The Allure of Tim Walz’s Progressive Populism

In the 72 hours since Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate, the charismatic military veteran and former high school social studies teacher has become a progressive sensation.

He’s been praised by his political peers across the spectrum. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez poked fun at the frequent media criticism about Democrats being in disarray by describing the wide-ranging appeal of Walz as “Dems in disconcerting levels of array.”

Walz is a former union member and advocate for workers’ rights, and major labour unions across the country were quick to publicly endorse him.

He seems to be stepping into a political gap that has been sorely felt by many Americans for years.

“In conveying the dignity and reality of what is casually derided on the coasts as ‘flyover country,’ Mr. Walz speaks plainly yet eloquently in the parlance of my place and thereby fills a decades-long geographic messaging gap for Democrats,” wrote Kansas author and journalist Sarah Smarsh in the New York Times. “What an absolute balm for my country heart.”

People across the wider, wilder internet felt it too. The discourse on X saw hundreds of thousands of likes for Walz’s genuine affection for children and animals. His recipe for Minnesota hotdish has been circulated widely on both social and legacy media.

Is the former high school football coach healing a nationwide dad wound that we haven’t fully acknowledged at scale until now? Walz’s former students have been sharing moving, viral reflections on his impact on their young lives.

“I was a ‘C’ ish student in high school,” wrote Duluth, Minnesota, resident Noah Hobbs on X. “Mr. Walz took the time to make sure that I was successful.”

“I know I wouldn’t be who I am today had Mr. Walz not taken the time to connect with me in a genuine way and showed that I mattered as much as the ‘A’ students,” he continued.

The raw video footage of a March 2023 press conference where Walz signed a bill for a free school lunch program to become law features several community members in tears while they speak of the bill’s impact.

Clips of the video, which have since gone viral, show Walz signing the bill while surrounded by students of Webster Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

After he holds up the signed bill to applause, he offers a celebratory fist bump to the kids around him. They respond with an unexpected cascade of hugs.

What social media consumers won’t see when they watch the viral clip are the moments that establish the context for the outpouring of affection, moments that don’t scan as enticingly for a fast-moving audience online.

Before he signs the bill, Walz pauses to explain the new legislation to the students, breaking down a political process in a way that makes sense to children.

Press events can’t possibly tell us everything about a person, but they say a lot. Throughout his half-hour at the school, Walz uses his speaking time not to centre himself but to thank the many people who make bills like his possible. He is friendly but not overbearing, telling people what he’s doing instead of telling them what to do.

The room is full and the crowd is boisterous, and he carries himself with the awareness that he is a man in a school full of women and children. He embodies the cardinal rule of contemporary educators: give people space to get to know you, and don’t touch anyone without their consent, especially kids.

All of this is notably different from the recent aggressive behaviour of Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance and presidential candidate Donald Trump.

A wholesome side dish to ‘brat summer’

Walz brings a big-hearted authenticity to an election year that, until President Joe Biden exited the presidential race on July 21, had been marked by cynicism and a disturbing sense of disenfranchisement.

But is this, to use a word that vaulted Walz to popularity before he joined Harris on the 2024 ticket, a little weird?

If the unfamiliar feels strange, absolutely. That’s because the populist appeal key to Walz’s influence has, aside from the more niche space Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders holds in the hearts of many leftists, been largely reserved for people more politically conservative than he.

“Something I’ve been seeing online is that the Harris-Walz campaign is doing ‘cringe’ things,” Vancouver political strategist Will Shelling wrote on X this week.

Perhaps he’s referring to Harris’s “brat” summer. With her politically moderate values and her strategic campaign wardrobe of neutral suits, the former federal prosecutor has been capitalizing on the momentum of runaway pop star Charli XCX, whose hard-partying esthetic contributes to the mid-2020s indie-sleaze revival.

According to Charli XCX, to be “brat” (she released her chart-topping summer 2024 album, Brat, in June) is to embrace a messy, liberatory hedonism: “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.”

“Kamala IS brat,” the British singer-songwriter declared on the occasion of Harris’s presumptive nomination.

Charli XCX’s post went viral and inspired the visual identity of Harris’s campaign. But hip kids were quick to denounce it.

Even so, there is something of value here, Shelling suggested.

“This is widening the tent, getting people talking,” he wrote. “And people who are not usually invested in politics (e.g. young people who are chronically online) are now sharing memes. It’s good.”

Progressive populism is interesting because it’s largely unfamiliar to us here in Canada. We don’t have many, if any, recent examples of it done with much success.

Could it work in BC?

As we move towards B.C.’s Oct. 19 provincial election, I’ll be curious to see if candidates and their teams strive to emulate the breezy effortlessness of Walz’s salt-of-the-earth brand of progressive populism.

We might see versions of this strategy deployed in a host of contexts, including the municipal realm, which will always carry echoes of its provincial relations.

In an unexpected way, the low-key yassification of a large and anticipated annual conference for elected officials in B.C. has already begun. The organizing committee of the Union of BC Municipalities convention recently announced that former MuchMusic VJ George Stroumboulopoulos will deliver the keynote address for its September conference in Vancouver. The convention is attended by municipal and provincial leaders from across the province.

Strombo’s presence on the bill could be read as a bat signal to left-leaning elder millennials and gen-Xers who grew up watching him host punk and alternative rock shows on MuchMusic. Do they comprise UBCM’s hoped-for audience? It’s hard to see his resonance with the likes of John Rustad and his Conservative Party of BC.

Years before he became B.C.’s premier, David Eby was a widely quoted young lawyer who worked in the Downtown Eastside for the Pivot Legal Society and, later, for the BC Civil Liberties Association. He was a prominent voice in the lead-up to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, speaking frequently to the media about the social impacts of the Games that the BC Liberal government of the day seemed to largely ignore.

I was one of the local reporters in the crowd at his press conferences. I quoted him often. Eby offered articulate, impassioned commentary on the impacts of Olympics-related displacement for unhoused and marginalized people.

He was respected as a progressive voice in the public conversation. But then and now, there was a fractious division between Eby’s vision for social change and those on the left for whom social justice meant taking direct action in the form of a more disruptive style of activism than would be characteristic of a person who attended a Catholic high school in Kitchener, Ontario, and loved studying English literature at the University of Waterloo.

Things reached an inflection point in February 2010, when Eby, then a leading Olympics critic, was pied in the face by a fellow anti-Olympics critic at a community event.

“Eby wiped the pie off his face and delivered a long talk to a tough crowd,” wrote Geoff Dembicki in The Tyee.

“He was frequently interrupted and booed. The animosity was palpable. Eby referred to the events of Saturday as a ‘disaster’ for any future social movement building.”

The challenge Eby has faced politically — of appealing to a wide spectrum of progressives without losing the centre — will continue to play out this fall, for him and likely others across the BC NDP.

It remains to be seen whether or if progressive populist messages from the party could resonate with the voters they may be hoping to secure.

Maybe part of the appeal of Tim Walz is that, at least for now, he provides a joyful, relatively uncomplicated respite from the less adorable, infinitely less meme-able realities of life in politics, no matter where it plays out.

We’ve seen a recent rocky road to due process at Vancouver city hall. Mayor Ken Sim has made sustained, effortful attempts to bring “swagger” into municipal politics. Two years into office, I’m still not sure who he hopes to convince.

At the municipal and provincial levels in B.C., the abundance of baby farm animals, rescue pets and youthful fans that festoon Walz’s public image are just not there. But their absence shouldn’t be reasons for voters to stop engaging. They should be invitations for them to listen harder.