Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate for a lot of reasons: he’s been an incredibly effective progressive governor, a congressman with a demonstrated ability to work across the aisle, and on the campaign trail he’s been able to defuse MAGA Republican leaders by calling them out as weird. But there’s something else that’s even more important, and it comes down to this story:
It’s the 1990s. Walz is still in his pre-politician days. He’s a teacher. And a coach. A football coach, in fact. And when a gay student asks him, in those still quite prejudiced days, to be the faculty sponsor for the first gay-straight alliance at the school, Walz comes to an insight worth dwelling on. He realizes that, of all the faculty at the school, there will be special power in a football coach embracing the cause.
Walz, in short, is the kind of older white guy who might show lost and confused men — his friends and neighbors — that you can be a dude and a mensch. He can fight for people on an emotional level that competes with the MAGA message and can show them by example that there’s real joy for everyone in realizing a multiracial democracy in America.
Read the full essay below:
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