How Governor Walz "Grounds" The Harris Ticket
How Governor Walz "Grounds" The Harris Ticket
Governor Walz of Minnesota did not graduate from the ivy league. Why that's "grounding."
My initial question when Vice President Harris’s running mate was relayed this morning was: Does the Governor acquit himself well when contrasted against the excesses of JD Vance? I believe that Governor Walz of Minnesota does, at least by virtue of his resume, which reads as a chronicle of a life lived not in the cause social mountaineering, unlike his GOP counterpart. Vance’s origins as a social climber began in Appalachia then at Ohio State, but immediately thereafter diverged dramatically towards Yale Law and Silicon Valley, power centers of naught else but unfettered elitism. Which is not to say that aspirations beyond a life of poverty in Appalachia are bad, per se, but is that end in itself the proper lesson to draw from such a background?
After penning his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which wagged a condescending finger — the pointer or the middle, take your pick — at his fellow Appalachians for not hoisting themselves up from their addictions and aspiring like he towards mentors like “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua and the stately DC townhouses. Have they no shame? he seems to be saying from the page. “Vance introduces his reader to Appalachia by immediately profiling the worst behaviors of each of his uncles, including a scene of grotesque violence,” writes Appalachian poet, Willie Carver. “He calls us a ‘pessimistic bunch’ living in a ‘hub of misery’ (p. 4), and over and over again he uses a wide brush to paint Appalachians as lazy, ignorant and unwilling to try at life.” Charmed, I’m sure.
And that’s not all. After Ohio State and Yale Law and Silicon Valley, the future running mate of Trump veered into the world of venture capital, which we cannot fail to note is not the traditional path to power for right-populist candidates. Populists are usually profoundly skeptical of the over financialization of economies, which is generally seen as the province of selfish, even traitorous capitalists. But not JD Vance! Heaven forfend. From Nick Robbins-Early of The Guardian:
Vance remained a part of the tech VC world after returning to Ohio and leaving Revolution in early 2020. He received financial backing from (Peter) Thiel to co-found the venture firm Narya Capital – which, like Thiel’s enterprises, was named after an object from The Lord of The Rings, this time a ring of power made for elves. Other prominent investors in Narya included Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO,and Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, who announced his own support for Trump this past week. The stated goal of Vance’s firm was to invest in early-stage startups in cities that Silicon Valley tended to overlook.
… Vance’s long association with Thiel also proved lucrative during his run for senator in 2022. Thiel put a staggering $15m into Vance’s campaign and, according to the Washington Post, helped court Trump’s endorsement, leading to Vance winning a tightly contested Republican primary race and then the senate election.
Could Vance’s hyper-financialized late-in-life “transition,” and the contradictions of that life contained therein to a populist candidacy, be what Harris is attempting to expose through the public contrast against Walz? If so, it is quite ambitious and possibly rather brilliant. Vice President Kamala Harris to her detriment has been painted by the right as something of a Vogue covergirl, which was, quite frankly, inevitable for a woman Presidential candidate (has anyone historically ever said anything about male Presidential candidates on the cover of GQ?). The Walz pick, to that end, "grounds" the Party, takes it out of the upper atmosphere. Walz is decidedly post-Conde Nast (and, to be quite frank, aren’t we all, really?)
It should further be noted that Vance projects the overbearing preachiness of a 39-year old who thinks he know everything. Vance’s obsession with baiting “cat ladies” is not going to help Trump with his perpetual problems with winning over suburban women, which will be the strength of Harris at the top of the ticket. Walz, on the other half of the ticket, is one of those rare American politicians that never went to law school and did not pursue the path to power immediately. He is, further, an avid hunter who champions tighter gun controls. He also, like Kamala Harris, never attended the ivy league, according to Amy B Wang and Sabrina Rodriguez of the WashPo:
Walz’s foray into politics came later in life: Born and raised in West Point, Neb., a small rural town, after high school he enlisted in the Army National Guard, where he would serve for the next 24 years. After losing his father to lung cancer at age 19 — which he would later say shaped his views on health care — Walz enrolled in Chadron State College in Nebraska and graduated with a teaching degree in 1989.
Walz met his future wife, Gwen, while teaching after college, and they moved in 1996 to her home state of Minnesota. He would stay at Mankato West High School as a teacher and football coach for the next decade or so, until he decided to run for public office — reportedly motivated to do so after he and some students were denied entry to a 2004 George W. Bush campaign event because organizers found out they were Democrats.
In 2006, Walz won the race to represent Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, flipping a Republican seat in a rural part of the state.
It should also be noted that Walz spent 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring as a Command Sergeant Major. Also — Waltz was the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to serve in Congress when he joined the House in 2007, as well as the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, serving multiple terms on the powerful Armed Services Committee. Walz, in fine, strengthens Harris’s national security bottom line while providing linkage to veterans, all of great importance to the first woman of color to secure a major party nomination for the Presidency.
Another question worth asking — Does Governor Walz break the first law of running mates, which is to do no harm to the ticket? Time will tell, of course, and so will opposition research. But at present, right out of the gate, Walz’s resume presents him as not just anti-elitist, but as a real deal pro-worker populist able to make the argument to blue collar workers that Project 2025 undercuts labor unions by eliminating overtime pay laws, protecting child labor, curbing the right to organize as well as gutting health and safety protections. Trump/Vance, if elected, will almost certainly pursue many (if not most) of Project 2025’s labor section. I believe that he can, largely because he is a “grounding” force, a quality I cannot stress enough.
Another question for a running mate: Does Governor Walz hold the blue wall? Does he help win over some white working class voters in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania? His resume makes a strong argument, not just on professional grounds, but on moral grounds. Walz, before venturing into public service, was a school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, teaching geography to high school students, coached football and also advised his high school’s gay-straight alliance. At the top of the ticket, Vice President Harris will be prosecuting the case against Donald Trump, who has been convicted of sexual abuse and felony financial crimes. Her running mate will present a masculinity more in confluence with working class Midwest values and, possibly, that resonates with working-class male voters beyond the blue wall.
In that sense, too, the Walz pick, to that end, "grounds" the Party and immunizes it against culture war rodomontade. It takes Progressive arguments out of the ethers of the Democracy-versus-Autocracy debate, which takes place high above the heads of blue collar workers. The Trump/Vance argument that inflation and immigration — weak points for the Harris project — are paramount to the voter, as Gallup reminds us. Which is why Governor Walz’s “weirding of the GOP” audition tape has landed with such resounding impact in the last few weeks, even going viral. Calling the GOP and Project 2025 “weird” is not so much “othering” — which would be directly playing into the fascist conceit of us-against-them — as it was a grounding the argument of the evil of turning a democracy into an autocratic cult of personality in ways that undecideds can understand in their gut. “It took this stout white guy from Minnesota to finally name what we have all been watching for eight years,” writes Nina Burleigh of the pitch-perfectly named American Frerakshow. “Yes it’s fascism, corruption, autocracy, kleptocracy, misogyny and hate … but its essence is just ‘weird.’”
Finally, Senator Kelly, with a brilliant resume all his own, was a bit too slick to make that particular argument to the understanding of the working class voter. Also, picking him could have placed the tenuous Senate Majority in question. “The Democrats are projected to lose their Senate majority in November, and even if they confound expectations and keep it, that majority will be razor-thin, as it is today,” warned Tim Noah of TNR. “No current senator should be under consideration for the Democratic vice presidential slot…” Governor Walz has made a career of giving back to his community, as a teacher, then as a public servant; JD Vance has made a career of being the Sir Edmund Hillary of social mountaineering. Let’s see who ascends faster up the blue wall in the Midwest, shall we?
Walz’s “grounding” is in that his only investments appear to be in state pensions. Walz on paper looks like a living, breathing example of an American civics lesson. In the final round of choosing the last standing competitor for the job was Josh Shapiro, not a US Senator, but a graduate of Georgetown Law nonetheless, and not really the type that could drink suds at a football bar in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I think it is an interesting event that candidate Harris went for a non-elite school ticket (note: Howard University is considered an “elite” school in African-American households, but not, apparently, USNews). President Biden, it should also be noted, did not attend an elite private university, but rather the University of Delaware (BA) and Syracuse (JD), respectively, both respectable American institutions. And Vice President Kamala Harris attended Howard, an HBCU and the University of California’s Hasting’s School of Law, one of the best public state university’s in the country. Governor Tim Walz, a graduate of Chadron State College (BA) and Minnesota State University, Mankato (MS) are all “grounded” in their proximity, during their formative years, to the exigencies of life in ways that ivy grads headed to their Daddy’s real estate company or, for that matter, the security of Senator Torricelli’s office, where Josh Shapiro landed.
“‘Google is a monopolist.’ Those were the plain words used by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in a ruling Monday that delivered a brutal blow to the Silicon Valley titan and could have far-reaching implications over how information is organized and distributed across the internet. The consequential decision from Mehta was years in the making. The Department of Justice had first sued in October 2020. The case went to trial last year, with closing arguments concluding earlier this year. At the heart of the case was whether Google acted as a monopoly and abused its market position to stymie competition. Google, through exclusive deals with major tech companies such as Apple, has paid large sums of money to ensure it is the default search engine on devices. Mehta on Monday, after weighing all the evidence presented in the historic case, agreed that the search engine giant had, in fact, abused its market power. The judge offered an example to illustrate how Google can use its dominance to inflate the costs of digital advertisements, stating that the company ‘simply could not take’ such an approach ‘in a competitive market.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)