• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, August 7, 2024

“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” the affable Tim Walz, current governor of Minnesota, told presidential candidate Kamala Harris, as he accepted the Veep nomination last night in Philadelphia, to euphoric applause.

Indeed, the doom and gloom has lifted. The crowd was as joyful and energized as it has been for the last two head-spinning weeks since Vice President Harris became the presidential candidate.

Indeed, the previously little-known Minnesota governor is now better known for his relatable, plainspoken punchiness, or maybe it’s that old-fashioned word that Lou Grant famously hated: “spunk.”  He has spunk.

Not only that: Walz and Harris are smilers. Each has a sense of humor, gets irony and laughs easily. 

That’s organic and infectious. It’s like the sun has come out again for the Dems. Like when was the last time we laughed about politics?

Plus, he’s the guy who introduced “weird” as the vaguely troll-y but comic, present-day but nonvicious putdown that ate the internet and is already driving Republicans batty. He also uses “creepy” to pave the way for “and weird.”

That launched him on TikTok, Instagram and X as a massive generator of memes. According to the Washington Post, “posts about Walz on TikTok racked up over 43 million collective views.”

And among other things, Harris’s pick might have reflected a need to appease the “old white man” portion of the voter base (even though Walz is only 60.)

But it turns out that there’s a real crossover appeal to millennials and younger voters, and they’re happy to make memes.

At first, they attached the tagline “Big Dad Energy.” I felt it.  Walz reminded me of one of those people in the Progressive Insurance ads whom Dr. Rick counsels against becoming their parents. They have the tendency to tinker, start a friendly conversation, save plastic bags, and talk about the weather with the neighbors.

In fact, “Tim Walz 100000% stands at his doorstep when it’s raining and says ‘we needed this,’” David Hogg, survivor of the Parkland High School shooting and now prominent gun-control activist, posted Tuesday on Instagram. That was answered with a torrent of posts attributing Midwestern dad values to Walz.

Some of the funniest:

“Tim Walz will shake your hand and leave you holding a Werther's Original.”

“Tim Walz taught me how to parallel park in five minutes.”

And my fave:

“Tim Walz is the kind of guy who says he’s just gonna scooch right past ya.”

As a country, it seems we’re longing for a big, loving, fair-minded daddy. A healing dad in a supporting role is even better.

Although he’s running for VP,  his vibe reminds me of the way that Ronald Reagan was savvy about being a paterfamilias, soothing the nation when we needed it, as he did with his speech when the Challenger exploded.   That’s one of the reasons “It’s Morning Again in America” message in 1984 resonated so deeply, way beyond the effects of political advertising.  We want to feel approved of and optimistic about the future.

And in a letter that Walz wrote to me right after he got the nod (well, he did ask for money) he said “As a former social studies teacher and football coach, I'll say it feels like the first day of school” which fits right into the “morning again” sensibility.

Meanwhile, the optimism and energy that our VP exudes could bring her crossover “Harris Republicans,” just as there were “Reagan Democrats.”

At the same time, it seems that traditional labels are changing.  These days, how do you define “moderate”? What is “progressive” or the “radical left”?  It’s true that in general, Dems have gotten more liberal in the last few years. Their perceptions of racial and gender discrimination increased, their feelings toward minorities improved, and their support of policies aimed at increasing diversity, like affirmative action and allowing more immigration, rose.

And younger voters on the left are even more so.

Still, within minutes of news breaking that Walz was Harris’s choice, the Republican National Committee sent out a press release branding Walz as “radical and extreme.” The Trump campaign issued a statement saying that, by selecting Walz, Harris “bent the knee to the radical left.”

Tapping the phrase “bend the knee” for a female candidate is downright creepy and weird.

But speaking of reversals, in his acceptance speech, Walz mentioned that “some of us remember when Republicans talked about freedom” -- and then spoke about the post-Roe turn of having government in our bedrooms. That’s where “mind your own damn business” came in, a fresh new line for talking about women’s loss of control over their own reproductive freedom.

Obviously, I’m a Democrat. And although Walz’ speech was spectacular, I will say that I didn’t like the Vance-getting-off-the-couch-joke. Of course, it got the biggest laugh line of the evening. But this was a story that started on the internet and has been discredited. In this case, I’m not for “what’s good for the goose….”  Although the right has already responded with a story about Walz and horse semen, which I don’t want to repeat.

In any case, it gave Walz the chance to say, “You know it, you feel it: These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.”

This race, compressed as it is into the next three months, will obviously get tough and ugly. Inevitably, both sides will look for weaknesses to exploit.

But at least for now, I’ll add another line from Healing Tim: “The future doesn’t have to be dark and weird.”