Good Lord. Even if this were true -- and it probably is -- why would Tim Walz admit it in public?

Walz has taken his act on the road again, purportedly as a "listening tour" across the country following the ignominious defeat he and Kamala Harris suffered last November. Rather than listen, however, it seems Walz doesn't know when to stop talking. He revealed that Harris picked him to be the token white guy to create a "permission structure" that would peel white male voters away from Trump:

Former vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., continued a self-described “listening tour” across the country at a Harvard Kennedy School forum on Monday night, ruling out a 2028 presidential bid and revealing why former Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate. 

Walz said Harris chose him, in part, because, “I could code talk to White guys watching football, fixing their truck” and “put them at ease.” The Minnesota governor described himself as the “permission structure” for White men from rural America to vote for Democrats. 

For those who don't get the headline reference, this immediately put me in mind of the 1998 hit song by The Offspring, "Pretty Fly For a White Guy." It skewers a clueless fool who believes himself to be much more attractive and cool than he really is. The first verse alone scores a direct hit on Walz and his theatrical antics during the campaign:

You know it's kind of hard just to get along today
Our subject isn't cool but he fakes it anyway
He may not have a clue and he may not have style
But everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, clearly. 

In that sense, perhaps this is Walz' attempt at sincerity -- by acknowledging what seemed pretty apparent all along. What's mystifying is why Walz would admit publicly that Harris was pursuing a race-based calculation in her running mate rather than, y'know, finding the best person for the job. And not just in the one-heartbeat-from-the-presidency sense either, but also in the ability to campaign and to compete against J. D. Vance.

Speaking of which:

During the 2024 campaign, @Tim_Walz was so anxious for his debate with @JDVance that he couldn’t sleep and aides had to remind him to eat.

The debate “terrified him,” Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write in their book “FIGHT.” pic.twitter.com/qfr1YVHX1H

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) April 27, 2025

Walz had good reason to fear Vance, who easily outclassed him in the debate. The question is why Harris didn't pick someone who didn't need to fear a debate. Harris had Josh Shapiro, a confident and charismatic governor in a state she desperately needed to win, who had easily beaten his Republican opponent by appealing to the demo she needed. Harris could have selected Gavin Newsom, or Gretchen Whitmer, or practically anyone else than the bumbling Walz.

That's not the worst aspect of this admission. It exposes Democrats' cynicism about white male voters in general by just assuming that they needed a "permission structure" for their choice at the voting booth. What kind of thinking is that? It reminds me of the dumb Harris/Walz ad with Julia Roberts that was premised on the idea that white women weren't empowered to vote for Harris unless they got secret signals from celebrities that assured them their ballot choice would be secret. It's insanely infantilizing and practically sneers at these women as mindless idiots who desperately need progressives to remind them of what they already know. 

Walz makes it worse by claiming that he could "code talk to White guys," which (a) is terribly patronizing as well, and (b) not at all what Walz accomplished on the campaign trail. Walz came across as a progressive elitist who thought he could fake his way through the campaign as an outdoorsy dad, having trouble loading his own shotgun during a media photo op. 

And furthermore, Democrats should have known better from the data. In his two runs for governor, Walz ran to the left and lost rural and exurban voters by wide margins in Minnesota. He only won by dominating the deep-blue, Academia-driven Twin Cities metro areas. Even MSNBC warned that this was wishcasting shortly after Harris announced Walz as her running mate:

'You Don't Quite See That': MSNBC Data Guru Delivers Brutal Reality Check To Dems After Walz Pick pic.twitter.com/J020ClHAtw

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 6, 2024

So even if this was a deliberate strategy by Harris to "code talk" to white dudes, it was as idiotic as it was offensive. 

Which leave us with the same question we had at the start: Why would Walz publicly admit to this thinking? 

And one more: Have Democrats learned a lesson from it? Given Walz' public airing of this patronizing nonsense, I'd bet against it.

In case you don't recognize the song, here it is. This really should be Tim Walz' entry music at any future speaking gigs. The official video is hilarious if slightly NSFW, but it's worth it.