Letters from an American - August 6, 2024

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

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August 6th, 2024. Today, Vice President Kamala Harris named her choice for her vice presidential running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Walz grew up in rural Nebraska. He enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress, according to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. He went to college with the educational benefits afforded him thanks to his service in the Army and graduated from Chadron, Nebraska State College.

From 1989 to 1990, he taught at a high school in China, then became a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, who became his wife. They moved to Minnesota, where they both continued teaching and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF. and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF. Walls became the faculty advisor for the school's Gay Straight Alliance organization at the same time that he coached the high school football team from a 0-27 record to a state championship. The advisor really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married, Walls said in 2018.

Walls ran for Congress in 2005 after some of his students were asked to leave a rally for George W. Bush because one of them had a sticker for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Walls won and served in Congress for 12 years, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrast Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Committee on Veterans Affairs. Voters elected Walz to the Minnesota State House in 2018, and in his second term, they gave him a slim majority in the state legislature. With that support, Walz signed into law protections for abortion rights, supported gender-affirming care,

and legalized the recreational use of marijuana. He signed into law gun safety legislation and protections for voting rights and pushed for action to combat climate change and to promote renewable energy. Strong tax revenues and spending cuts gave the state a $17.6 billion surplus, and the Democrats under Walls used the money not to cut taxes, as Republicans wanted, but to invest in education, fund free breakfast and lunch for school children, make tuition free at the state's public colleges for students whose families earned less than $80,000 a year, and invest in paid family and medical leave and health insurance coverage, regardless of immigration status. While MAGA Republicans are already trying to define Walls as far left, his votes in Congress put him pretty squarely in the middle. His work with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan to expand technology production and infrastructure funding in the state was rewarded in 2023 when Minnesota knocked Texas out of the top five states for business. The CNBC rating looked at 86 indicators in 10 categories, including the

workforce, infrastructure, health, and business friendliness. Walls checks a number of boxes for the 2024 election, most notably that he hails from near the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and comes across as a normal, nice guy. He favors unions, workers' rights, and a $15 minimum wage. He is also the person who coined the phrase that took away the dangerous overtones of today's MAGA Republicans by dubbing them weird. As a student of his said, in politics, he's good at calling out BS without getting nasty or too down in the dirt. It's the kind of common sense he showed as a coach, practical and kind of goofy.

It's the kind of common sense he showed as a coach, practical and kind of goofy. Walls is also a symbol of an important resetting of the Democratic Party. He has been unapologetic about his popular programs. On Sunday, July 28th, when CNN's Jake Tapper listed some of Walls' policies and asked if they made Walls vulnerable to Trump calling him a big government liberal, Walls joked that he was, indeed, a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we're a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness. The fact of the matter is, where democratic policies are implemented, quality of life is higher, the economies are better, educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you're going to have a chance to go to college,

and you're going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you're going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you're going to have health insurance. So if that's where they want to label that are higher and you're going to have health insurance. So if that's where they want to label me, I'm more than happy to take the label. Right wing reactionary politicians have claimed to represent ordinary Americans since the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, exactly 59 years ago today, by insisting that a government that works for communities is a socialist plan to elevate undeserving women and racial, ethnic, and gender minorities at the expense of hardworking white men. Historically, though, rural America has quite often been the heart of the country's progressive politics, and the Midwest has had a central place

in that progressivism. Waltz reintegrates that history with today's Democratic Party. That reintegration has left the Republicans flat-footed. Trump and J.D. Vance expected to continue their posturing as champions of the common man. But on that front, the credentials of a New York real estate developer who inherited millions of dollars and of a Yale-educated venture capitalist pale next to a Nebraska-born school teacher. Brian Metzger, politics reporter at Business Insider, pointed out that J.D. Vance tried to hit Walls as a San Francisco-style liberal, but while Vance lived in San Francisco as a venture capitalist between 2013 and 2017, Walls went to San Francisco for the first time just last month.

Head writer and producer of A Closer Look at Late Night with Seth Meyers, Sal Gentile, summed up Walls' progressive politics and community vibe when he wrote on social media, Tim Walls will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your carburetor, replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door, and put a new chain on your lawnmower. Vice President Harris had a very deep bench from which to choose a running mate, but her choice of walls seems to have been widely popular. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party, York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party,

both praised the choice, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to post Dems in disconcerting levels of array. Harris and Walz held their first rally together tonight in Philadelphia, where Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who had been a top contender for the vice presidential slot, fired up the crowd. Each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game and to do our part, he said. Are you ready to do your part? Are you ready to form a more perfect union? Are you ready to build an America where no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, or who you pray to, that this will be a place for you? And are you ready to look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, hello, Madam President? I am too, so let's get to work. Pennsylvania is a crucial state,

and Shapiro issued a statement offering his enthusiastic support to the ticket. He pledged to work to unite Pennsylvanians behind my friends Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.