In another American timeline, former football coach Tim Walz, rather than the Yale-educated MAGA toady J.D. Vance, is the vice president of the United States — in the White House of Democratic President Kamala Harris.
But Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and Walz, still the governor of Minnesota, was in Minneapolis on Monday giving a fiery speech to kick off the Democratic National Committee’s summer meetings. He even engaged in a bit of political fanfic, describing how a Harris presidency might be playing out right about now.
“We wouldn’t wake up every day to a bunch of shit on TV,” Walz said, “and a bunch of nonsense” from Trump. “We would wake up to an adult with compassion and dignity and vision and leadership doing the work — not a man-child crying about whatever’s wrong with him.”
The governor then offered a (perhaps less-than-heartfelt) wish of good health for the actual 79-year-old occupant of the Oval Office, whom the White House has disclosed is suffering from a circulatory ailment, chronic venous insufficiency, that causes swelling in his lower legs: ”May his fat ankles find something today,” Walz said.
Despite Walz’ high-profile sprint as Harris’ running mate in 2024, the Minnesota governor hasn’t seized the national spotlight during Trump’s second term. This is certainly true in comparison to fellow blue-state governor Gavin Newsom, who has begun trolling Trump by mirroring the president’s unhinged, ALL CAPS bluster on social media, and who has sought to counter Texas’ ultra-partisan House redistricting by pulling a similar move in California.
Walz used his address to Democrats and the national media to reassert himself as a player in the party’s future. Rare in a moment when Trump’s reactionary agenda is driving the national political conversation, Walz championed his own state as a model for American progress — a place that provides universal pre-K, feeds all students breakfast and lunch at school, offers the nation’s most generous child tax credit, and will soon lead the country with its paid family medical leave program.
Walz preached a message of inclusion. Amid Trump’s bigoted campaign to reverse diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across government, universities, and corporate America, Walz praised them. “We are proud of the diversity of this country,” he insisted. “We’re not shying away from diversity as a strength, and equity as a goal, and inclusion being the air we breathe.”
Walz also stuck his neck out for trans Americans, who are being excluded from sports, the military, and public facilities by Trump and Republicans — and some Democrats. “Minnesota ranks the highest per-capita for being a safe haven for transgender individuals,” Walz touted, insisting that standing up for society’s most vulnerable isn’t a distraction from the Democratic Party’s core messages. “We can talk about economic growth, and feeding children, and growing the economy, and creating jobs simultaneously with talking about [how] everybody’s human rights matter,” he said.
The Democratic meetings are taking place at a moment when six in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance as president. But this unpopularity is not rebounding to the opposition party’s benefit. Democrats’ own favorability polling is in the toilet, and recent reporting shows registered voters are leaving the party in droves.
Walz called out the press for giving undue weight to ideological divisions in his party. “It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military take over our cities … and the unconstitutional nature of the way they’re attacking our neighbors that the press finds the need to talk about, ‘Oh, there’s a division in the Democratic Party,’” Walz said, before adding: “There’s a division in my damn house, and we’re still married. And things are good!”
Walz countered that internal debates are a healthy sign in an era of red-hat MAGA minions following Trump’s whims in lockstep. “We are strong because we challenge each other,” Walz said of Democrats. “We are strong because we’re held accountable. We’re strong because we believe that there’s a place for everyone here.”
The governor insisted that Trump’s authoritarian threat to democracy is more than enough to keep Democrats focused. “Each and every one of us are unified around the idea that this cruelty must end,” he said, decrying Trump’s “slow-rolling attempt at undermining democracy.” The Minnesota governor underscored that it is important to describe the threat clearly: “I don’t think we do any favors when we don’t name it. These are fascist policies,” he said, “meant to take away” core American freedoms.
Walz closed by imagining the day when Trump and his movement are relegated “to the dustbin of history” and “people use it as a cautionary tale to scare the shit out of their children.” But to get the country there, he said, sounding much like a football coach in the locker room, the Democratic Party needs to keep putting “one foot in front of the other.”
For now, that includes contesting upcoming 2025 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and ramping up to contest the congressional midterm elections in 2026 that will determine control of the House. Most importantly, Walz said, Democrats need to “push back every single day [and] do not allow them to normalize federal troops in our cities. It is un-American,” he insisted, “and unconstitutional.”
