Andrew Sullivan Is Not Impressed With Tim Walz

"If you want to accelerate the far left’s cultural revolution, you have the ticket of your dreams. This is not a pitch to the center.”

Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP candidate yesterday. While everyone had an opinion on the selection, the one that caught my attention came from Andrew Sullivan.

“The Walz pick is the first decision Harris has made as nominee. He is an ‘equity and inclusion’ fanatic, a BLM supporter, a man who justified riots and let his cities burn, a lockdown enthusiast, and a believer in medical experiments on gay, autistic and trans kids, without parental consent if necessary.

If you want to accelerate the far left’s cultural revolution, you have the ticket of your dreams. This is not a pitch to the center.”

As I’ve said before, Sullivan—a gay, British-American Catholic—is no crank. He is one of the most established and celebrated commentary writers of the 21st century, having hung his hat at Time, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast before joining New York magazine in 2016, where he stayed for about five years before the Jacobins exiled him amid the Covid madness.

For what it’s worth, Sullivan detests Donald Trump, a figure he sees as absurd. He’s a creature exceedingly rare in 2024: a bipartisan figure who places principles ahead of politics.

Some of Sullivan’s principles I share, others I do not. But I think his analysis of the Walz pick is pretty much spot on, and it dovetails with my own, which I offered on Twitter.

“Harris…has tapped Tim Walz, a drab governor who is known to people outside of Minnesota only because he happened to be governor when Minneapolis was torn apart during the George Floyd riots. Walz hunkered down while a police precinct was burned to the ground and rioters caused $2 billion in damage. His "aw shucks" Mayberry style is meant to conceal his Marxist philosophy and statist instincts. There's virtually nothing he doesn't believe the government should run or control. His crowning achievement is having the government pick up the tab for all school lunches—rich or poor—and pretending he's feeding the starving children. Walz might help Harris keep Minnesota, a state Democrats haven't lost since the [Nixon] years. But he will disappear on the national stage (maybe he's supposed to?).”

I’ll add that Walz is on record as comparing socialism to “neighborliness,” an absurd claim that is getting absolutely roasted.

For weeks, I’ve been trashing Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate. It seems that Kamala Harris has tapped a running mate even worse.

The selections of Walz and Vance reinforce my fear that both major political parties are heading in precisely the wrong direction.