A Great American Democrat

Tim Walz is more than a smart pick for Kamala Harris. He's what Democrats should be.

Something rare happened in politics this week. A decent man was selected for a high office.

Tim Walz, my governor in Minnesota, is suddenly a national story now that Vice President Kamala Harris has selected him as her vice-presidential running mate. This is a useful strategy for Democrats to solidify their progressive credentials while broadening their appeal to middle America.

Walz embodies pragmatism, progressive values, and an incongruent mix of identities that shouldn’t reasonably work together. Educator. Veteran. School lunch champion. LGBTQ protector. Hunter and gun owner. Law enforcement supporter and community ally in cases of police misconduct.

He’s a Long Island ice tea in a world of light beers.

Expect a flood of stories about him in the coming days. They will probably attempt to place him in the left/right binary. They will probably paint him as a super leftist.

Their frame will be too narrow to explain him.

In truth, he is best defined by his sincere desire to hear good-faith arguments from all sides, find common ground, and produce policies that serve the most people.

Walz is what a great American Democrat should look and sound like in 2024 and beyond: positive, energized, unapologetically compassionate, driven by values, and an everyman for all his constituents.

He has a story made for political campaigns. His father worked in public school administration. His mother managed their home. When his father died his family relied on the public social safety to get by, and that clearly informs his policy priorities today. When he talks about the common good, it doesn’t come from a class he took at Yale.

When talks about growing up in a town of 400 people, it’s not with a cynical backhanded slap to the people he loved.

If only all vice presidential candidates could say that.

Walz joined the Army National Guard at age 17 and served for 24 years, retiring as a command sergeant major.

The right wing won’t be able to steal his patriotism from him. They won’t credibly call him a limousine liberal who is out of touch with working Americans.

It’s not like he’s been a power bottom for a Silicon sugar daddy.

The most prolific governor in America

With a crazy slim Senate majority, Walz produced what many call the "Minnesota Miracle." That’s a bit of heavy-handed marketing, but he has received national attention for progressive victories that redefined the state's political landscape. With Democrats gaining a narrow majority in the state Senate in 2022, Walz pushed through a bold agenda that had long been stalled by Republican opposition.

Here’s an incomplete list:

• Automatic voter registration

• Restored voting rights for formerly incarcerated people

• Universal free school meals

• Legal weed

• 12 weeks paid family leave

• 12 weeks paid sick leave

• Free public college for the working class

• Tax rebates up to $1,300 for the working class

• Sectoral bargaining for nurses

• Carbon-free electricity by 2040

• Ban on “forever chemicals”

• Universal background checks for guns

• Banned conversion therapy

• Legal protections for gender-affirming care

• Legal protections for woman’s reproductive health

• $1 billion investment in affordable housing

• $2.2 billion in new money for public schools

All of that while also generating a nearly $4 billion budget surplus.

Education advocates want to know what he’s accomplished

I’m an education guy, as is most of my professional network. People are asking me, “Is he good on our issues?” When Walz first became governor, I worried he would be an ideologue who would end “standardized” testing, kill charter schools, lower standards, and replace accountability measures with fuzzy, feel-good, non-educational interventions. That would be disastrous for Civil Rights and racial progress, but it tracks with a state that believes warm hugs and vibes are the best remedies for lagging student achievement.

Given his past as a public school educator and supporter of teacher unions, I worried he would turn over education policy to people who believe every proposed reform is an affront to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

He didn’t do that. In fact, on education issues, he’s been wholly unremarkable. I don’t mean that in a bad way.

I called several insiders this morning to get their take on Walz's education record. The most damning criticism is that he suffers from “toxic positivity” when it comes to the state's public education system.

Our schools are the best in the nation, he’ll tell you.

Minnesota’s Federal Reserve will tell you that our state has national-leading racial and economic gaps in student achievement.

Happy talk is not a strategy.

To the extent that Walz has had an education agenda, it hasn’t harmed my two biggest issues—public school choice and student outcomes. The pandemic put a boot on our back end, like in other states, but he ably led the state through responsible school closures and openings and provided recovery aid to get students back on track.

A controversy worth noting

For all the good he did, Walz angered progressive education activists on the issue of school resource officers. They criticized him for siding with law enforcement officials when they argued that a new law restricting the use of chokeholds on students hindered their ability to maintain safety in schools.

Law enforcement leaders protested because by pulling their officers from the schools.

They really wanted to choke students in a bad way.

One activist told me privately that the chokeholds the resource officers were fighting to use were outlawed in prisons but allowed in schools.

Walz had to balance his progressive justice reforms with school safety concerns. In the end, he signed a bipartisan bill that clarified how and when resource officers can restrain students, coupled with de-escalation and mental health training for the officers. It wasn’t a solution that pleased everyone, but it was sensible in the eyes of most stakeholders.

A good choice for Harris, Democrats, and the country

In selecting Walz, Harris gains a running mate who enhances her campaign's appeal in the Midwest—to the proverbial regular people that conservatives lionize with smarmy language while robbing them with billionaire policies.

Do not undercut his ability to seem old and young simultaneously. He has the energy, stamina, and sharpness to excite younger voters. His silver hair and plain talk will comfort voters who see Harris as young and untested (she and Walz are virtually the same age).

He’s a dude’s dude. A woman’s ally. A rural football coach who got his players to defend LGBT students. A hunter who believes in gun safety.

A guy who is more obsessed with creating a good society than with cat ladies, dolphins, and couches.

He’s also the guy who nearly single-handedly reframed the MAGA juggernaut with a one-word definition that stuck: weird.

Harris picked the right happy warrior to combine progressive aspirations with practical governance—a vision that speaks to America's core challenges today.