I wish Tim Walz wasn't the hero America needed. Thank god he's here.
Plenty of Americans won't listen to somebody talk about progressive policies if that person isn’t white, male, cis, straight and a little beefy.
With a jawline cut from cheese, Tim Walz has quickly gone from a relative unknown to a vision of the future of the Democratic party. When Harris chose Walz as her vice presidential candidate this week, the party anointed by far the most progressive person in Harris’s pool of (all white + male) veep front runners, most of whom were moderates in the dullest sense of the word.
For progressives — or at least, to me — Walz feels like a distinctly different hero of the moment than Harris represented when she replaced Biden atop the ticket. Harris offered relief from a particular vision of hell, rescuing us from our futures hinging on a haunted ventriloquist dummy not getting pummeled by the juiced-up cocaine lion. Meanwhile, Walz represents a Democratic party that embraces progressive politics, no longer treating them as “nice to have” policies that the party’s left wing needs to stop being unrealistic about.
But when you think about what makes Tim Walz so appealing, and specifically a messenger that those who most automatically oppose left policies might actually listen to, it becomes obvious that the progressive movement was always going to need a hero who looks like Tim Walz.
Walz is a corn-fed progressive dynamo. During his time as Minnesota governor, the state signed into law free school meals, state-level protections for abortion, paid sick and family leave and put Minnesota on one of “the most aggressive timelines to shift away from fossil fuels.” And you already know about the whole Midwest Dad thing.
But here’s what sets Tim apart: he’s kind of a guy’s guy? He hunts. He owns guns. He coached the football team to a state championship. And it’s these things that make him what the movement’s always needed, so long as it exists in America: a sheep in wolves’ clothing. A compassionate sweetheart with a gun safe and Scottish ancestry (relax, Scots — I’m one of you!). Somebody who might cut through the tribalism that’s kept so many Americans from listening to past progressive messengers.
Plenty of Americans won't listen to somebody talk about progressive policies if that person isn’t white, male, cis, straight, a little beefy. And while I’m thrilled Walz is the white guy we got, this moment feels like an inescapable reminder of a bleak fact: that a systemically racist country needs a white guy to be the messenger of progressive policies that Black, brown and people of color have been championing for decades when far fewer were listening.
The past few years have introduced us to plenty of progressive rising stars in the Democratic party — Cori Bush, AOC, Jamaal Bowman, Hakeem Jeffries, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Rashida Tlaib and plenty of others. But none of those individuals are white cis men, and you have to notice that when you consider that virtually all of them have been punished for their progressive views, by voters and by their own party.
A few related reads:
Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans (Bloomberg)
5 Things to Know About Kamala Harris’ Criminal Justice Record (The Marshall Project)
Tim Walz's Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident (The New York Times)
It makes a dark sort of sense that, on the national stage, the progressive movement would need a strong (white), sturdy (male) vessel for viewpoints that have otherwise been branded as weak and anti-masculine. This is the messenger that America, racist and sexist and awful as it’s often been, was always going to need.
To be very reductive about it, Tim seems to represent a progressive movement rooted less in identity, and more in class. He’s saying the exact same thing that millions of those so-called blue-haired tattooed socialists (using my grandfather’s language here!) have been saying for decades, only Walz is saying it while wearing camo. Whatever. It’s kind of bullshit. But if America was always going to need a white guy to usher in an era of political progressivism (I’m clearly getting ahead of myself), it’s at least exciting that we got this guy — a guy who is genuinely excited about what it means to help a Black woman beat Trump.
Walz seems like a rare delight who I hope writes several post-presidential memoirs on his gratitude practice that he’s never deliberately thought about. He’s our corn-fed Mr. Rogers, ready to hold our hands and usher us into the spooky unknown of an America with compassionate politics that aren’t a trick, that aren’t a scheme, that won’t rob you of your personal freedoms, and that might actually enhance your personal freedom, by letting you live in a world where your basic human needs of housing, and food, and health coverage aren’t solely dependent on your keeping a job in an increasingly unstable and lopsided job market. (What kind of personal freedom is that, really?)
Let Walz introduce us to a new vision of government — not the sinister “government” that that word has come to conjure in recent years, but a boring, churnin’ along government that makes possible a certain standard of living for all people. That’s not a weak society. It’s an evolved one.