The Democrats’ Carhart Messiah? “Is Tim Walz the Midwestern dad the Democrats need?” Ezra Klein names his latest piece New York Times Podcast interview with Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris. One tweet that has resonated with about 46,000 people read: “Tim Walz is the father an entire generation wishes they had instead of the father Fox News lost.” “In Waltz, Harris is seen wearing a card Hart’s battlefield strategy,” read New York Times Lisa Lerer analyzes workwear brands. One politician joked: “Walz will host daily live broadcasts for the remainder of the campaign, explaining to voters how to fix a running toilet, how to check the oil level on your car and how to properly patch holes in drywall. “X.”
“It’s fascinating in the sense that I haven’t seen a rally like this on TV or in person in a while,” reporter Mike Barnicle told MSNBC, referring to It was Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who held a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday. “Watching it, you could feel the power in the hall — it was the power of joy, the power of laughter, the power of hope for the future… No aspect of American politics has held anyone accountable for a long time. All with smiles on their faces.
The reception from many of the media was warm and lovely. But Tim Waltz is not your father. He is not your handyman. He’s not even necessarily a pragmatic alternative to Harris, who seems to be channeling ideological preferences — bigger government, higher taxes and a broader welfare state — and extending an olive branch to the progressive far left. Embracing more moderate swing states like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro may be a more pragmatic option.
“My biggest concern with these comments is that people are conflating some true things – Minnesota is in the Midwest, Walz represents a rural area, Walz has a rough white demeanor – and create a Wrong impression that Tim Walz is a rough white guy ) writes. Slow and boring. “The reality is that Minnesota is more educated, more urban, more liberal than Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania, so traditional liberals can do very well there. No Performs well in rural areas of the Midwest.
Walz is seen as an affable Midwestern father, especially when paired with Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance (whom Walz refers to as “J.D. Vance”) Strange, leading to a strange news cycle in which other Democrats keep jumping on the bandwagon), which is pretty irritating to many elite coastal news outlets. The question is whether swing state voters will actually buy into that sentiment.
Waltz’s actual record: For better or worse, Walz has pursued fairly progressive policies during his nearly 20 years in politics, and over time his policies have moved further to the left. He is keen on raising taxes, including income taxes and gas taxes. The state agencies he leads work with a variety of wasteful and fraudulent organizations to distribute taxpayer dollars to entities that mismanage the funds. He continued to allow this practice during the pandemic when he wanted to give so-called “hero pay” to so-called frontline workers, which resulted in some 333,000 people claiming they were eligible when in fact they were not (or in some cases , completely disqualified) fraud, such as, uh, dead people trying to get a check). The responsible state agency issued the check anyway, and the whole plan was derailed.
During COVID-19, Walz has implemented a similar authoritarianism to his blue-state counterparts: limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings, mandating mask wearing, reporting a coronavirus hotline (the executive order states that violators can be punished with 90 days in jail) , and a nursing home policy that is very similar to New York.
What does Minnesota have to show all these approachable fathers to govern? Immigration issue!
Cato’s Chris Edwards and Ilana Blumsack noted in their fiscal policy report card evaluating the nation’s governors: “IRS data shows that for every three households the state gains, it loses four households making more than $200,000. ” Tim Waltz gets an “F.”
As some defenders on the left might claim, Walz is not even uniquely effective at governing. “The key thing to note during his tenure as governor is that Democrats won a slim legislative majority in Minnesota in the 2022 midterm elections,” Iglesias wrote. “This is despite Minnesota being a center-left state. state, but they have not historically had a Democratic three-game winning streak. long time. As a result, only a raft of standard Democratic bills gained ground over the years, and Walz signed a slew of legislation. This doesn’t create the People’s Republic of Minnesota or anything, it mostly reflects the fact that Minnesota’s pre-2022 policy status quo is unreasonably conservative relative to the underlying partisanship.
Walz’s selection probably won’t affect that much. Most voters who are less politically engaged and live in swing states likely won’t care much or spend that much time studying Walz’s record. But the choice is interesting because of what it says about Harris — who made a major gesture to the progressive left — and about the media, who are strangely hungry for a good-guy father figure and may have been blinded by both. Eye.
New York scene: Journalist/independent photographer Samuel Seligson has been charged with a hate crime. Authorities say he was involved in vandalizing the Brooklyn Heights home of Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak with red paint. The vandalism accused her of being a “white supremacist Zionist”. Seligson’s attorney, Leena Widdi, said Seligson was acting in his capacity as a journalist. Others claim he is a member of the extremist group Antifa and has a long history of targeting Jews in their homes. It was also noted that Seligson was not carrying any photography equipment when he was arrested, but was acting as a lookout for vandals and did not appear to be operating in a journalistic capacity.
“Beginning in 2015, during Ms. Pasternak’s tenure, community organizers staged protests at the Brooklyn Museum,” the report said. New York Times. “During the Israel-Hamas war, the museum has been targeted by pro-Palestinian activists who allege ties between wealthy trustees and Israel’s military-industrial complex, a charge that museum officials deny.”
Quick click
- I bring you good news and bad news. Last night, Cory, a member of Bush’s “squad” who served as one of the Missouri representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, lost the primary election. Unfortunately, Justin Amash also lost the Michigan Senate primary.
- “Some of the best evidence that we still live in a free market economy is that big tech companies are hated by people [former President Donald] Trump has done very well in his presidency, and Big Oil, which Biden hates, has done very well in his. National Review. “If you can make a bunch of money investing in companies that the president hates, that’s a pretty good sign that you live in a free country.”
- The Biden administration has decided to phase out single-use plastic tableware in all federal government departments and buildings, as if that’s what’s going to save the environment.
- “back [Hugo] After Chavez’s death, [Nicolás] Maduro continues to pay lip service to socialism and blame the United States for all of Venezuela’s problems, but he has no real ideological fervor,” wrote reasonIt’s Jim Epstein. “As Martin Gurri recently observed of post-Castro Cuba, ‘the last stage of communism is the Mafia,’ the same insight fully applies to Venezuela.”
- Evergreen tweets:
All the misinformation reporters can fuck with traffic cones.
— Mary Katherine Ham (@mkhammer) August 7, 2024
