, the fictional character, had a birthday party and none of his teammates showed up, that was like a deciding factor in the movie. I wonder if there was those kind of vibes when people like Senator Fetterman was kind of ragging on his Pennsylvania colleague behind the scenes, which was reported political no-transcript and regional messaging that Dems have needed for decades. As someone for whom place not strips every other identity, I've never felt seen or represented in the White House in my lifetime and that could change with VP Waltz.

Speaker 5:

Ben Shapiro tweeted picking Waltz is a massive gift to the Republicans. He from a non-swing state with a long history of insane statements, who presided over the burning down of his state in 2020. Kamala picked him because he's not a Jew and she's too online. I'll pause here to say this tweet says everything about my sort of issues with Ben Shapiro and his commentary over the years is that there's like a sane, measured, honest version of what Shapiro said where he can make some of those arguments without exaggerating and, as I just mentioned, saying that he is a radical leftist is an unnecessary exaggeration, based on the record that I just described to you. And also to say he presided over the burning down of his state is also an exaggeration. There's a version of that argument where you could say he was somebody who was a moderate and who tapped left due to the pressures of his politics, or he was somebody who could have acted faster during the riots post Floyd. But that's the kind of language I think would be honest. All too often, shapiro seems to opt for the exaggeration and seems to favor a certain kind of online commentary.

Speaker 5:

Mark Cuban tweeted on the Tim Walz choice. I think people who don't like it are missing the lesson of the switch to Harris. She went from worst to first as people got to know her. It's not a reach to think that the same thing will happen with Walz. People are tied with the ideologues and hate for both parties. They want to people they can relate to. Waltz can sit at the kitchen table and make you feel like you know him forever. That's an incredible skill these days. Jonathan Chait tweeted Waltz probably won't hurt Harris much, if at all. But it's a missed opportunity to claim the middle and she needs to do that to try to coin flip election into a safe one.

Speaker 5:

There were also quite a few takes from his former students on the internet. One of his students tweeted just a big hell. Yes to all of this. I was a slacker who didn't fit in or like the place I grew up very much. My locker was outside of his room senior year. He checked in on me. He recommended books, he encouraged me. He treated my thoughts as valuable. Mr Waltz was the best.

Speaker 5:

I also interned on his first campaign and watched a career in politics, but the first thing I'm still struck by is how much joy he runs with. He loves people. He loves helping. He was never supposed to be in this position. He's going to make this thing fun. I can't wait. Let me run down the pluses and deltas and give you my best assessment on where we are here. On the plus side, he seems like a hard guy to tag as elite, a guy who graduated from Chadron State College and has the background that he did, coming from small-town Nebraska and spending as much time in education as he did. He appears to be a real human being, not a practiced politician. When I went to Shapiro yesterday he had the standard go-to-a-laboratory politician's background today. Honestly, it was a roller coaster. Like it was just a ton of different stuff, like the guy has lived a real life.

Speaker 5:

This pick certainly seems to minimize intra-party conflict. Like you know, this definitely calms these sort of what would have potentially been a minor I don't want to exaggerate how big it would have been but a minor insurrection due to a Shapiro pick, which I'll talk a little bit about in a second no-transcript. He hasn't actually run very many races. Waltz has been in a lot of vigorously contested elections and is thoroughly vetted. I think we can be confident that there's minimal downside to a Tim Walz pick, end quote. And then there's the but he has a lot to say about them, like I was listening to him on the Ezra Klein podcast, and let's actually play a clip from this podcast where you can hear Waltz talking about issues like vouchers and education. Let's go to this question.

Speaker 3:

Trump and JD Vance, who are telling you we need to do school vouchers. How are you going to get a private school in a town of 400? That's not where the private school's going to be. The private school's going to be where it already is, giving tax breaks to the wealthiest, and it undermines what's the core. It's the two things that are core felt thriving when I was there two grocery stores, a couple bars downtown, all that. Now it's empty Main Street. He wasn't. That vision of ill-billiality was true. But he doesn't tell you the story, why. And the bitterness, the cultural bitterness, whatever. That's just not true. They're just looking for what are things to rejuvenate us? How do we get back? How do we make this? I wouldn't trade anything from where I'm at today. Those are real stories in small towns. These guys, they talk about how evil the public schools are. For many of us, public schools were everything. That was our path. That's the great American contribution.

Speaker 5:

So you could see the appeal and the critiques kind of shaping up here, like where Shapiro would be tagged expand the safety net, increase funding on the universal school lunch program. I think he speaks eloquently for the case for simplicity in that model and cutting through the red tape and trying to make that program work for the most vulnerable kids, and I think he's comfortable when mocking his right-wing opponents, which is why I think he'll do quite fine against Vance On the Delta side, number one. I think there's this risk and perception that Josh Shapiro was left at the altar and I'm curious to see how that's going to play in Pennsylvania. Tonight Shapiro will be appearing at the same rally and giving his full endorsement to the ticket. Tim Miller commented that he feels like the left bullied the Harris campaign, whether it's true or not, and so there's that perception out there. This certainly seems to be. What Van Jones said is that I think some people feel like the obvious choice would have been Shapiro. He would have been more palatable in Pennsylvania, more obvious, but that Harris was worried about an insurrection from the left.

Speaker 5:

There's all the post-Floyd stuff that I described. There's the education fraud issue that I described. There's the fact that Waltz is not from a swing state and that, as Kornacki described in the clip that I mentioned earlier, that he hasn't shown himself recently that he's been able to win and perform better than standard Democrats in the hard-to-reach places. What a wealth defender would say is that he did, you know, for years he did that in a swing congressional district, and so you know. I'll leave it to you to decide that. There's the DUI, which I'm not sure, given how long ago it was and the turnaround from us, whether that will matter, but that's there. And you have the fact that you know Minnesota. Is it a good sort of approximation of Wisconsin, michigan? I think a lot of people will be left wondering like is his relative success, which again Kornacki kind of argues that there really isn't relative success there but is his relative success in a place like Minnesota really going to help in other places?

Speaker 5:

What do I think after all of this? I genuinely am not sure I really need to see the guy more. I wasn't super familiar with Waltz's record before I did a little bit of a deep dive on this for this podcast. I need to see him campaign more and I suspect that this isn't going to hurt or help a ton. This feels like a bit of a safe choice for Harris, assuming that there are no major skeletons that come out. It seems with the pick that avoids a fight within the party without a ton of downside with swing voters.

Speaker 5:

I know that the right is going to try to paint Waltz as a super lefty. I think that seems like it's going to be hard to do just based on you know, watching the, you know the guy and diving deep into his record and who he is like. This is a guy who really did come from small town america and has spent a ton of time in quote unquote normal america, but we'll see. Uh, he will be really fascinating to see somebody of his style debating somebody like jd vance. I really don't know how this is going to go down. I suspect it won't make one much of a difference either way. I do think it says something about Harris and says a bit about where her head is at right now, which is that she really wants to continue the good vibes that she's got going on within the party and within a certain segment of the media and with independence, and she didn't want to mess with that with a Josh Shapiro pick Again, like I haven't gone through Shapiro's record. Why did she not pick him?

Speaker 5:

There is some of the stuff on Israel-Palestine. Some people will say that that that you know of Shapiro on Israel-Palestine stuff is a little bit different than others, because he had spent a decent amount of time in Israel. He did some volunteer work there, some service work there. He was more pointed, I think, in some of the language he used on the issue than others. I don't think that was disqualifying, but I do think that he was of his identity as a Jew. That could have factored in there.

Speaker 5:

Do I think there was some anti-Semitism against Josh Shapiro as well? For sure Do I think that was coming from Harris' camp? I have seen no evidence of that. There were other issues with Shapiro. Again, I mentioned that there were some people in his orbit who over the years who felt like he betrayed them, fetterman being one of them. Not that Fetterman was in his harassment and Shapiro was accused of a sort of cover-up on it, you know, kind of burying it with a non-disclosure agreement and slow-walking that investigation. I wonder if that might have played some role here. It's hard to say. Maybe at some point we'll get some reporting on what happened within the Harris camp.

Speaker 1:

In sum, this was one of the shows I listen to a lot, some for analysis, called the Lost Debate with Robbie Gupta, so I thought he'd done a good job trying to explain and I had some of the same opinions about it. But President Trump, former President Trump and Vance are going to try to do is they're going to label Waltz as like the Bernie Sanders type of Democrat and for the most part.

Speaker 1:

I think that I would be careful in that framing because I don't think that they realize how popular Bernie Sanders still is with a lot of the people in the American electorate. We're going to pay close attention to this. I would love to see the debate between Trump and Kamala and between Vance and Walls. Yeah, it went from being one of the most boring presidential elections to one of the most exciting. See you on the next episode.