Is that some...pep in my step? A dash of excitement on my otherwise exhausted face?
Trust me. It's bewildering to experience rare bouts of hope in the year 2024. But Kamala Harris' choice of Tim Walz as her running mate is personally doing it for me today. Just look at the man's excellent record on voting rights; Walz's success, as governor of Minnesota, securing free school lunch and some of the most rigorous, pro-labor laws in the country; a career that has spanned public school teacher to command sergeant major in the Army National Guard. He also has a penchant for ludicrous-looking food, a quality that is extremely rad to me.
But perhaps more than anything, Walz appears to be an exceedingly normal dude—even lovely. Here he is talking about his family's IVF journey, in deeply personal and compelling terms, after the Alabama state Supreme Court's devastating ruling on the issue in February:
"Gwen and I have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF. This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others. Don’t let these guys get away with this by telling you they support IVF when their handpicked judges oppose it."
Read that against everything JD Vance and the right have to say on the matter—and just about everything else, really—and the contrast couldn't be more striking. So will Harris and Walz have what it takes to defeat the weirdos on the right? With 90 days out from the election, anything can happen. But for today, things at least feel pretty darn OK.
—Inae Oh
