Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz talked a huge game during his first appearance with Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democrat running mate. “I can’t wait to debate the guy,” he said of Sen. J.D. Vance, his Republican opponent from Ohio. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Walz’s tune has changed so dramatically now that it’s unrecognizable. “Tim Walz is telling people he’s just as nervous about facing JD Vance as he was the Sunday afternoon in August when he warned Kamala Harris in his running mate interview that he was a bad debater,” said CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere. A dozen Walz operatives report the governor is absolutely terrified of “letting Harris down.” His constant mockery of Vance for rising from poverty in Appalachia to graduating from Yale Law School is reframed as a “glimpse into his anxiety” about going up against Vance’s superior intellect.
Other media outlets are also trying to lower expectations for Walz, reminding anyone who will listen that vice presidential debates rarely move the needle.
But Walz was picked precisely because he was supposed to move the needle with an important demographic Democrats are struggling to win over: men. And he was going to do it with a form of masculinity that the media claimed was so effective that it was terrifying for Republicans.
“Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans,” Bloomberg wrote in August. The New York Times said Walz exemplifies “a kind of healthy masculine confidence,” citing his ease speaking
