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The Progressive Populism of Tim Walz
Walz is making an argument for Harris and the party that is rooted in the rural values of regions where Democrats have struggled to compete in recent years.
Aug 09, 2024
Kamala Harris set up a virtual primary for the Democrats who wanted to join the party’s 2024 ticket as her vice-presidential running mate. She offered them all—governors and senators, progressives and centrists, East Coasters and Midwesterners, Southerners and Westerners—an opportunity to secure the nomination. And they all gave it their best.
So how did Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, arguably the least well-known and least politically connected of the finalists, come from the back of the field to win Harris’ confidence?
Democratic Party insiders and the political pundits who listen to them are struggling to figure out what just happened. But there is nothing complicated about the Walz surge.
“Their idea of freedom is to be in your exam room, your bedroom. You know, banning books, we’re banning hunger. These are Democratic policies.”
What Walz recognized—to a far greater extent than more centrist and cautious VP prospects such as Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—was that Democrats wanted to add a happy warrior on the ticket with Harris, whose replacement of President Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee has given the Democrat’s 2024 prospects a significant boost in morale and in the polls.
Walz had no problem fitting the bill. His record and political instincts positioned him as a candidate who is capable of winning where Democrats need to prevail in the race against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
As a Democrat who had won six races in a rural, Republican-leaning congressional district in southern Minnesota and then two terms as the governor of a politically competitive Midwestern state, Walz knew exactly how to rally the party base and to reach out to the progressive-leaning independents who must be mobilized to defeat the Republican right.
Where other Democratic candidates and party strategists had struggled for years to figure out how to characterize Trump and the MAGA cabal that has taken over the Grand Old Party, Walz got to the point in his first interviews as a VP contender. “You know there's something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read,” Walz toldMSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “That stuff is weird.”
The “weird” line went viral, as Democrats from across the ideological spectrum embraced what turned out to be a highly effective critique of Trump and Vance.
But there was much more to Walz’s appeal.
In a remarkable series of cable TV appearances in late July, at a point when the former teacher and National Guard master sergeant was still in the back of the pack of Democratic vice-presidential prospects, Walz made an argument for Harris and the party that was rooted in the rural values of regions where Democrats have struggled to compete in recent years.
“I grew up in a small town of 400 people. I have said I had 24 kids in my class—12 were cousins—graduating. That’s small-town America,” began Walz in one of his first MSNBC appearances during the VP race, turning the tables on Trump and Vance. “I said the thing that most irritates me and baffles me... is a failed real-estate guy from New York City that knows nothing about small towns and a guy who wrote a book that denigrates my neighbors and tells them that this is some type of cultural thing. I think the real message here is that the reason that rural America is struggling more—[with challenges such as the] outsourcing of jobs—is because of Republican policies and people like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist who cares nothing about those institutions there.”
Then he dug into the issues that actually matter to the rural regions, small towns, and small cities where Democrats need to do better—areas where, if the party can hold its own in the way that it did when Barack Obama was its nominee in 2008 and 2012, it will win nearly every swing state. And, perhaps, a few states that weren’t thought to be competitive.
“If you’re in a town of 400, there are two institutions that are the most important to your town. That is the public school and a hospital or a clinic, if you have it,” Walz said to MSNBC. “Both of those things are being gutted by the Republicans. They’ve been telling us for six-and-a-half years they have a plan on healthcare, and that means taking away Medicare and Medicaid and reducing [Affordable Care Act] access. And they talk about privatizing public schools.”
Rejecting the tired, and massively disproven, Republican talking point that says the private sector will invariably do a better job than the public sector, Walz mocked the GOP line that says, “Oh, we’re gonna privatize this and take the money out of our public schools.” Then he said, “Let me be very clear: When you talk about private education, that means you gut the public schools, you send [public money] to people [who are] already sending their kids to those schools, and you got it. So I think the condemnation of these people [is that] they don’t know middle America. They don’t know who we are.”
That is a progressive populist message that’s rooted in the rhetoric of Democrats such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who won rural Americans, and of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, who won enough rural, small town, and small city votes to tip the balance to their party in the elections of 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012.
It also reflects the record of a congressman from rural Minnesota who continuously won volatile elections from 2006 to 2016, and of the Democratic governor of a frequent battleground state who won big in 2018 and 2022.
Recalling his congressional wins, Walz now says, “I represented a district that Trump won by 18 points, but that got tougher and tougher.” But, instead of giving up, Walz says, “I think we need to take this populist message—the economy, the freedoms—[and say that]: These guys aren’t for freedoms. Their idea of freedom is to be in your exam room, your bedroom. You know, banning books, we’re banning hunger. These are Democratic policies. And I think the people in Missouri, [and] I would argue, the people in Montana, doing those types of things make a big difference. What is Donald Trump offering? You go to these rallies, he’s talking about Hannibal Lecter.”
And that, as Tim Walz put it, is weird.
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Raging Against White Rural Rage
In their new book, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman write as if economic class no longer exists or matters.
Apr 17, 2024
I don’t like to slam books, especially those ahead of mine on the best seller list. It might seem like petty jealousy. But one recent release, White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, is seriously flawed.
For starters, the authors write as if economic class no longer exists or matters. According to this book, all rural white people, or at least most of them, share similar racist attitudes. Class distinctions between bosses and workers, rich and poor, are meaningless.
Because Schaller and Waldman view the world through their anti-class, whiteness lens, they don’t consider the possibility that working-class voters share common attitudes across geographies. Contrary to their thesis, the research for my book found no discernable differences in attitudes on hot-button social issues between urban, suburban, and rural white working-class voters.
When Democrats, like Sherrod Brown, show the courage to fight against Wall Street’s war on workers they gain working-class support.
As Democratic Party pollster Mike Lux reports, “These voters wouldn’t care all that much about the cultural difference and the woke thing if the Democrats gave more of a damn about the economic challenges they face deeply and daily.”
Where’s the Beef?
Schaller put his cards on the table during an interview on MSNBC, during which he called rural Americans “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.”
The authors also claim it is getting worse. In defending themselves in The New Republic, they write that “as the rest of the country moved away from Donald Trump [in 2020] rural whites lurched toward him by nine points, from 62% to 71%.”
But voting for Trump is not the same as being a bigot. In fact, the data in my book shows that white working-class voters, rural and otherwise, are growing more liberal, not illiberal on key social issues.
Anti-Immigrant?
“Are you in favor of granting ‘legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years and not been convicted of any felony crimes?’” (Cooperative Election Study)
White working-class in favor:
2010: 32.1%
2020: 61.8%
Anti-Gay?
“Should gay or lesbian couples be legally permitted to adopt children?” (American National Elections Study)
White working-class in favor:
2000: 38.2%
2020: 76.7%
Increasing Racism?
“Agree that most Blacks just don’t have the motivation or willpower to pull themselves out of poverty.” (General Social Survey)
1996: 56.8%
2021: 32.8%
Furthermore, our data, which is derived from three large multi-year voter surveys, shows that from 20-50% of white working-class non-Democrats are liberal on social issues.
What About Sherrod Brown?
If white rural racism is the key to all politics, then why do significant numbers of rural voters in Ohio support Sen. Sherrod Brown, who in 2018 ran about 12% ahead of President Joe Biden in 2020? In fact, Brown, who votes liberal on social issues up and down the line, ran significantly ahead of Biden in every rural county.
Brown’s connection to working-class voters might have something to do with his willingness to take on Wall Street for ripping off workers again and again. It works politically because enough of those supposedly bigoted white workers care a lot more about never-ending job instability than they do about wokeness.
In his excellent review (and evisceration) of White Rural Wage, Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist, points out that:
Democrats who give in to the simplistic rage thesis are essentially letting themselves off the hook on the politics, suggesting that rural Americans are irrational and beyond any effort to engage them.
It’s not white rural rage. It’s not irrational rage either. Rather it’s very clear-eyed working-class anger as insatiable corporate greed tears up their lives.
When Democrats, like Sherrod Brown, show the courage to fight against Wall Street’s war on workers they gain working-class support.
Maybe it’s time for a little more Democratic Party rage?
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Idaho Hospital Ends All Labor and Delivery Care, Citing Abortion Ban
"Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines," said Bonner General Health as it closed its obstetrics unit.
Mar 22, 2023
Rural areas in the U.S. have faced a decline in hospitals that provide obstetric services for years, and the fate of one hospital in northern Idaho suggests that abortion bans could worsen the trend.
As The Washington Post reported reported Tuesday, Bonner General Health in Sandpoint, Idaho has been forced to announce the impending closure of its labor and delivery department, citing staffing issues as well as the state's punitive abortion ban—one of the strictest in the nation—and threats from state Republicans to make the law even more stringent.
The state's ban criminalizes abortion cases in almost all cases and threatens doctors who provide care with felony charges, suspension or termination of their medical license, and up to five years in prison. It includes potential exceptions for people whose pregnancies result from rape or incest and people who doctors determine face life-threatening pregnancy complications—but as Common Dreams has reported, such exceptions have led medical providers to withhold care until a patient is sufficiently ill, placing them in danger.
The threat of prosecution and pressure to withhold medical care from people who need it has contributed to the hospital's staffing shortage, said Bonner General Health in a statement late last week.
"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs."
"Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult," said the hospital. "In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines."
Idaho Republicans have proposed classifying abortion as "murder from the moment of fertilization" and have called for bans that extend to people whose pregnancies result from incest and rape.
"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs," hospital spokesperson Erin Binnall told the Post.
Patients in Sandpoint will now have to travel to Coeur d'Alene, about 45 miles south, to deliver their babies. The city now has the northernmost labor and delivery department in the state, and people living near the state's northern border may have to travel two hours to reach the hospitals there.
Bonner General Health announced its decision days after the podcast "This American Life" featured an interview with an obstetrician who has worked for several years at Bonner General Health but has considered leaving the state since Idaho's ban went into effect last June, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
"I was looking at social media and somebody was talking about a person who is completing their OB-GYN residency and was looking to come to the Pacific Northwest," said Dr. Amelia Huntsberger. "And I'm like, hey, there's all sorts of openings in Idaho. And then I'm laughing out loud because I'm like, who is going to be finishing their residency training and being like, I definitely want to go to the state with the super strict abortion laws that criminalize healthcare?"
The Journal of the American Medical Associationpublished a report in 2018 showing that a lack of obstetric care in rural hospitals is associated with a rise in preterm births and more people giving birth in facilities where medical staff lack the proper training to assist with labor and delivery, such as emergency departments. High rates of maternal mortality are also associated with "maternity care deserts," which include nearly half of rural U.S. counties, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Nearly 90 rural obstetrics units closed their doors between 2015 and 2019, with hospitals citing financial losses associated with high numbers of patients who use Medicaid as well as difficulty in recruiting and retaining doctors.
"This will be the beginning of a trend, I fear," said behavioral scientist Caroline Orr Bueno of Bonner General Health's decision. "We already have a maternal mortality crisis in the U.S.—we're the only country in the developed world where maternal mortality rates are increasing—and abortion bans are going to make it worse."
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