First and Last to Appear, Inside the Starry Sphere

I linked to Molly Jong-Fast’s interview with Tim Walz in a post yesterday, but I there’s so much to mine here other than his comment about healthcare that I wanted to pull out the main points.

• Walz wanted to talk to Jong-Fast because he had been on a mission to The Hague to meet with Phillips, which is building a plant in Minnesota. He notes the hunger of Europe to believe that not all Americans agree with Trump.

• He says that, as a governor, right now the uncertainty feels like COVID to him. He notes that Mike Pence did all he could to help during that time, while acknowledging that it wasn’t great. There’s no Mike Pence now. The COVID analogy is something I want to write more about.

• He notes that one of the first things the Trump administration did was defund Lutheran Social Services, which is associated with his synod, the ELCA. (For those of you who didn’t grow up around a lot of Lutherans, there are a ton of synods, but the big ones range from extremely conservative, the Wisconsin Synod, to moderate, the Missouri Synod, to his liberal synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.). The American Association of Geographers was also defunded. Walz doesn’t think this was specifically aimed at him, but he wonders, especially about Lutheran Social Services.

• He believes that Democrats will be back in power, and when they are, people are going to expect universal health care. He makes the point that a one-vote majority is a majority. His message to Republicans: you are teaching us a lot of what we will do when we’re back in control. “We need to deliver for people, and that’s their downfall in this.” (Meaning: Republicans won't deliver shit.)

• “You lead with good policy and politics will follow that.”

• Jong-Fast throws him a question about the lack of Democratic media engagement. Walz, being Walz, takes ownership for his role in the loss, and acknowledges that he thought it was crazy to put Vance on every show, but he’s re-evaluating. He says that he thinks Dems left a void that Republicans filled.

• Walz makes the point that Obama didn’t have charismatic resistance. “It was Boehner and Mitch McConnell.” He acknowledges that some of it was pushed by right wing media, but he says some of it was organic. He thinks that the current protest are similar. “At least get out there and throw some gas on it.”

• He says that it’s good to hit on Republicans for lack of results, but when Democrats get in there, people are going to want some results. He doesn’t think all of the great work the Biden Administration did translated into the mainstream consciousness. He thinks that’s an issue of getting the message out.

• “I’m an unabashed believer in a shadow government.”

• He’s hard on himself for, in his mind, taking the bait on the eating dogs and cats line from Trump and Vance, and talking about it so much for a few days. He thinks it didn’t do a damn bit of good, electorally.

• This, to me, is the most important part of the interview: He notes that people might not like him, but he’s way more popular in Minnesota than Trump, and that’s because they don’t have anything to gripe about. He’s delivering on school lunch, soon on family medical leave, on people who have healthcare. Governors should not just resist, but deliver on policies that are popular. “That’s why you lean in on this gun stuff. Seriously, we’re having discussion about bathrooms when you can’t keep guns out of the school?”

• Molly says that what his handlers did wrong was not use him enough, and he switches the conversation to how they didn’t show enough of how great Kamala was, including her calming presence, especially with young people.

• He understands why Democrats want to see their politicians do something. More on the shadow cabinet. Example: a shadow HHS secretary who says that measles are bad. He also suggests a daily briefing similar to what was done during COVID, from governors, explaining what’s going wrong.

• Second most important point of the interview: Molly challenges him about a friend who said that free lunches are great but poor kids and poor moms don't vote. Walz responds that the free lunch was one of the biggest tax cuts middle-class people got. He hears from middle-class Republican-leaning moms that it was a big tax cut, and they have more time with their kids because they don’t have to make lunch. (The way to keep social welfare programs from being a wedge issue is to give the benefit to everyone. Jesus, why is that so hard.)

In a political world occupied by cautious lawyers (no shade on Kay, my family is full of lawyers, plus she’s not that cautious), Walz’ background as a teacher is a huge political benefit to him. He sees the good in a wide variety of people (as teachers must). He takes on responsibility if something he did failed — every kid who fails makes a teacher sad. He’s the ultimate team player, but like a good coach, once the game is done, he will look at what went wrong and what can be improved.

In the last 20 years, there are three politicians who I think are extraordinary: Obama, AOC and Walz. Right now, Walz is the morning star, and AOC is the evening star for Democrats.

(If you’ve read this far, you probably regret not just watching the video. Anyway, the title is a reference to a song by the drummer in one of Walz’ favorite bands, Hüsker Dü, Grant Hart. Grant died young (56), RIP. Here’s the song. Here’s Grant performing it live with a young guy, but first making sure he tries to sell the last three copies of that kid’s CD. Grant was born in St. Paul, and that’s a total Minnesotan move.)