Tim Walz looks as though he might have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. A wide, friendly grin beams from that ruddy, well-fed midwestern face. Deep-set eyes twinkle behind thick glasses as if he has just polished off a soda float at the local Dairy Queen.
The backstory is pure middle-America son of the heartland. Born in a small town in rural Nebraska, he moved to Minnesota for college, became a high school teacher and coached the football team.
He served for two decades in the army national guard as a non-commissioned officer. Married to the same woman for 30 years, he and his wife own no stocks or property, their public sector pensions being their only real asset.
He spends weekends out hunting with Scout, the family dog, or attending services at the local Evangelical Lutheran church.
It’s the persona that helped him to get elected to Congress in a formerly Republican district as a mainstream Democrat and then ascend Minnesota’s politics to the governor’s mansion in 2018, re-elected for a second term in 2022.
But as governor, this epitome of mainstream American values signed laws that permit a woman to have an abortion at any point up until the moment of birth and guarantee protection to children who travel to Minnesota for “gender-affirming care”, including puberty blockers and reconstructive genital surgery.
He mandated that tampons be available in the boys’ bathrooms at every high school in the state. During Covid he ruled by emergency decree and instituted a hotline for Minnesotans to rat on any of their neighbours they might see breaking social distancing rules.
When the state exploded in Black Lives Matter-orchestrated rioting after the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, Walz refused pleas to send in the National Guard for three days to help overwhelmed police forces to deal with the violence, implying he sympathised more with the rioters than with law enforcement.
He has approved laws that provide free public services to illegal immigrants and since he became governor, crime levels in previously relatively peaceable Minnesota have grown sharply.
As John Hinderaker, a Minnesota lawyer and conservative commentator, told me, the overall results for the state have been predictable: “Tim Walz is anti-growth and anti-business. In 2023 for the first time ever per-capita GDP in Minnesota [was] below the national average. He took a prosperous state and turned it into a below-average state economically.”
Less Norman Rockwell, you might say, more Jackson Pollock.
But Walz’s story is a perfect parable of what has happened to the Democratic Party in the past two decades. Here is a man who has travelled the trail blazed by his party from mainstream American values to the cultural elites’ position today, which denounces America as a historic oppressor – a country in which the white male straight patriarchy must now spend the rest of American history making reparations for its sins at the behest of a party that subordinates the interests of regular working-class Americans to the regnant ideologies of critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion.
That Kamala Harris chose Walz to be her vice-presidential running-mate in November’s election is a powerful confirmation of that transformation.
She had alternative choices: Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a moderate with a strong record who is highly popular in a key swing state, was widely touted as the frontrunner – and in my conversations in the past week with senior Republican campaign officials, it was clear he terrifies the Donald Trump team.
But the dominant left of the Democratic Party warned Harris that Shapiro would create blowback. His fierce support for Israel – or perhaps, more importantly, his status as an observant Jew – was clearly a problem for a party whose pro-Palestinian voices have become increasingly strident.
Though also a supporter of Israel, Walz’s religion is not such an issue and he is a full subscriber to the wider cultural progressivism that Harris personifies.
Walz’s selection is also significant in another way that speaks to the objectives of the party in this election. Like the presidential contender herself, Walz can count on protective coverage from a highly supportive media.
Since the announcement of his selection, the mainstream press has presented the Rockwell version of Walz. Evidently mindful that his actual political record might not be a winner with voters, they have emphasised the human story instead. ‘Bringing back the joy’: Walz’s first day keeps Democrats’ buzz going was the piercing headline in The Washington Post after the first Harris-Walz rally this week.
What is really keeping the Democrats’ buzz going, of course, is unrelentingly favourable media coverage.
If you harbour any doubts about the continuing power of the press to shape opinion, the rollout of the Harris campaign in two weeks should sink them.
A poll this week by Marquette University captures just how successful the Harris propaganda campaign has been.
In May 35 per cent of respondents viewed her favourably. This week that number had risen to 47 per cent. Her unfavourable ratings have fallen from 59 to 50.
This is the result of a managed campaign launch that has brooked no scrutiny of the candidate’s views or record. She has not given a single interview or press conference since she was anointed the nominee by acclamation. Indeed she hasn’t had to answer a single serious question about her political positions at all.
This is the Democrats’ plan. They know Trump is still toxic for many voters. They dumped from the ticket the man even Trump-sceptics thought couldn’t possibly do the job.
Now they are betting that they can present as an alternative someone, like her running-mate, whose real views they can keep hidden with the help of a complaisant press and drag the country further to the radical left. So far, it’s working.
The Times
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