Today on The BradCast: Well, the past 24 hours have turned out to be rather historic. At least I hope. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]
After having become the nation’s first female Vice President, Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Asian immigrants, was officially selected on Monday night by Democratic National Party delegates via an online roll call vote to become the first woman of color to lead a major party’s Presidential ticket.
But the California Democrat stepped on her own history-making moment by Tuesday morning when announcing her selection for Vice President: 24-year Army National Guardsman, former high school teacher and football coach, 12-year Congressman and two-term Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
In the hours since, the affable, blessedly normal, very progressive 60-year old, union-supporting Nebraska native — who flipped a rural Minnesota Congressional seat from red to blue in 2006 — became a bit of a national sensation, it seems to me. He was, after all, the one who appears to have cracked the code of how to attack the Republicans’ standard-bearer Donald Trump and his Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance with a simple, and even “Minnesota Nice” dismissal by referring to them as just plain “weird”.
But, as our guest today, The Nation’s progressive journalist, author, longtime Walz fan and native son of MN’s neighboring rust belt state of Wisconsin, JOHN NICHOLS, makes clear, Walz didn’t just come from nowhere. He has a history that Nichols has been sharing for days — well before today’s announcement — on his Twitter feed, with links to some great Walz moments over the years. His incredibly moving radio ad when first introducing himself to run for Congress in 2006; his sweeping video ad announcing his gubernatorial run in 2018; an impassioned, ass-kicking speech at the MN Legislature as Governor in 2023, as the 2nd Amendment supporter and 24-year veteran, deployed both domestically and overseas, promised (and then delivered) long-overdue gun safety laws to finally help stop the massacre of school children; being hugged by school children after signing a bill to ensure free public school breakfast and lunches for all; a telling moment when the Governor, in well-worn blue jeans, bends over to tie the shoe of a little girl.
“He is kind of an outsider on the national political scene,” Nichols tells me today, when explaining why he’s been posting Tweet after Tweet in support of Walz in recent days. “As of a couple of weeks ago, it’s safe to say that 99 out of 100 Americans couldn’t have identified him out of a lineup. So in a very short amount of time, this guy has come not from the mainstream, inner circle of the elite Washington Democratic Party, but from way outside, up on the border with Canada.”
“So I think there was a lot that people needed to understand quickly about the guy, and that’s one of the reasons why I posted a lot of those old campaign ads and videos — so people could understand that he didn’t just appear out of nowhere. This is kind of an amazing political figure.”
America is certainly learning that as of today, after what Nichols reported at The Nation this afternoon as the Paul Wellstone disciple who rose to the top during “a two-week ‘virtual campaign’ in which [Harris’ Veep contenders] would present themselves to the party and to the candidate and to the nation. … And, in so doing, she freed herself up to the prospect that the final pick might not be a predictable insider, or, to be more precise, the predictable choice of the predictable insiders.”
“There’s nothing radical about Tim Walz,” Nichols tweeted today, “except for his faith in the American people. He believes in an America where we treat one another as neighbors, lift one another up and build a future where no one is left behind. Walz is the opposite of JD Vance.”
Nichols has a lot to share about Walz’ background, Harris’ courageous selection, and how he believes that Trump has been “destabilized” by all that has happened over the past two weeks following Joe Biden stepping aside to make way for Harris. “Trump really does believe in a cult of personality. So, he couldn’t possibly imagine that Biden would ever give up the leadership of the party, never give up the candidacy. Well, Biden isn’t a cult of personality guy. He did give it up. That threw Trump off. I think Trump is still destabilized simply by that reality.”
“And then comes this good-humored guy out of the Midwest. Somebody who really does speak to a lot of the people Trump has tried to speak to, but instead of Trumpish-language — ‘I’m a billionaire from New York who knows things you don’t know.’ Tim Walz comes along and says, ‘I’m a teacher from Mankato. I know a lot of things you know. I get you. I get what you need. And I’m telling you, you’re not getting it from a weirdo.’ Suddenly, it’s like the whole conversation has changed. … And the Republicans are frankly going crazy.”
Nichols also explains how Walz on the ticket from neighboring MN, will “absolutely” have an effect on voters in the “Blue Wall” state of WI and beyond, and why the Trump Campaign’s laughable attack on Walz as a “West Coast wannabe…obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide” is probably going to miss by a California mile.
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the climate change-enhanced Hurricane Debby wreaks havoc across Florida, Georgia and South Carolina; as climate change changed the Paris Summer Games; as victims of the climate change-exacerbated wild fires in Maui get a small measure of justice; and as oil major BP is now all but conceding that fossil fuels will soon be on their way out…
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