Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, accepted the VP nomination last night. Here’s his speech from last night.
It was a ‘greatest hits’ kind of speech, where he threw out all the familiar slogans that the Democrats have found to resonate with the public. That’s fine; I agree with the sentiments, and will be voting for Harris/Walz in November.
I figure I’d better come clean and confess that I was not happy with Walz. You can go through the archives here and find all the posts where I commented on him, so I’ll save you the effort and repost some excerpts for you so you can tell me I was wrong.
My number one complaint was his close connection to the National Rifle Association. This was a major political issue in his campaign, as he proudly advertised the fact that he was an NRA supporter.
In the Minnesota caucuses, Democrat Tim Walz came out in first place in the race for governor. He was my last choice. He’s a Democrat who is good at getting the rural — that is, conservative Democrat — vote, and I scratched him off my list for consideration on the basis of one crucial fact: he’s got an A+ rating from the NRA. Nope. That’s like getting praise from the KKK; it might appeal to a certain demographic, but that’s one demographic I’d like to see ignored.
Another factor was the condescension by the DFL. They figured that NRA hook was sufficient to capture the yokels of rural Minnesota. It probably worked, since he won the 2018 primary.
I took a look at the Minnesota primary election results. There weren’t really any surprises, although there was one disappointment.
The disappointment is that Tim Walz will be the DFL candidate running for governor in November. I despise Tim Walz — he’s a conservative Democrat who has been in the pocket of the NRA for years. What’s particularly galling about it is that I keep seeing people saying that they voted for Walz because he was most appealing to outstate (the obnoxious term people in the Twin Cities use for the region outside the Twin Cities) voters, so they were supporting the DFL candidate most likely to win over those Neandertals who don’t reside in the metropolitan region.
I live in “outstate” Minnesota. Grrrr. Don’t assume we’re all gun-totin’ rednecks out here.
And yes, he was a conservative Democrat. I didn’t vote for him in the primary (although I did in the general election) because there was a good strong liberal Democrat running against him.
The frontrunner is Democrat Tim Walz. I scratched him off my dance card long, long ago: he’s got an A+ rating from the NRA. That ought to be the kiss of death for any politician any more.
On the other hand, Rebecca Otto has the recommendation of environmentalists and climate scientists like Michael Mann, along with an excellent record as the state auditor. She’s pro-democracy and pro-environment.
An A+ from climate scientists vs. an A+ from the freakin’ NRA. This one’s an easy choice. I want Rebecca Otto for governor of Minnesota.
Walz did get better, fortunately, and he changed, becoming more progressive in the course of his term. I’ll admit that I was proven wrong (although I’ll bet there are a lot of rural voters in these here parts who now rue the day they voted for him), and he turned out to be a very good governor.
Still, the NRA? Jesus. I think I was justified in not trusting him.
Sometimes (in fact, far too often) the only choices are between the half-bad and the awful.
I can understand why voting participation in USA and other countries with a two-party system is low.
Sweden has a more modern system, but while significantly better it is not populism-proof. The same is the case in Germany.
The term “outstate” reminds me of a German term, “ausland,” which basically means “not Germany.”
I don’t know if there’s a special word Americans use for “not America,” other than “foreign countries.” Some use the term “foreigner” as a disparaging epithet, I know, but I don’t know of a special single word for “not America.” I guess the rest of the world is just too insignificant to warrant its own term.
This is why it’s important to keep bullying politicians. Bullying works to push politicians to your positions. Walz didn’t become better on his own, spontaneously. And he’s still not entirely good, either. But he can be pushed in positive directions. Harris appears to be at least somewhat receptive to being bullied too; at least a lot more than Joe Biden ever was (even before his neurological degeneration became apparent).
Voting for Harris/Walz cannot be the end of political participation. Get these people elected and then hold their goddamned feet to every fire you can find. Otherwise, they have no reason to get better on anything you care about.
Walz changed his position on gun control around 2018, following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. See JD Vance and Tim Walz claim to be 2nd Amendment stalwarts. But where do the VP picks really stand on guns?.
The article goes on to say he donated campaign contributions from the NRA to charity, he supports various gun control measures, accuses the NRA of being an obstacle to the implementation of sensible gun control measures that most NRA members support.
I’m old enough to remember when the NRA was basically a gun safety organization for hunters and sportsmen. As a hunter myself, I probably would have belonged in those days. It even supported some common sense gun control measures.
Don’t exactly remember when it crossed the line into crazy, but I do remember that the first President Bush, who had been a member of the NRA, publicly dropped his membership because he thought it had veered too far into cuckoo-land.
@#5
Wayne LaPierre and Charlton Heston. ’nuff said.
Coyne is making it known he dislikes Harris. She lacks merit (a DEI hire?) and would be bad for Israel. Makes the many conservatives in his comments happy I guess.
Weird. My complaint with Harris (but, frankly, with almost all politicians) is that they are way too chummy with genocide.
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith
Sadly, I think, kind of like a lot of Republicans, a lot of the NRA believers delude themselves into believing it still has the same “values” as it did in its early days, before the gun lobby literally took it over, or that, somehow, its just, “A few bad apples.”, and some day they can restore it to former glory. They refuse to see the cancer it has become. That, and of course, for politicians, its a useful thing to latch yourself too, to get votes, if you are even slightly delusional about the, “Right to bare arms.”, and what limits should rationally apply to it.
His stance on guns has definitely changed, as was mentioned above. He was actually gun control activist David Hogg’s preference for Harris’ VP pick, so he must be doing something right.