These Clowns Can't Lay a Glove on Tim Walz

Why the avuncular governor is a teflon candidate in the face of right wing shit-slinging (so far).

Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images

I’m not here to convince you that Minnesota Governor — my governor, for now — Tim Walz is a great politician or even a good one. At a certain point along the upward trajectory of national electoral figures, questions of “good” are almost beside the point, subsumed instead by the calculous of “who will do the least harm?” By that measure, at least, Walz’s inclusion on Kamala Harris’ presidential ticket is a mostly encouraging one, I think. Perhaps you think differently? That’s fine. Like I said, I’m not here to convince you of anything.

What I am here to do, though, is point out that Walz is genuinely impressive in one, undeniable way: He appears (at least to date) to be utterly immune to right-wing mud-slinging. So much so in fact, that the more mud the usual suspects of GOP goons attempt to sling at him, the more they themselves end up dripping in their own slop.

It’s been a pattern since even before Harris named Walz as her running mate based in no small part on the strength of his surprisingly effective invocation of Republican “weird”-ness — a charge Donald Trump and co have attempted to reflect back at Walz with, uh, diminishing returns.

It’s only gotten worse from there. This week, Republican operatives took two extremely ambitious swings at Walz in a bizarre effort to paint him as a liar and failed spectacularly on both counts.