I must admit, I was almost as perplexed as the Democrats who were trying to decide whether to support Joe Biden despite the debate disaster or to urge him to step aside for a younger candidate to defeat the would-be dictator. After the debate, Joe seemed more his normal self, gaffs and all; he gave a sophisticated complex assessment of some foreign policy matters in a news conference, which reflected significant “cognitive acuity.” But the debate failure was the subject of confirmation bias among other forces completely out of his control. And he was fading; something very important was missing from his campaign. Joe realized that his quest for another term was futile, so he graciously stepped aside. Nobody quite expected what would happen next, but it was exactly what the Dem’s needed.
Who Are We, Really?
The politics of hate, which had surged when Donald Trump entered politics to run for the presidency, has come to dominate the public discourse ever since. The withdrawal of President Biden from the Democratic Party’s campaign for the presidency in 2024 changed all that in ways nobody expected. Who are we? What the pundits and campaign operatives did not factor into the response to Kamala Harris replacing the President on the Democratic Party ticket was that fact that we are tired of the hate, forced divisions, and vitriol. Kamala Harris offered an explicit vision of positive motion into the future, in stark contrast to the world of negativity and illusion turned toward recouping an imagined idyllic past American Greatness.
We were ready, it seems, for the politics of joy. When I first heard a brief interview with Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, I was attracted to his strong positive outlook and his no-nonsense attitude about the opposition—the MAGA cult of hatred and its figurehead leader. His speech was that of just a regular guy who voiced the opinion that the utterings of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump were weird. That statement stuck and went viral as a new meme reflecting a turn away from the politics of hate, chronic lies, and the fascist ambitions of the Trumpian “Project 2025.”
The Politics of Reality
I was hoping that Kamala would pick Tim Walz as her running mate, based only on hearing that one speech and also the reporting on his record of getting things done for his students, his high school team, the U.S. Army Reserves, the people of Minnesota, and especially working for Veterans in Congress, in a committee assignment that most ambitious congressmen avoid because it is work with little political reward, but for which he had nevertheless volunteered. Tim Walz embodies the cultural value of service, and not just in the military.
That is not to knock the other candidates for the job. They had strong capabilities too, but Walz’s biography captures the American value of service to people more than any. And, as it turned out, his personality clearly resonates with the outlook of Kamala Harris, who knows well the delicacy and potential of a vice president’s relationship with the president.
The “Coach” in All of Us
One of the dominating themes of the new MAGA Republican Party, which traditional Republican politicians despise, is the aggressive authoritarian impetus to direct the lives of citizens in ways that conflict with the traditional Republican values of personal freedom and a government that serves the people by protecting that freedom. You know the issues, from meddling in personal medical decisions to suppressing accurate histories of the racist elements in the American past and their continuation into the present, to banning books—even recognized classics—that these cultural authoritarians perceive as evil from their sanctimonious outlook of fear and hatred.
Walz was explicitly clear in expressing the American small-town values of helping your neighbor and of following the consensual rule, “mind your own business.’ Those values resonate with a broad swath of the American public. Kamala Harris’ politics of joy, looks forward, and refuses to engage with those who impugn her character in various ways, such as the outright lie about her ‘cheating’ by having AI create the huge crowds enthusiastically attending her rallies—despite the broad media coverage of the actual huge crowds.
Tim Walz’s joyful standing up to the stupid attempts to smear his record of service to the American people, simply overpowers the MAGA efforts at sowing fear and hatred. Nobody buys the implication that providing school lunches is somehow a communist plot. The bottom line, as far as response from the voters is concerned, is that Trump and Vance have no policies to offer that the American people want. Recent polls show that most Americans reject the autocratic attempts at policies to enact an even more extreme rule by the billionaire class than we already have.
We are all tired of the politics of hate, division, and political violence. The Harris-Walz campaign for the politics of joy and unity have resonated with a yearning for a far better world than the white nationalists and autocratic oppressors can offer. Considering the extremely difficult global conditions we face today, we have no time to entertain such foolishness. There is too much serious work to do.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 