Tim Walz

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Today we discuss Kamala Harris's Vice Presidential pick, Tim Walz. We're also going to be talking about Walz's state of Minnesota and how impressive it is that their one-vote majority of Democrats is passing so much policy. We'll compare it a little bit to Massachusetts, where we will be discussing our session this time around, which is abysmal in how little we have passed.

Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 57. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to incorruptible mass. Our mission here is to try and help you and us all transform state politics, because we know that we could have a legislature that supports the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful state. And today we are going to be talking about Harris's vice presidential pick, Tim Walz.
And we're also going to be talking about his state of Minnesota and how impressive it is that their one vote majority ofDemocrats there is passing so much policy. We'll compare it a little bit to Massachusetts, where we will be discussing our session this, this time around, which is abysmal in how much we have passed. But before we get on to all of that fascinating stuff, I am going to introduce my two illustrious co hosts.
And I will start off with Jonathan, if you would introduce yourself. Yes. Hello.
Jonathan Cohn. He him, his. I'm joining from the south end in Boston.
I've been active on progressive issue and electoral campaigns here in Massachusetts for a little over a decade. Thank you.And Jordan.
Jordan Berg Powers. He him. And I am coming from Worcester, Massachusetts.
And I love you all. And I mean, you listening right now so much that I am missing the US women's national team playing right now to be here to talk about this really important topic. But that's how much I love this podcast.
Awesome. And I am Anna Callahan. She her coming at you from Medford, you know, super into local politics across the country.
Love working on state politics with these guys and running this podcast. And we are so excited to talk today about the very new news, which, by the time this podcast comes out, we'll be a few days old, that the democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris, has chosen her own vice presidential pick, Tim Walz of Minnesota. I will say he was my top pick.
He is the one that Bernie wanted, which, of course, means a lot to me, being a Bernie person. And because of that, I was quite sure that he would not be picked. And so I am thrilled.
I was thrilled. He's like, so pro union, and he's great. He's done a lot of wonderful, amazing things in Minnesota.
And I would love to hear from you guys your thoughts on Tim Waltz. Jordan, do you want to start? Okay, so the thing that I Find really, really kind of refreshing about Tim Waltz as a democratic politician, and let me just pull up this quote so I can say it correctly about. So ultimately, and before I get to the quote, ultimately, it feels very radical in Democratic Party politics these days when, when you see politicians campaign on doing things and then get into office and, like, actually do the things that they campaigned on.
So republican right, like, it shouldn't feel radical. And it's something that I also feel like Democrats often, that for those of us on the left often get, I feel, get unfairly maligned by a bunch of, let's say, folks in, let's say, a centrist democratic operative world. But we demand so much and yada, yada, whereas most of us acknowledge that the extent of things that we would like to see may not happen, but we would, but we would like to see democratic politicians at least do the things that they say they believe in doing, because even just that alone is much better than the status quo.
And it's refreshing when Democrats actually believe that. Like, the quote that I was alluding to is Tim waltz saying, kind of right now Minnesota is showing the country, you don't win elections to bank political capital, you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives. Yes.
Yes. And I think that's like an important, like, just like a fundamentally important kind of framework like, framework to realize that when Democrats in Minnesota finally achieved a trifecta, something that they hadn't had, they won the House, the state house, the state senate and the governorship, the governor, because of having had republican governors in that recently, recent history, and having had a republican senate for a number of years, and they only won the Senate by one vote. But when they did achieve that, they actually were like, okay, we have all of these policies that we wanted to be able to pass, and by being in the minority, we haven't been able to.
And so they’ve had an incredibly productive legislative session. And, like, in some cases, doing things before Massachusettsitself did them. Like, I want to get into that in a second, if you don't mind.
Can we just, I just want, like, a few thoughts about Tim, and then I really want to go block where we talk about Minnesota And everything. They're comparative to Massachusetts. The other thing I would just know with that is that I appreciate one that kind of conscious thing. He's somebody who has very strong labor cred, which I think is important. And I think as somebody who, as somebody who has, like, good relationships with a variety of, variety of people in Congress, I think it's important. Like, if you have somebody who gets very positive statements issued about them by both AOC and Joe Manchin, they're doing, they're remarkably impressive at politics and stuff in some way.
And I think that that's much to his credit, that he was able to be kind of well liked by his colleagues in the House, he had somebody who had won a historically republican seat and held it even amidst republican waves. And as somebody wholike, as somebody who's a former high school teacher, brings up, brings even a professional background that is often underrepresented in democratic politics, where often our highest ranking politicians are all lawyers. And that's not necessarily like we have many, like no shade against lawyers.
We have many competent, wonderful politicians who are lawyers. But the legal mindset isn't the only important mindset that needs to be represented, particularly because the problem with that you can often get with certain attorneys is that I,as a mindset of how the law tells you what you shouldn't do. Rather, it becomes too much of a, too much of a mindset in democratic politics rather than how can the law tell you how to do what you want to? Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. I'll just say the other thing that I like really quickly about Tim, about Tim Walls is the way he communicates. I think that that is another lesson for us.
I admire politicians who can take are progressive values, but not even necessarily progressive values because I think you can oversell people as necessarily progressive. He takes the values that underpin a lot of the things that reason progressives like certain policies. He takes those values and talks about them.
And so that's the thing that he does really well in a way that's like totally approachable for people. And that's actually for me,the lesson is he himself doesn't always support the most progressive version of any one policy, but he talks about them in our values in a way that surfaces them so that people who don't necessarily share our values share that shared, don't necessarily share the outcome. Right.
They don't necessarily even understand the policy, but share our values. He connects on that level, and that's how you win political power is through that process. One thing I think on that, that's so true.
Say two things. One, I did appreciate his line recently when pushing it back against republican complaints about how one person's socialism is another one's neighborliness, which I thought was a very good kind of pushback about that, of like, no,you're just about like trying to help other people. And that brings it down a level from the kind of realm of like, specific,concrete policies to Jordan, as you're not speaking to, like, what is the overarching, just like, kind of values framework that you're approaching policy and things that speak to, like, underlying values and kind of people's everyday experiences and connecting policies.
I don't know if either of you saw, going around the other day, a radio ad that he had done when he was running for Congress first in 2006, and it was talking about how because of his experience in the military, he had become partially deaf in one year, and talking about, because of having health insurance coverage, was able to go and finally get. He was able to finally get surgery to hear that covered. And then, like, one day he turns this to his wife and being like, wait, what am I hearing? And it was apparently, like, his daughter, who was, like, singing every morning that he had never been able to hear because of being deaf in that ear, and then uses that story to talk about the importance of everybody having the best health insurance coverage we can provide for them.
And it's a very effective thing that understands the fundamentally, like, emotional resonance of, like, kind of something that is, like, a very relatable, fundamental. It's a parent-child kind of relationship and using kind of the emotion, both the emotions of that and the relatability of that to connect to talk about health insurance. Yeah, absolutely.
One of the things that I really like about him, I was thinking about this. Cause I was listening to a lot of things about the six pick, you know, the six potential vice presidential picks. And a lot of people were saying, oh, well, she won't wanna pick TimWalsh because she's already being labeled as too liberal and from California and all that stuff.
And in my mind, I don't think a lot of voters think that she's too liberal. I think a lot of voters think that she's a wealthy politician lawyer from the Bay Area. Right.
She has a little bit of this elitist kind of sensibility to her. Whereas Tim Walz, a high school teacher, football coach, a guy,the way, just way he talks, the way he presents himself, he really just seems like a totally regular guy and sounds really authentic. And to me, that kind of balance is more what, what regular folks are actually going to respond to rather than this,like, being smeared as, you know, left or right or whatever.
That talks about a lot. So because he doesn't, I don't think that. I don't think he, like, telegraphs as, like, that.
If you were to ask people how progressive Tim Waltz is, he's not going to be ranked, like, just because people respond to,like, vibes often more than specific policies that somebody who is the, like, high school, the veteran high school teacher hunter, is not going to respond to signal, like, rabid Lefty to the average. Totally. Well, let's go ahead and shift to talking about Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Kind of. I'd love to cover Minnesota first and all the amazing accomplishments we have. I don't know, Jordan, if you want to jump in a little bit about this.
So Minnesota had a one vote majority, a one vote majority in their house. They passed twelve weeks of paid family medical leave. The opportunity for residents to buy into Medicaid, free public college tuition for low income and middle families, anew child tax credit, free breakfast and lunch for all public school students, which Tim Walz obviously talked about.
Driver's licenses for all people, regardless of immigration status. They passed strong protections for workers seeking unions. How about that in a state? And then my favorite part about it is that they then, in the press release about this, it says,take a deep breath.
There's more comic. And that middle class seniors will no longer pay state income taxes and Social Security benefits. They Made it immediate.
They restored voting rights for felons who have completed their prison sentences. That's 55,000 people in Minnesota. If you were serving life behind bars, as for a crime you committed as a child, you're now eligible for release after 15 years.
So if you're a child, they created not only a system to make sure that you stay in the children's system better. Also, if you came in our old system, you now have opportunities for release because again, you were a child. Suspending gun permits for people experiencing mental health crisis.
They, they pass recreational marijuana just from the legislature about that. Just passed it. And they, they passed a new state law protects abortion rights and a, quote, trans refugee law shields transgender children who travel to Minnesota for medical transitions from legal repercussions from their home state.
And they set a goal of moving Minnesota to carbon free, 100% carbon free by 2040 and a real plan to do it. And it was. Yeah.
And got nicknamed the Miracle Miles Minnesota Miracle. And I just want to say really quickly, one quick thing for those of you who don't remember, we also passed paid family medical leave after agreeing. After threatening to go to the ballot, the legislature passed it.
When the legislature did it, it took away money from poor people who were getting time and a half. It took away money from them because corporations said to do so. It said we, even though paid family medical leave is an insurance lots of people pay in, it's not just the corporations who have to worry about.
Right. Even though it's not, it didn't cost them that much. The corporation said if you do this, pass them a minimum wage and pay them monthly.
You have to exact the cost on workers. We're going to steal their money. We're going to take money that they've been earning away from them.
And Democrats in Massachusetts were like, that seems fair. That didn't happen in Minnesota. They just passed it.
They just helped people. They passed paid medical leave, and then that's what happened. And what kind of gets me with this is that there are certain things on the list of what Minnesota has done that I feel like a Massachusetts state legislature would be like, well, we've done as, like the paper where we've done that, too.
And Massachusetts has an over 80% democratic house in a 90% democratic Senate. And some of these things we did after Minnesota did. So that, like you, we've had that democratic supermajority for years.
If Minnesota is just doing a number of things now that they. A majority, like, why weren't we doing those two years ago, four years ago, six years ago? We've had a Democrat. We've had a democratic house and a democratic Senate since my dad was born in the late 1950s.
And that they've. So, like, what was the hold up? I mean, but I guess, yeah, I just would say also that we just also have it. The Other thing I didn't mention on this is they passed it.
So Minneapolis had an Uber Lyft bill that Uber and Lyft were threatening to pull out of the state, and the state legislature stepped in to fix the problem. Not as progressive as we, by the way. They didn't step in to prevent the city from doing this.
What our state would do. Right. They put.
They came in and passed something that at least got them further along, was hailed by the people who are pushing Uber and Lyft as really good and created some clear guidelines for them. So they did the. So they. So they pushed it and did the right thing. So just to be. I mean, because we don't do these things, we don't exempt our seniors from Social Security and things we don't.
I apologize to interrupt you, but I just have a special guest here, which is my son, and I'm going to just have him say hello.Hey, sweetie. Are you excited about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? Yeah, exactly.
Awesome. Have fun. I'll see you later.
Bye bye. You know, we don't. You know, we didn't pass.
We don't. We didn't pass protections for unions. In fact, unions, their major legislative bills never go anywhere.
You can't buy into Medicaid. You can't. The fact that they basically do a public op, kind of like a public option there, which,like, back in 2018, the Senate passed the House didn't.
They've never done it since. They've just forgotten about doing it because they get, and it's just striking because again, likeMinnesota has a one vote Democrat majority in their democratic Senate, it's a six votes in the House. And they view in away that's like particularly striking contrast here, they view themselves as having a mandate to actually have a shared agenda of making the lives of people in Minnesota better.
And let me just jump in for 1 second, because we've had an entire episode on this, on the fact that our legislature has, they have no agenda. And it appears that really the people in power, their job is not to pass anything. Their job is to prevent things from passing, prevent progressive bills from passing.
And then what's also what I feel like also stands out. We've been talking, and this has come up in the news over the past few weeks as well, about things that the Minnesota democratic legislature has passed. I will point out they apparently don't wait, at least it seems till the very last day and then suddenly get.
They did not, they passed those much earlier in the year. Like, did they, those things have already passed. So that like at least something was structural even on that basis.
Also much better because they're not doing, not doing what we do here. Yep. Yep.
So I think, you know, and so to contrast that, like in Massachusetts, we now, they passed a tax cut for rich people and a tax credit that helps regular people, but the majority of it goes to rich people. They passed a public housing bond bill which will borrow money, not appropriate money from the budget, but borrow money to fix public housing and dropped most of the things in it that would have helped municipalities and the state actually build and support affordable housing. But they did pass legislation to gentrify black and brown neighborhoods and gave a ton of money for that through the HDIP program.
Massachusetts, it's did, passed a, it did, in fairness, pass a good gun bill. Not hard, but it did pass a good gun bill. And it passed technical changes to how we think about parenting.
So that it's important but should not, should not have waited till the end. Could have been done in January of last year.Right.
Like it's not a controversial bill. The opposition is bonkers town. It's a, it's something that's easy to fix, doesn't cost any money.
Really like easy thing, but thankful, like not. I want to minimize it. Real effect of people's lives, but something that should have been easy to do and not wait until July to do.
Right. That's what? That's all we did. We did.
Like, I mean, look at the contrast in the people's lives. Like, they legislated to fix all of Minnesotans lives. And we helped a few people, mostly rich people.
And the thing that they're talking about going back into session four is to. Is for tax cuts for corporations. Oh, yeah.
This is amazing. So continue. We're all talking at the same time.
Sorry about that. I was just going to say, like, maybe this is a good time to start talking about what is going on right now withMassachusetts legislature, where they just ended the session and they did so little. And we talked before about this pure number of bills that had passed that was wildly below.
Like, all the other previous sessions, they have passed so little that the governor is like, hey, gang, you guys have to comeback to formal session. Like, you can't just leave. You can't do that.
You know, so this is really verging on the absurd here in Massachusetts. And I just wanted to underscore what Jordan was saying, is that when Healy is telling the legislature to come back into session, Healy was not telling them, come back. Youneed to pass the climate bill or come back.
You need to pass the hospital bill to address the steward crisis or come back. That you need to finish off. Finish your drug pricing bills or your maternal health bills.
It was, you need to come back to pass tax credits for the life sciences industry. Well, that was Ron Mariano. Right.
He's like, we were. Unless we. Unless that's our priority.
Yeah, that. Like the economic development bill. And she's not even weighing in or saying, like, for instance, good things.
That included, like, the Senate having language to keep high school seniors out of adult prisons, for instance. She's not saying, we need to come back so that you pass this. It's, how do we give tax credits to a very already, like, cash rich industry in Massachusetts that doesn't need tax credits, which is also damning itself.
That that's the big draw. Absolutely. So what else can we talk, can we say about this current session and what passed or didn't pass? So this isn't in terms of what passed or what didn't pass, but one thing that I can also point out is that the legislature has also just simply been taking fewer votes.
It's something we've noted before, and I decided to look back on past sessions to see how true it was. So, like, that there are some things, as I would note, that people that the legislature simply does need to take a vote on that will always add to these totals. They need to take a vote.
If they are kind of transferring land from the state to a municipality, they need to take a vote after a quorum call to check to see if there are enough people present or if they're going past 09:00 p.m. or if they're doing an override of it for a budget line item. But even assuming all of those, it's still striking.
Whereas in this legislative session, the Massachusetts House took a total of 199 recorded votes, by contrast, in 2021 to 2022, they took 286. And the 286 of last session was also historically very low because in 2019 to 2020, they took 420. In the1718 session, 521 2015 to 2016, 559.
That also made me wonder, are we seeing more votes? I thought, are we seeing just more votes when we had a republican governor and there might be more fights. If you look under Deval Governor Deval Patrick 2013 to 2014, 505 recorded votes in the House 2011 to 2012, 375 2009 to 2010, 513 2007 to 2008, 607. And in 2005, 2006, 915.
And remind us, what was this year, the final tally? 199 of recorded votes. So you have, like, if you see just how, like, obviously,there can be a lot of fluctuation for many reasons year to year, but a fluctuation that tends to be, like, in the 500s or 600s, as what? Like, par is for a session's total number of votes, and we have 199. That is truly remarkable.
Truly, how they're just, like, fundamentally not doing things. Yeah. Wow.
And it's. Can we have a moment of silence? I just think it's just. It is.
It does. I think if you listen to this podcast, you probably. Well, you probably agree with a lot of the problems, but I think the thing that's really.
I think the thing that's hard in this moment is that the whole process in Massachusetts is to gaslight you into thinking that you're bonkers for wanting them to do things and then also for them to take victory laps for things that should be easy and actually shouldn't be things you take victory laps for. And I think what Minnesota does so clearly is it juxtaposes that they're not taking victory laps for changing a few, for changing parentage. They're just like, they're not taking victory laps for tax cuts, for billionaires.
Like, they're just not doing. You know, Tim Walz is now the vice president for doing things for people. You said he's now the vice president.
He's going to be the vice president. Sorry. He's going to be vice president Pick. He's the vice presidential pick for doing things for people. And like, that's, I think, an, unapologetically.
So that that's the thing. That, and not that that's the thing. And then talking about it in a way that doesn't talk about the people you're trying to help, as if they're stupid, as if they need to be patient, as if they're too greedy, as if you have to balance all the time.
Mariano, balance. Right. And the media loves that.
They lap up the sort of Maura Healy, Charlie Baker, you know, Mariano, line of having to balance. But what are we balancing? We're balancing people making exorbitant profits and regular people suffering or corporations, like the number of, you know, state legislatures that will. Well, we can't go against the health insurance industry.
You know, we can't go against the real estate industry. Yes, you can. What are you talking about? You can.
Not only, not only could you do it, but you will be super popular. The Internet will love you, and you don't even have to do it perfectly. You can.
You can do it in ways where people will still wish you had done more, still wish you had done it differently at the time, push you to do better, but still appreciate it because you still did the right thing. And that's the lesson that, like, that, you know, of course there's always dead enders. There's the people that Chris Hayes, somebody on Chris Hayes podcast said, like,there's some people who you just, who are just unpleasable, right? Like, you can't ever make them happy.
There's nothing you could pass that will make them or do that will make them happy. But for the majority of people, if you send out, if the message you're sending voters is we're going to do things for your behalf, even when it's not great, the people who are critical are gonna be like, that's actually pretty good. That's pretty good.
That's the lesson. And I also feel like, kind of building off that the one thing I thought was a very funny anecdote in one story about the Minnesota Democrats is how they had this poster board up with everything that they wanted to pass. And everytime that they passed something from it, they would get to cross something out and they'd be playing this DJ Khaled.
All I do is win. And the thing that I always think, oh, my God, all I do is win, win, win. Yeah.
It's fantastic. People like, I think one thing that often that I think about politics is that people like winning yeah, it's basically basic thing. It is true of everybody.
People like winning. And then if you communicate that, that, like that we are winning and we're doing it for you, that's a very,that's a very potent political message to. Well, this is, this is something that I was just talking last night to a friend about.
You know, and this basic concept of, let's, you know, let's make an analogy. Let's say that, you know, you're trying to bring friends who've never heard of foot uninterested in football to a football game, right? And your team is team blue and the other team is team red. And team red is like driving down the field, driving on the field, driving on the field.
And team blue is doing nothing until they get to the ten, to the blue ten yard line, and then suddenly they're fighting back.You know what? The third or fourth time that that happens, they're like, why are you even on team blue? I'd rather be on team red because team red is actually going down the field and they're making some goals. People love it when you actually accomplish something, right? They want to win.
And if you can be part of winning, if you accomplish the things that you say you're going to do, like this is the, to me, the messaging of it is so fantastic because people do get it that when you pass this kind of policy, you're doing it for them and you're winning. But like, to overtly state and put it in musical terms that like, this is a win for you. We just won.
That is incredibly important thing. And I feel like the Democratic Party generally tends to be more worried about like preventing bad things than passing good things. And it doesn't feel like winning when you're just like trying to like, stop awful things from happening.
It feels like, yeah, just wait till they get to their, you know, till they're about to score before you even start fighting. Like we gotta fight and get, and actually make some goals. Exactly.
One thing as well into this in terms of communicating on the politics, people who don't. I thought it was very effective. Ithink, Jordan, you had shared it the other day, or I think I'd seen it.
I think I thought I'd seen it from you. Tim Waltz's like reelection campaign tv spot that. Oh, yeah, me like that.
Like Ed is being like kind of half, kind of like with like a half time framing that was, it's a very effective ad both in terms of macro frame around that and the way that, like the many different kind of policies it alludes to in a very values driven,human way. Totally wonderful. Well, let me know if you have some.
While I do my little end roll. Why don't you think about any final comments you have on the Tim Walz or on the comparison between Massachusetts and Minnesota. But before we end, I just want to let people know that this is one of the only place in Massachusetts where you will hear state politics being discussed, being analyzed.
You'll hear about the issues, the things that are happening in our state government, comparisons between this state and other states. You will hear stuff that you are not going to hear anywhere else. And we are extremely happy that we have some wonderful regular donors.
We would love for you to be one of those people. You want to just look right below here and put in $10, $20 a month.Something like that would be amazing.
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And we're on TikTok, we're on social media. We're all over the place. And with that, I want to see if you guys have any final words.
My final word is like, I can't believe they picked him. Wells. I'm actually.
I'm really, really excited and I'm thrilled. I'm really happy for him and for our country. And I'm getting even more excited thanI was about the presidential race.
I'll say really quickly, my favorite fact about Tim Walz is that, um, he. During his career, he was a high school teacher. In the same year, he coached the football team to the state title.
He also served as the faculty advisor for the school's first gay straight alliance, the GSA. And if you don't remember the GSA, in the nineties, I, in my high school got the whole after school programs canceled because I tried to start a GSA. Andhe was there.
He was the football coach and the advisor. The football coach and the advisor for that. At a time like we think of it now, it's like, oh, that wouldn't be a big deal.
That was a big deal that he. I'm sure that he did that. And I think that is the sort of.
That's the thing we want for our Massachusetts politicians. We want them to just do the right thing. That's it.
So what I would say is, what I appreciate is that I feel like we've had very good vibes coming out of the Harris campaign over the past few weeks. I think she's, like, really excellent energy, and I think she's a very clear messenger on a number of issues. And I feel like that they're selecting kind of Tim Walls, who is somebody who was clearly a favorite amongst people in Congress, was a favorite amongst many in labor and amongst many in progressives, is kind of continuing this, like, good vibes only feel to the election, which I think is something that is important because it makes people want to get involved.
People want to get involved when there is positive energy surrounding campaign, when you're combining like, clear messaging, clear communication of clear messaging and an energy of people having fun while campaigning. Absolutely.Well, thank you both so much and thanks to all of our listeners.
We love having you with us as we're doing this state politics and today a little bit of national politics. And we will continue to bring you the news about Massachusetts, um, as we move on past this legislative session into the next. And we look forward to chatting with you all next week.