Tim Walzs goofy revelation speaks volumes about Democrats identity-politics fixation

Former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz recently told an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School that former Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as a running mate because of his uncanny ability to connect with the average Caucasian cisgender dude.“I could code talk to white guys — watching football, fixing their truck,” he explained.“I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can do this and vote for this.’”It’s true, all the fellas are talking about “permission structures” these days.Alas, the White Guy Whisperer didn’t really help the Democratic ticket at all in 2024.Part of the problem, one imagines, is that the governor of Minnesota has an utterly deluded conception of himself as the embodiment of the working-class male.Though even if he were, few would have cared.

Blatant pandering doesn’t go over well with any race or gender.For one thing, guys who talk to guys never talk about how good they are at talking to them.Say what you will about President Trump, he doesn’t “code” his language to appeal to the working class or anyone else.When he slams general managers for passing on Shedeur Sanders in the NFL draft, for example, you know the comment hasn’t been vetted by a bunch of pinhead pollsters or risk-averse handlers.Yet authenticity is about the last thing that came to mind watching Walz’s ham-fisted manly media stunts in 2024, not during his cringey Madden video game contest with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or his hunting outing where he struggled with a shotgun.Never mind that the notion of “white guys” being transfixed by a candidate simply because he also watches football is awfully insulting.Just because a couple of white guys talk about trucks doesn’t mean they agree on foreign policy.Now, we might have a propensity to read too much into things politicians say, but I think Walz’s white-guy code comment also speaks to one of the big problems hampering Democrats: They have an unnatural obsession with ide...