Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate suggests Harris is leaning into the idea that Democrats are the party of normal and Republicans are weird.
Walz has been calling Republicans “weird” since at least last year, and in recent weeks, he made it into something of a rallying cry for his party.
“No one can picture them in their own lives,” Walz said in one of his many recent TV appearances. “You never see this guy [Donald Trump] laugh. You never see him do these normal things.”
Walz then described throwing a Frisbee at his dog and scratching its belly when he got home from work at night.
“Picture these guys doing that kind of stuff. They just can’t,” he said. “And what it allows us to do is, we hear where you’re coming from.”
No less a beacon of moderation than West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin ― who left the Democratic party this year because he said it had become too extreme ― lauded the Walz pick on Tuesday.
“My friend Governor Tim Walz will bring normality back to the most chaotic political environment that most of us have ever seen,” Manchin said in a statement from his office. “I can think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic Party.”
The Walz choice also sets up a stark contrast with former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who has been a major target of “weird” attacks from Democrats, who have slammed him for his 2021 criticism of Democrats as “childless cat ladies” who are miserable because they don’t have kids.
In their announcement, the Harris campaign highlighted his background as a high school teacher and member of the Army National Guard ― as well as his and his wife’s struggles to have children.
“Governor Walz and Mrs. Walz struggled with years of fertility challenges had their daughter, Hope, through reproductive health care like IVF ― further cementing his commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to this care,” the Harris campaign said in a press release.
Walz told HuffPost in February, during a visit to Washington as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, that he believed the politics of reproductive health care would be “foundational” in the 2024 election. At the time, the Alabama Supreme Court had recently declared that human embryos were people, jeopardizing access to IVF care in the state, in a decision that resulted from the U.S. Supreme Court having eliminated the federal right to abortion in 2022. Walz said he knew from experience why people would care.
“My wife and I used Mayo Clinic reproductive services, and my daughter Hope was named Hope for a reason,” Walz said then. “Because married for eight years, no children, wanting children. We got Hope because of this type of stuff.”
Vance has stressed he never intended to criticize people who want to have children but can’t, and Trump, as well as most (but not all) Republicans at the national level, have said they support IVF, even if it would seem to clash with their support for the concept of fetal personhood since embryos are often destroyed in the process. Still, Vance and other Republican senators voted against a Democratic bill to guarantee access to IVF, arguing it was unnecessary.
Last week, when he was essentially auditioning for the VP job, Walz blasted Vance for talking about people’s family choices, connecting the cat ladies comment to Republican positions on reproductive health care.
“This the golden rule that makes small towns work so we’re not at each other’s throats all the time in a little town, is mind your own damn business,” Walz said on MSNBC. “I don’t need him to tell me about my family. I don’t need to tell me about my wife’s health care and her reproductive rights.”
