America has a new happy warrior: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the new running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Walz was introduced in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening to an enthusiastic crowd of 10,000 people, the beginning of a 90-day sprint to the very consequential November election come November, and quite possibly a historic American presidency.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
Walz was a dark horse in the veep race: He is a white, 60-year-old, married father of two kids, who is now serving his second term as governor and is a former member of Congress. Boring, right?
Not after Tuesday’s performance in Philly. He was anything but boring. Landing great one-liners and punches on both former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
But Walz is more than a politician. He was a command sergeant major in the U.S. Army Reserves. He was a schoolteacher. Football coach. He ice fishes. He hunts. He owns guns. His two kids were conceived through IVF. And he is the guy who coined the “weird” mantra to describe Trump and his MAGA acolytes. Better yet, Walz, with his fuzzy white eyebrows and thinning white hair, is younger than Hollywood icon and heartthrob Brad Pitt. And his running-mate, Vice President Harris will turn 60 in October.
I know some people felt let down by her choice. On X, Tim Kaine immediately started trending after the announcement of Walz went viral. Kaine, of course, is the U.S. senator from Virginia whom then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton selected as her running mate in 2016. The visual of another boring, America’s dad-type white guy struck fear in the hearts of some Democrats. But Walz is not like Kaine. I think even his detractors will agree that after his rousing speech in Philly on Tuesday, he is the perfect candidate to help Harris solidify the blue wall and white male voters she needs to win over in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
For his part, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, another VP contender, opened the first Harris-Walz rally with a bang. He was terrific. Harris and her team, led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder undertook a serious vetting process. (Trump’s team apparently did not do that with Vance, who has gotten off to a really bad start as the Republican vice presidential nominee. Vance comes off as a grumpy, Mr. Doom and gloom. In fact, according to a July CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance is the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.)
Harris’s team was very strategic in announcing Walz as the VP nominee before the convention because it allows her to control the positive media narrative longer and stay in the spotlight. Trump rolled out Vance at the convention with far less fanfare.
But, let’s face it: Democrats have a much deeper bench of Gen X political talent. From well-known, popular governors like the charismatic Gavin Newsom of California, to the smart savvy “Big Gretch” Whitmer of Michigan, to Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and, the coup de grace: Shapiro, the guy they dub the Jewish Obama. Democrats also have a good bench of Millennial rising stars, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rep. Max Frost of Florida, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, and former South Bend, Ind., mayor and now U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The Republicans, for their part, have a bench of what used to be considered “moderates”: former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. All of these Republicans, though, have endorsed Trump and bowed down to MAGA. They have not stood up to Trump or condemned his felony convictions, and they have allowed him to turn the once “grand old party” into a cult of personality, into the Donald Trump party.
But the somewhat bittersweet point of the VP choice was that when the candidate names started to float around, it was very white, very male, very heterosexual. As a center-right former moderate Republican myself, I know that all of those things play well with the “Republicans for Harris” and independent-minded, or once-devoted Republican turned “never Trump” voters coalitions. However, it did strike me as strange when I thought about it that the only running-mate who was acceptable for the nation’s first female president was a white man. I guess on one level I get it. But, boy do I look forward to the day when two women can run on a ticket together, or two African Americans or whoever is qualified and prepared, and we do not have to choose an older white male to validate the trailblazing Barack Obamas and Kamala Harrises of the world.
Sophia A. Nelson is the author of “Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama” and “E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders’ Vision for a United America.” She is a former GOP counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
