The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
In case you haven’t heard, the Mother Country is finished. Under their new Communist prime minister, COVID-era censorship of social media has been resurrected. It’s not just censorship; it’s imprisonment for writing anything online that the government dislikes. Do you think the British can vote this tyranny down next time? There is no next time.
Great Britain was never perfect, but it provided the intellectual and political basis for Western civilization that gave rise to the First Amendment and the United States. Our soon-to-be elected or selected Vice Puppet has already made it clear that censorship will be the policy of the United States, very soon.
America is not far behind. Tim Walz openly calls for censorship. He has said that the government must “push back” against “hate speech,” and he made it clear that the words of Trump supporters, whom he has called fascists, certainly do constitute hate speech (meaning: disagreement). What will “pushing back” mean in practice, after next January 20 — or even sooner, if they push Biden out of the White House?
The U.K. government has actually posted on X: “Think before you post.” People know it’s a warning, because Facebook jail has been converted to real jail, at least in the U.K. Can you imagine the Harris-Walz regime doing the same in America? I absolutely can.
“Government is organized crime,” says a meme on social media.
Actually, today’s federal government in the U.S. is much WORSE than organized crime. It answers to nobody. It controls the police, the military, the courts– and, as we’ve seen, gleefully and unapologetically weaponizes them against all innocent people they dislike. It prints money. It brainwashes children and sexually (as well as intellectually) mutilates their minds and bodies, with no consent from parents — and forces unwilling parties to pay for it all.
Tony Soprano faced much more opposition than today’s monsters in what we still call a government ever face. Mobsters are on the run. Today’s tyrants do not have to run from anything, because we have allowed them unlimited power, including a monopoly on the use of that power.
“In 1776, the British demanded we surrender our weapons.
We shot them,” says another meme on social media.
In her first, wildly unsuccessful campaign for President (where she faced actual voters), Kamala promised an executive order on day one in office, an order to confiscate the guns of all Americans.
Let us know how that works out for you, Kamala.
Too few Americans seem willing to take the threat seriously; to demonstrate recognition that they’re in for (at least) the biggest fight since 1776.
The waking up, when and if it happens, will not be pretty. If most never wake up, then it will be even uglier to the rest of us.
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Are Kamala Harris and Tim Walz just too weird to win election in November?
Or are they the two Democrats that America needs right now dammit, a special pair that have the unique ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been?
I just can’t say. I’m just a guy who spent his life working in the American news media, much of that time writing a political column at a well-known conservative Chicago newspaper. But after the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, the paper went woke and then broke and neo-Marxists took the newsroom. I hear them and what remains of the chattering class talking gibberish and jaberwocky about how “Democracy Dies in Darkness” with Harris avoiding any meaningful news conferences, and I’m just about as dazed and confused as the rest of you.
But nagging questions persist. Chief among them: Will Harris and Waltz continue to hide their true selves as what is left of a broken media covers for them?
For example, is is too weird to suggest Vice President Harris–a famous coddler of criminals and George Soros prosecutor zero who unleashed a national crime wave allowed masked thugs to smash-and-grab up t0 $950 in stolen goods a day–has now transformed herself into a stern border warrior who is tough crime? Or is her tough-on-crime pose and her feigned concern over the broken border simply more tapioca pudding shoveled at foolish infants?
And is her Democrat running mate Minnesota Gov. “Tampon Tim” Walz too weird for mandating tampons for middle-school boys at Minnesota schools?
Hmm. Are feminine napkins for schoolboys just too weird, or is all this in keeping with the pursuit of the new “fweedoms” Harris and Walz keep yammering about to their chorus at MSNBC? It’s just rather confusing now that the left wing corporate “mainstream media” (which is anything but ‘mainstream’ ) allows Harris’ and Walz’ true identities to remain masked and hidden. But if they win this election will they finally reveal themselves as did the Jacobins of the French Revolution? Of course. Because by then it will be too late.
Currently, the true nature of the Democrat Party remains hidden. The Jacobins could not win election if their first promise was to crush freedom and lop off the heads of the nobles. It all remains obscure, like their smiles.
And rather like the masks Americans were forced to wear in lockdown states with lockdown governors like Minnesota and Illinois, where we were discouraged from gathering together in our homes on the holidays. We were prohibited from attending church services on Sundays, and public schools were closed, but our political leaders allowed us to worship of sorts at box liquor store and get high on state-approved weed. Remember?
Today’s Democrat is not the Democrat Party I remember, that party of Richard J. Daley in Chicago, the party that loved America like Harry S. Truman. But this Democrat Party preparing to gather in Chicago on August 19 is a gathering of Jacobins. They are all about selling abortion and racial hate. And as such they are nihilists, as were the French Revolutionaries. This is the Democrat Party that is driven to destroy the political system, the party that destroys the old icons and statues, the party that changes the foundational dates, from 1776 to 1619, the party that whips up racial animosity as they did during the insurrectionary Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. The party that sells abortions as “freedom.”
Have you forgotten the BLM riots to glorify the criminal George Floyd, the thug who held a loaded gun to the abdomen of a pregnant woman? Those the leftist riots in his name destroyed Chicago and other cities like Minneapolis. Have you forgotten, even as the national news media wants you to forget? It was Gov. Walz who let Minneapolis burn, and he took days and days to call out the National Guard as his aides worried if the guard was diverse enough to handle the riots.
Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which could have cost taxpayers $475 billion. Additional loan-cancelation initiatives—also certain to face legal challenges—are in the works.
But the high drama of loan cancelation has drawn attention away from a more pressing issue in the student-loan system. After the pandemic-induced student-loan payment pause ended last year, the Education Department implemented a one-year transition period to allow borrowers time to ease back into the habit of paying their loans. That so-called on-ramp is set to expire at the end of September—yet tens of millions of borrowers have not yet made a payment.
The federal repayment “on-ramp” is set to expire at the end of September, yet tens of millions of borrowers have not yet made a payment.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareThe Looming Student-Loan Nonpayment Crisis
During the payment pause, no federal student-loan borrower had to make a payment, and interest rates were set at zero. During the on-ramp, payments are due and interest accrues once again. But borrowers who don’t pay their loans can avoid the worst consequences of failing to do so: Delinquencies will not appear on their credit records, nor will loans be placed in default or sent to collections.
Since most student borrowers had not made a payment on their loans for over three years, the logic of a one-year on-ramp was to allow borrowers time to make financial arrangements to recommence payment. Missing a payment or two would be no big deal. After a year, the logic ran, most borrowers should be comfortably paying their loans every month.
That ideal couldn’t be farther from reality. At the end of 2019, prior to the payment pause, 3.1 million borrowers were more than 30 days behind on their loan payments. As of March 2024—the latest month for which data are available—the number of delinquent borrowers had reached 7.3 million.
Another feature of the post-pause transition was a program to allow borrowers who had been in default prior to the pandemic a one-time chance to bring their loans back into good standing. Yet most defaulted borrowers have not availed themselves of this option. In December 2019, 7.7 million borrowers were in default; as of March 2024, the ranks of defaulted borrowers stood at 5.9 million.
Other borrowers are taking advantage of legitimate options to avoid paying their loans. As of March 2024, two million borrowers had entered loan forbearance, a status in which payments are not due.
The number of borrowers not paying their loans exceeds 20 million.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareMany more borrowers are enrolled in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan, which allows them to pay less than the standard monthly amount—and sometimes nothing at all. The most popular IDR plan is the SAVE plan, a creation of the Biden administration that allows borrowers with even relatively high household incomes to qualify for $0 monthly payments. As of February 2024, 57 percent of the 8 million borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan paid nothing towards their loans each month. (While the SAVE plan is currently on hold due to legal challenges, the Biden administration has placed all SAVE borrowers into interest-free forbearance while the court battle plays out.)
Add the 15 million borrowers who are delinquent or in default on their loans to the two million borrowers in forbearance and the four million who paid nothing under the SAVE plan, and the number of borrowers not paying their loans exceeds 20 million. Excluding those enrolled in school, there are around 35 million borrowers total. That means more than half of student borrowers who should be paying their loans are not.
What Happens to Borrowers Once the On-Ramp Ends?
All this is costly for taxpayers. It’s one reason the Congressional Budget Office expects the student-loan program to post a loss of $400 billion over the coming decade. But the nonpayment phenomenon also carries major implications for borrowers.
Think about the last few years from the perspective of a student borrower who doesn’t religiously follow the news. You’re allowed to make no payments on your loans for three and a half years, from the beginning of the pandemic until October 2023. During that time, you hear that student-loan forgiveness is coming. After October, your servicer starts sending you bills again, but you face no real consequences for missing your payments month after month. All the while, you continue to hear more promises from the president and media about loan cancelation.
It’s understandable that a borrower in this situation might assume that he can get away with not paying his loans forever—or at least until one of those loan-forgiveness promises comes true.
But things are destined to change after the on-ramp expires in October. First, loan delinquencies will be reported to credit bureaus, which generally happens when payments are 90 days overdue. That will adversely affect borrowers’ credit scores.
The Education Department has the power to garnish wages, withhold tax refunds, and seize Social Security checks.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareA borrower who goes nine months without making a payment will enter default. After that, the Education Department will have the power to garnish the borrower’s wages, withhold his tax refund, or seize his Social Security checks. Defaulted borrowers can also be responsible for enormous collection fees.
Even borrowers on an IDR plan may not be out of the woods. Recent research has found that borrowers who qualify for a $0 monthly payment often become disengaged from the student-loan system and neglect to reapply for IDR each year. This can lead to higher rates of student-loan delinquency in the long run.
The Biden Administration’s Plans for Student-Loan Repayment
Facing a potential nonpayment crisis in October, the Biden administration could opt to kick the can down the road by extending the on-ramp period. This may be the most likely outcome, as it makes the nonpayment crisis the next administration’s problem. But extending the on-ramp is not sustainable in the long run, as it means tens of millions of borrowers will continue to skip their payments—leaving taxpayers to pick up the cost.
Of course, many decisionmakers in the Biden administration are ideologically opposed to collecting the loans at all, so they may be fine with that. In the meantime, they will keep trying to forgive the loans outright. Though the administration’s highest-profile forgiveness plans are on thin legal ice, there are other ways to discharge debts. The Education Department has canceled $170 billion so far by bending the rules on other loan-forgiveness programs.
In addition, the administration has announced new proposals to forgive student debt by executive action. One proposal, announced in May, would forgive around $150 billion for 28 million borrowers. Another scheme, expected in October, could be even more consequential. These plans are still working their way through the regulatory process, but the White House has signaled it hopes to begin canceling debt this way before the November election.
Perhaps the administration will give up on actually collecting the loans in the hope that one of these forgiveness plans will survive legal scrutiny. Or perhaps officials figure that allowing the loan program to descend into chaos will leave no option but mass forgiveness. Either way, advocates of fiscal responsibility need to offer a better way forward.
A more responsible approach would send a clear signal that borrowers are expected to repay their loans.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareWhat Should We Do Instead?
A more responsible approach would send a clear signal that borrowers are expected to repay their loans. The on-ramp should end in October, as promised. Government officials should stop talking about mass loan cancelation to demolish any hint that borrowers should hold out for it.
There should be reforms to the repayment system, as well. A responsible policy would reverse the SAVE plan and institute a minimum monthly payment in remaining IDR plans, so borrowers remember they have a loan to repay. Long-term loan forbearance should no longer be an option, except in extreme cases.
But the government should meet borrowers halfway. Policymakers should make penalties for default less punitive and create simple pathways for defaulted borrowers to return their loans into good standing. Interest subsidies for lower-income borrowers who make a good-faith effort to repay their loans, as House Republicans recently proposed, would ensure borrowers can pay down their principal balances and eventually get out of debt.
Beyond changes to repayment, more fundamental reforms to student loans are necessary to prevent such a crisis from happening again. Congress should implement lower limits on student borrowing and require colleges to cosign the loans they foist on students. Privatization of the federal student-loan system (or at least portions of it) is also worth considering, as private lenders will make an apter assessment of prospective borrowers’ capacity to repay than does the federal government.
The political and legal wars over student-loan forgiveness are likely to stretch years into the future. By contrast, the end of the repayment on-ramp is an issue that demands attention today. More than 20 million student borrowers are not paying their loans, and the nation is about to discover what that means.
Preston Cooper is a higher-education policy expert based in Washington, DC.
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The Imminent Student-Loan Disaster We’re Not Talking About Aug 7, 2024Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which …
In March 2022 I predicted some consequences of the sanctions imposed on Russia:
The first [map] shows the countries which banned Russian airplanes from their airspace. Russia in turn denied its airspace to operators from those countries. It will cost quite a bit for U.S. and EU airlines as their flight times and cost to and from Asia, which typically fly through Russian airspace, will now increase. Carriers from Asian countries will now easily out-compete U.S. and European airlines on these routes.
bigger As British media reported yesterday:
British Airways is temporarily scrapping flights to Beijing until at least next year. From October to at least November 2025 the carrier will not fly to the capital of China, although flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong will continue.
European carriers are not currently able to enter Russian airspace which makes flying to China more challenging as it takes a few hours longer than it used to.
Russia’s civil aviation authority introduced the restrictions in February 2022, in retaliation to a British ban on the country’s Aeroflot airline as part of sanctions for the war in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We will be pausing our route to Beijing from 26 October 2024, and we’re contacting any affected customers with rebooking options or to offer them a full refund. We continue to operate daily flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong.”
The route only resumed operations on the route in June 2023, following a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time, British Airways described London-Beijing as “one of our most important routes”. The airline did not provide a reason for the suspension.
It is one of many Western airlines avoiding Russian airspace, which is adding to their flight times, fuel costs and complexity over how they deploy crew and aircraft.
British Airways isn’t the only one.
A simple look on the map explains the issue:
bigger As I continued on sanctions:
The second map shows those countries which enacted sanctions against Russia. The secondary effects of sanctions are likely to hurt these countries as much as they hurt Russia. The absence of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Central and South American countries is quite telling.
It does not look like ‘the world’ or the ‘international community’ is backing the ‘west’.
bigger The U.S. also sanctioned all imports of oil products from Russia. President Biden has blamed Russia for the price increase that will inevitably follow. I don’t believe that mid-term voters will accept that reasoning. European countries can not follow that step as their economies depend of imports of oil and gas from Russia and will continue to do so for years to come.
Which fits to this other recent headline:
French imports of Russia’s liquified natural gas surge, and Ukraine supporters seek a stop
Shipments of Russian liquified natural gas to France more than doubled the first half of this year, according to new analyses of trade data, at a time when Europe has tried to pull back from energy purchases that help finance the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe has restricted oil imports from Russia, but natural gas is still allowed. And while companies in France are importing the most, one analysis found EU countries overall imported 7% more Russian LNG, natural gas that has been chilled and liquified for easier ocean transport, in the first half of this year compared to the same period a year ago.
Meanwhile in Germany, which currently has a rather crazy government, industrial production is further declining while bankruptcies have reached a record height:
Germany, with its energy-intensive industry and shortage of raw materials, has been particularly affected by the rapid rise in energy prices. Large corporations such as BASF are closing factories because management no longer believes it can efficiently produce essential chemicals. There is a trend of deindustrialization. The volume of orders from German machine-building and engineering companies decreased by 12 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the industry association VDMA. year to year in real terms. Orders from Germany itself fell especially sharply – by 18 percent. Orders from foreign companies fell by 9 percent. Metallurgical corporations are also suffering, as demand for their products is also falling.
All this could be fixed with some sanity and the discarding of useless sanctions.
Yes, but only to a point. Once you start supporting people who endorse coercive medical experimentation, censorship, executive orders for gun confiscation, hyperinflation, wealth redistribution, race wars, weaponization of the police and judicial system against their own citizens, the end of due process, subsidized brainwashing of students, genital mutilation of children by the state, willful obliteration of the middle class, religious and racial persecution, handing arms to terrorists, emasculating and weakening the military, outlawing fossil fuels so the great majority will have to live in an 1800s lifestyle, and mass election fraud … well, I lose all respect for you. And if I cannot respect or trust you, I will not be your friend.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea will not seek outside help to recover from floods that devastated areas near the country’s border with China, leader Kim Jong Un said as he ordered officials to bring thousands of displaced residents to the capital to provide them better care.
Kim said it would take about two to three months to rebuild homes and stabilize the areas affected by floods. Until then, his government plans to accommodate some 15,400 people — a group that includes mothers, children, older adults and disabled soldiers — at facilities in Pyongyang, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.
KCNA said Kim made the comments during a two-day trip to northwestern town of Uiju through Friday to meet flood victims and discuss recovery efforts. The agency gave Kim its typical effusive praise, saying the visit showed his “sacred leadership” and “warm love and ennobling spirit of making devoted service for the people.”
State media reports said heavy rains in late July left 4,100 houses, 7,410 acres of agricultural fields, and numerous other public buildings, structures, roads and railways flooded in the northwestern city of Sinuiju and the neighboring town of Uiju.
The North has not provided information on deaths, but Kim was quoted blaming public officials who had neglected disaster prevention for causing “the casualty that cannot be allowed.”
Traditional allies Russia and China, as well as international aid groups, have offered to provide North Korea with relief supplies, but the North hasn’t publicly expressed a desire to receive them.
“Expressing thanks to various foreign countries and international organizations for their offer of humanitarian support, (Kim) said what we regard as the best in all realms and processes of state affairs is the firm trust in the people and the way of tackling problems thoroughly based on self-reliance,” KCNA said.
Kim made similar comments earlier in the week after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered help, expressing his gratitude but saying that the North has established its own rehabilitation plans and will only ask for Moscow’s assistance if later needed.
While rival South Korea has also offered to send aid supplies, it’s highly unlikely that the North would accept its offer. Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years over the North’s growing nuclear ambitions and the South’s expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan.
The North had also rejected South Korea’s offers for help while battling a COVID-19 outbreak in 2022.
During his recent visit to Uiju, Kim repeated an accusation that South Korea exaggerated the North’s flood damages and casualties, which he decried as a “smear campaign” and a “grave provocation” against his government. Some South Korean media reports claim that the North’s flood damages are likely worse than what state media have acknowledged, and that the number of deaths could exceed 1,000.
LONDON — In response to desperate pleas from downtrodden citizens throughout the United Kingdom, Russia announced it was preparing to send troops to liberate oppressed British people from communist rule.
British citizens who had been crushed under a communist reign of terror reportedly rejoiced when hearing the news that the brave, freedom-loving Russian military would soon arrive to set them free from the despotic British government.
“We have heard the cries for help from the persecuted British people,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said when announcing the operation. “Our forces are now on their way to the United Kingdom to liberate these poor, helpless people from the iron grip of their oppressive communist rulers. We are happy to export the freedom we have here in Russia to the countries of the West.”
Upon hearing of their impending liberation, British citizens wept tears of joy. “I have been dreaming of this day!” said London resident Wellington Hamptonshire. “We have been living under communist brutality and oppression for so long that we have forgotten what it feels like to be free. Thank God for the kindness of Russia and Vladimir Putin for risking so much to bring freedom to Great Britain!”
Sources within the British government said Prime Minister Keir Starmer remained committed to retaining power and keeping the people of the UK enslaved under his totalitarian regime.
At publishing time, Russia was rumored to also be in the early stages of making plans to liberate the United States in the event of a Kamala Harris presidency.
Barely a day goes by when somebody doesn’t ask me if they should blame their parents for various problems that might have arisen in childhood. No matter what the specific issue, my response is always the same: You can hold your parents accountable for anything they said or did wrong when you were a child, but you must hold YOURSELF accountable for undoing that damage – now that you’re an adult.
Children are vulnerable. I maintain that infants are born virtually tabula rasa, meaning “blank slate.” Parents can write on that slate whatever they wish. But even young children have their own personalities, and as they mature they become more capable of forming concepts. This does not guarantee rational thinking, but it does allow for independent thinking. According to cognitive research done by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, the capacity for abstract independent thought appears in the early teens. In today’s media-filled world, young adults are free to think for themselves.
Given that emotions arise from thoughts and ideas, one cannot blame one’s psychological health (or lack thereof) on his or her parents. Their time of influence has come and gone. As we enter adulthood, we are exposed to all sorts of outside psychological influences.
You’d think that being a therapist for over 35 years would have shown me exactly how people are shaped by their parents. Not so. But it has shown me how heroically independent people can be, IF they’re willing to think and question. Unless you’re raised by extraordinarily thoughtful, rational parents – which is certainly possible – you’re in a position to question anything you were taught.
Most dysfunctional or abusive parents declare war on the child’s capacity to think and be independent. Indeed, this is the very essence of what makes them dysfunctional or abusive. They probably do it to the child because they do it to themselves. It’s an extension of their own self-negligence. It’s healthy to stand back and judge your parents objectively and see them for whom they are: good, bad or some mixture of both. People who don’t do this are usually the ones more prone to getting stuck playing out the unresolved conflicts they never objectively addressed with their parents. Objective judgment sets you free to explore your life in the present, away from what you’ve known (or not known) in the past.
Many people fail to seek out better methods of thinking and coping than what their parents showed them. The resulting disappointments set them looking for someone to blame. And that’s their first mistake: It’s not about blaming anyone; it’s about holding yourself responsible for errors you’ve made that might have been fostered by your parents. As an adult, you’re now free to reject these errors.
It’s easy to cop-out and say, “My parents were negligent. Therefore I’m ruined forever.” Nobody has that power over you – not even your parents. When we think of a little child, we think of a helpless, vulnerable person. But we should not project that helplessness and vulnerability onto our adult selves. A person who resorts to that does him- or herself an injustice. It might feel like you’re bringing justice to your parents, but you’re actually harming yourself.
It’s psychologically healthy to look head-on at reality, and plainly acknowledge any wrongdoing or negligence on the part of your parents. If the situation warrants, you should even feel free to tell them so. But that’s not the same as blaming them for “ruining” you. The fact that you can think for yourself is proof that the most important part of you is saved. The rest is up to you.
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Democrats are eager to introduce Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the country. He is a veteran who used the GI Bill to get to college, a former public-school teacher who coached high school football, and a two-term governor of a midwestern state with a record of accomplishments on behalf of working-class families.
Republicans are just as excited. Despite his Rust Belt resume, they say Vice President Harris has selected a radical as her running mate. In an interview with RealClearPolitics, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said, “Tim Walz is really, truly her ideological soulmate.”
The emerging Republican plan to beat the Harris-Walz ticket? Just roll the tape, replied Whatley: “Our opposition research is going to be video clips of Tim Walz.”
More specifically, Whatley said the GOP would point to Walz’s previous comments about wanting to invest in a “30-foot-ladder factory” to help migrants scale former President Trump’s border wall, his support for giving undocumented individuals healthcare and driver’s licenses in Minnesota, and his handling of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis that followed the death of George Floyd.
Republicans have already been hitting Harris over illegal immigration and the border, inflation and the economy, and crime. Walz just presents a new wrinkle and new video clips. One immediately began circulating online.
Conservatives were quick to criticize Walz for not deploying the Minnesota National Guard sooner in the summer of 2020 as rioters looted and burned through Minneapolis. “I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing,” Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz told a local news reporter in an interview making the rounds online Tuesday. “I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”
According to the GOP, this is more evidence of the weak-on-crime radicalism of Democrats.
The race is now on for Democrats to introduce their new folksy anti-Trump champion while Republicans rush to define him as more of the same. For his part, Walz has a history of spoiling GOP plans. He punched his ticket to Congress in 2006 by flipping a Republican House seat. After more than a decade, Walz ran and won the governor’s mansion by more than 10 points in 2018, a post he easily held a second time four years later.
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said that by picking Walz, Harris has “cemented the fundamental contrast in this race between the Harris-Walz ticket which is fighting for working families and the Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda that would unleash harm on Americans across the country.” The pair will spend the coming months, he added, traveling the country talking about “building up the middle class instead of cutting taxes for the rich, and fighting for our fundamental freedoms, including reproductive freedom.”
Walz may be an asset particularly in the Midwest. He talks plainly, and his small-town biography explains his appeal. When President Biden announced his retirement, Walz was quick to throw his support behind Harris as many others did. He emerged as a sort of pathfinder for Democrats with his broadsides against Sen. J.D. Vance as soon as Trump named the Ohio Republican his running mate.
“The golden rule” in rural, small-town America, Walz said during a “Morning Joe” interview last month, was to “mind your own damn business.” And then the governor forged the talking point that the left has used with some immediate success to define the GOP ticket.
“We do not like what has happened where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary,” he continued. “Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”
And in this way, the word “weird” became the Democratic byword for the Republican ticket. Trump, Vance, and all their ideas, Democrats have said on repeat for weeks, aren’t just a threat to democracy, they are unusual and out of touch with America itself.
The left now enjoys rare alignment. Everyone from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to West Virginia independent Sen. Joe Manchin praised the Walz pick. All of it, replied Whatley, is more evidence that Democrats have “shifted so far to the left as a whole that candidates as extreme as Kamala Harris, as extreme as Tim Walz, are now considered mainstream.”
While the party boss said that the GOP playbook remains the same now that Walz has joined the ticket, behind the scenes Republicans expressed giddiness that Walz, instead of a more moderate candidate like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, was selected. One prominent Republican operative accused Walz of “plagiarizing California’s failed far-left liberal agenda for Minnesota.”
Republicans hope to compete in that state, despite Donald Trump’s two narrow losses there. The selection of Walz won’t do anything to change that strategy, Whatley told RCP. He said Republicans are looking forward to “a conversation in Minnesota about how, as the governor, Walz allowed riots to basically burn down Minneapolis, and then Kamala Harris came in and bailed out all those people out.”
That will continue to be, he said, “a conversation we’re happy to have in Minnesota.”
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire
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