Barack Oba…er, Kamala Harris has picked Governor Klink to complete her ticket. The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention – Walz was governor because he’d made his deal with the devil.  

Part of the deal appeared to be “making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor”; her name appeared below Walz’s on most campaign literature – but was longer, and usually colored such that her name “popped” harder than Walz’s. 

You can hear the Twin Cities media going Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all the way to Chicago. Those of us who live here and pay attention – a painfully small Venn diagram, as the 2022 election showed us – know that, as Scott Johnson says,  Walz “casts the pale shadow of a man incapable of embarrassment and presents as an example of life imitating art, in this case the advertising art that created Joe Isuzu:

For those of you in my audience who aren’t from MInnesota, let’s go through a little of Tim Walz’s political record.

Congress:  Walz spent six terms as a US House rep from the 1st District – the largely rural southern tier of counties, at the time.  He ran to the commonsensical center to defeat the very moderate Gil Gutknecht; like Colllin Peterson, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy, he made moderate noises for his rural base.  He was a-rated by the NRA. 

And when Governor Dayton ran up to his term (and, likely, health) limit in 2018, Walz took that record – sans his NRA rating, which he dumped like it was a “3” when a “5” was batting her eyes at him:

Emerging As A Puppet: Tossing aside the NRA endorsement wasn’t enough to impress the DFL’s newly surgent “Progressive” wing, which pushed the overtly extreme Erin Murphy, backed with the equally gleeful extremist Erin Maye Quade at a convention where even Keith Ellison was too moderate (they endorsed fire-breathing socialist Matt Pelikan over the, I say again, too moderate Keith Ellison.

Not even picking Peggy Flanagan – literally the most extreme leftist in the Minnesota House at that time – was enough to slow the prog wave, although it was a start:

Of course, DFL chair Ken Martin knew the electorate wasn’t quite as demented as the DFL activist base – outside the metro, anyway – and put his foot down, He pulled his backroom deals, put the DFL’s money behind Walz/Flanagan, and dragged them over the line for a win in the 2018 DFL primary.

The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention – Walz was governor because he’d made his deal with the devil.  

Part of the deal appeared to be “making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor”; her name appeared below Walz’s on most campaign literature – but was longer, and usually colored such that her name “popped” harder than Walz’s. 

Unremarkable:  During those years, Walz’s most extreme urges were stymied by the GOP’s slim, often one-vote, majority in the Minnesota Senate.  Not that he didn’t try – but the worst instincts of his “progressive” regime got tempered by Paul Gazelka’s canny politicking – one might call it “rear guard action”, either in the military sense, or (to some) the “covering one’s ass” sense.  Take your pick. 

The Deluge:  And then came Covid.

Walz declared emergency power on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2020.   In an infamous press conference, he said Minnesota would have a bare minimum of 20,000 dead by July, if everything went perfectly – with 70,000 much more likely.  He seized emergency power, and shut down schools, churches, most businesses…

…but not big box stores, liquor stores, or “The World’s Largest Candy Store”, in Jordan, run by a major campaign contributor.   He declared broad swathes of Minnesota’s labor force “non-essential”.  He instituted a “snitch line”, which countless “Karens” used to report their neighbors for offenses against the Covid regime. 

He also repeated Andrew Cuomo’s catastrophic errors in handling long-term care of the elder;ly; the carnage in Minnesota’s nursing homes was epic, and inexcusable. 

But the death toll lagged his predictions – by about an order of magnitude.  And for a brief, weird moment, the media did the unthinkable – they asked questions . 

Including at a presser on May 11 – where a reporter asked if the Department of Health department would release the code for the model that had made the initial, alarming preductions .

And Walz’s spokesperson replied “No – because people might use it to get different results than we did”. 

Which, for those of us who passed ninth-grade science class, is the opposite of science. 

He held emergency power for seventeen months, for an emergency that in effect ended in the summer of 2020.

The Floyd Riots:  Walz’s performance during the George Floyd riots was perhaps more controversial – mostly notably when Mayor Frey of Minneapolis asked where the National Guard was, after 2-3 days of rioting, and the Governor, essentially, asked why the Mayor hadn’t put a cover sheet on his TPS report. 

Some in emergency management said he followed the plan (although the response was botched at many levels). 

Speaking as someone who lives in a neighborhood hit hard by the riots, I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now.   The Guard appeared in token numbers on the Friday after the riots came to Saint Paul – four days into the violence – and didn’t appear in numbers sufficient to tip the balance until Saturday. 

The Governor may have done his job – maybe.  But he did it to the absolute bureaucratic minimum standard.  The only two leaders in the whole affair were Chief Axtell, and then-president Trump, whose threat to send the 82nd Airborne may or may not have spurred actual action, but certainly seemed to, whether coincidentally or not.

The Flood:  And then came the 2022 elections.   

The DFL did what it does best – scare suburban women into thinking abortion (protected in the MN Constitution for years, now) was in imminent danger.   They rode that to seizing the “Trifecta” – control of both chambers of the Legislature. 

It was a close fight – Keith Ellison and Julie Blaha nearly lost.   1,000 votes would have swung the Senate to the GOP; about 4,000 more, the House.  Scott Jensen was a weak GOP candidate at the head of a decreasingly potent state GOP – but Walz only won by 8 percent. 

But the DFL governed like they’d had a California-style mandate.

And the results have been wretched.  I’ll just brain-dump them here:

• He and the DFL squandered a $19 billion surplus.  The “surplus” was structurally down to $2B as of the last forecast, but it’s going to be a deficit – right after the election.  The money went to buying votes (“Feeding kids!”) and frau/ /
• The Metro DFL is a fraud machine, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars through the HHS and Education Departments.  Faced with the news, Walz said “it’s not my job, man”.  
• Much of the surplus also went to “fully funding education”.  But school districts are still complaining about money, teachers are striking all over the place, and reading and math scores are still falling.  Graduation rates improved, briefly – when they state removed most standards. 
• While Minnesota’s population is said to be holding steady, it’s mostly because of immigration.  Minnesotans in their productive years, or with fungible capital, are leaving and taking their businesses and their money.
• College students and young people are leaving Minnesota.  That the reverse of the trend that obtained for decades before, when generations of young people – myself included – saw Minnesota as a destination. 
• While he prattles about “One Minnesota”, he has “sorted” Minnesotans pretty relentlessly. 
• He made MN a sanctuary State
• He pushed drivers licenses for illegals
• He drove making Minnesota a “trans refuge” – signing a law that mandated disregarding of child support decrees for children brought to the state by noncustodial parents to seek chemical and surgical neutering (alone among all causes).
• Crime in the metro is about double what it was ten years ago – and while it’s down a skosh from 2021, it’s waaaay ahead of pre-pandemic levels.

When they think they’re among friends, the left proudly recognizes Walz as one of their own. 

The Rule Of The Brittle:  Walz succeeded Mark Dayton – who was a fairly opaque governor, largely because his health was so atrocious his rarely went to the office (unreported by the state’s compliant media)

Walz is healthier – but far more opaque.  Other than the stage-managed pressers during Covid, his only real communication is via his very active Twitter feed, which provides a constant deluge of photos of him cavorting about the state, usually in his “regular Joe” costume of a seed cap and overstretched T-shirt.   State Fair time is usually high season – as he and his entourage waddle about the fair, sucking down corn dogs as the cameras roll. 

Which is probably a good thing – because he doesn’t handle questioning well.   And he appears to know it – the only debate in the 2022 cycle was on a feeble TV station in Rochester.  And Scott Jensen got under his skin – which isn’t hard to do.   He has a long record of losing his cool when people actually question him. 

So his handlers allow none of that. 

Speaking of questions:

Why Walz?   I think most national GOP strategists thought Josh Shapiro would be the prime choice.   Pennsylvania may be the swingiest of the swing states; some day it’s the hinge pin of this election. 

While Minnesota is a 50-50 state (four DFL and four GOP reps in Congress), the DFL turnout machine dominates state races against a MN GOP that makes the Vikings look like overachievers. 

if the state is in play then things are very bad for the Democrat indeed.  This doesn’t seem to track the situation. 

I’ll entertain thoughts in the comments.