Vice President Kamala Harris’s pick for governor of Minnesota. Tim Walz While her running mate suggests that Harris holds the view that Democrats are the normal party and Republicans are alien.
Walz has been calling Republicans “weird” since last year, and in recent weeks he has turned it into something of a rallying cry for his party.
“Nobody can imagine them in their own lives,” Walz said in one of his many recent TV appearances. “You never see this man [Donald Trump] laughing. You never see him do such normal things.”
Walz then described throwing a Frisbee to his dog and scratching his belly when he came home from work in the evening.
“Imagine these guys doing that kind of stuff. They just can’t do it,” he said. “And what it allows us to do is, we hear where you’re coming from.”
A model of moderation is certainly the senator from West Virginia. Joe Manchin ― who left the Democratic Party this year because he felt it had become too extreme ― praised Walz’s choice on Tuesday.
“My friend Governor Tim Walz will bring normalcy to the most chaotic political environment most of us have ever seen,” Manchin said in a statement from his office. “I can think of no one better to help bring our country together and restore balance to the Democratic Party than Governor Walz.”
The choice of Walz also stands in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who has been a major target of “weird” attacks from Democrats, who have criticized him for his 2021 critique of Democrats as “childless cat ladies” who are unhappy because they don’t have children.
In their announcement, Harris’ campaign members highlighted his background as a high school teacher and member of the Army National Guard, and the struggles he and his wife faced to have children.
“Governor Walz and Mrs. Walz struggled with fertility issues for years and had their daughter Hope through reproductive health care like IVF — further affirming his commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to this care,” 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 would be “fundamental” in the 2024 election. At the time, the Alabama Supreme Court had recently declared that human embryos are people, threatening access to IVF care in the state, in a decision that came after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights 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 at the time. “Because we had been married for eight years, had no children, and wanted children. We had Hope because of things like this.”
Vance has stressed that he never intended to criticize people who want children but can’t, and Trump, and most (but not all) Republicans nationally, have said they support IVF, even though it seems 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.
When he auditioned for vice president last week, Walz criticized Vance for talking about the choices people make in their families, linking the cat lady comment to Republican positions on reproductive health care.
“This is the golden rule that makes small towns work, so we’re not at each other’s throats all the time in a small town, mind your own business,” Walz said on MSNBC. “I don’t have to tell him about my family. I don’t have to tell him about my wife’s health care and her reproductive rights.”
