The joyful Minnesota governor is a valuable spokesperson for Harris whose background and personality can help the Democratic ticket undermine Trump’s efforts to woo America’s men.
Tim Walz’s first official speech on the Democratic ticket displayed all the reasons that Kamala Harris has been lauded for picking the Minnesota governor as her running mate. Personally, I think one outshines all the rest.
Walz’s military background and his work as a high school teacher and football coach, along with his palpable joy and open expressions of compassion for people in need, offer America a vision of what manhood can look like — he’s a “joyful warrior” offering a vision in contrast with what’s being offered by Donald Trump’s bravado-driven campaign.
And he’s clearly willing to challenge Team Trump on that front. He displayed that even before he received the call to join Harris’ campaign, using public appearances to refer to Trump and his allies as “bullies” who are truly weak at heart and by mocking the GOP ticket for “running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something.”
Don’t you see how your vision of what masculinity can be still focuses on his military service and his love of football?
Maybe he could be accepted by patriarchal heterocisnormative society as an example of masculinity. Maybe. I don’t think it would go that way. I think he’d be treated like a model minority and “one of the good ones”, used to denigrate other gay men for not being sufficiently masculine. His traditionally masculine qualities would be played up and anything that subverted that would be downplayed and ignored.
Play up his role as husband and father, play down his actually existing husband, etc.