TTim Walz had a lot of advantages to advance him as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. A former teacher, former football coach and Nebraska native with a history of flipping Republican congressional seats, Waltz looks like the kind of guy who would tow a car into a ditch, even if it had a Donald Trump bumper sticker. He has a degree from a modest state university. He’s served in the military. But some suspect the only thing that won the 60-year-old Waltz the vice presidential nomination is his unabashed use of the word “weird.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Walz appeared alongside Kamala Harris for the first time in Philadelphia, and aside from the startling fact that the Vietnam War veteran is almost the same age as Ms. Harris, two things were immediately clear: The Minnesota governor has a natural statesmanship and charm that the out-of-sorts Harris lacks, and he would present a satisfyingly big challenge to his Republican colleague, J.D. Vance.
The problem is veracity. In one of the main absurdist pillars of Trump’s campaign, the scion of a New York real estate empire denounces his rival as an “East Coast elite.” Waltz, unlike most other prominent Democrats going back several decades, including Hillary Clinton’s affable and Waltz-like 2016 vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, is not a lawyer. He didn’t go to Harvard or Yale, a fact he gladly uses as a weapon. If Waltz has the energy of a father who reminds his grown kids to stay hydrated, judging by the evidence from the first day of the campaign, he also remains a high-school coach who presides over the cafeteria at lunchtime, employing all the tools traditionally used to control wild children: sarcasm, loud, aggressive language, sudden, sharp ridicule.
So, with a wolfish grin on his face, Waltz told the crowd in Philadelphia, “Like most people in America’s heartland, J.D. Vance went to Yale, was funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and wrote a best-selling book trashing that community….enough!”, a line he tweeted the next day in case you missed it. As The New Yorker noted: This week, Waltz recently White men who support Harris After the video fundraiser, he spoke out the part he’d been quiet about, saying of Trump, “How many times in this world does that son of a bitch wake up later to find out that a black woman kicked him out and sent him down the street?”
What’s great about Waltz’s use of the word “weird” is that it ignores the subtle ways Democrats have been trying to humiliate Trump for years. Waltz’s attack follows a rule Tony Blair once laid out: in politics, you get nothing by calling someone a “fascist,” but you get everywhere by using a personal, sticky insult. Trump, with his bully mentality, understands this better than anyone, which is why he’s been so adept at mocking Marco Rubio’s height, Ted Cruz’s bald lies, and Elizabeth Warren’s careless claims of Native American ancestry for years. Now Waltz and Harris are among the Democrats who finally get it, layering the word “weird” with the equally convenient word “creepy.”
The uncertainty remains: Vance will go after Waltz for his delayed response to the Minnesota riots that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Israel will remain a source of hatred and division among Democrats, and a Harris-Waltz coalition will lose votes. And hours after Waltz’s candidacy was announced, during a fundraising surge, many prominent Hollywood Democrats came forward to praise him, only to be met with the usual sulkiness.
Let’s hope the craze for Waltz survives the evangelism of John Cusack and Cynthia Nixon, who would go a long way to win support, especially from someone like the mercurial Nixon who once ran for governor of New York. Right now, George Clooney’s assistants are putting the finishing touches on a Clooney-bylined op-ed that will appear in next week’s New York Times.
And yet the excitement and momentum of Harris’ rise seemed to be fueled this week by Walz, who on first impression seemed like a smart choice: Instead of a Catholic astronaut, a Jewish-American governor who might have saved Pennsylvania, or a matinee idol governor from California, Harris chose someone you could imagine honing successful, easy-to-understand left-wing policies while having fun in a Home Depot branch.
