Ed note: Kamala Harris announced that Tim Walz will be her running mate. This interview with Ezra Klein covers many issues and hopefully will help VP Harris waltz with Walz into the White House.
By Ezra Klein in the NYT (listen here)
I’ve watched a lot of presidential campaigns, and I can’t remember one in which the contest for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination has played out quite so publicly. And that’s allowed for some voices and figures to break through who you might not have imagined before. Foremost among them is Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, because of one interview on “Morning Joe,” saying of Donald Trump and JD Vance, “These guys are just weird.”
That was the interview heard around the Democratic Party. I remember it hit me on social media. I saw that and thought, “Oh, that really connects.” And then all of a sudden, it was all you heard from Democrats. “Weird, weird, weird. These guys are weird.”
Why did this connect this way? And is there a risk of this falling into something that can bedevil Democrats, coming off as an insult to Trump’s supporters, like Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment in 2016?
I wanted to hear Walz go deeper on all of this. He grew up in a small town in the Midwest and repeatedly won a congressional seat that was quite red. So I also wanted to hear his thoughts on why the Democrats have been losing the types of voters he knows so well and how to win them back.
Walz joined me for a conversation on my podcast. This is an edited transcript of our conversation.
You’ve had a hell of a couple of weeks. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen any single person, including, for that matter, a president, change an entire party’s messaging the way your riff on “Morning Joe” — on the weirdness of Donald Trump and JD Vance and Republicans of their ilk — did. You’ve been using that word for a while when a lot of other Democrats are using “existential,” “terrifying,” “undemocratic.” I’m not saying you don’t believe those things. But why, for you, “weird”?
All those things are true about an existential threat to global peace, in my opinion, a desire to strip constitutional power and division. All of those things are true.
What I see is that that kind of stuff is overwhelming for people. It’s like other big issues like climate change. If you can’t tackle it one piece at a time, it just seems, why should I do anything about it?
It’s the emperor’s wearing no clothes, is all this story is — this guy’s weird stories and inability to connect like a human being. What happened was, the minute that spell came down, the minute everybody in the crowd realized the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, we can sweep in and say, “Who’s asking to ban birth control? Who’s asking to ban these books? Who’s asking to take veterans’ benefits away?”
And then we come in and say, “Look, Kamala Harris is talking about making sure that you have expanded health care, making sure there’s day care available, making sure that it’s easier to get free school lunches.”
And “weird” is specific to him. I’m certainly not talking about Republicans. I’m not talking about the people who are at those rallies. I’m hearing this from my Republican friends, because the people at those rallies, they’re the ones that can most benefit from the message we’re delivering. (continued)