Tim Walz Exposes the Democratic Party’s Weakness for Lawlessness

Early reports indicate that Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz to join her on the presidential ticket in November. Walz’s selection represents a rare moment in which America’s progressives and Republicans are experiencing the same range of emotions.

If Harris had backed Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro for the role, both the far left and the Republican right would be beset with existential anxiety; progressives over their rejection by their party’s presumptive presidential nominee and Republicans over Harris’s effort to make their jobs that much harder. Both sides of the political spectrum are breathing a sigh of relief this morning, but Republicans have more reason for it: Walz exposes the Democratic Party’s fatal weakness for disorder and lawlessness.

Walz himself called his state’s response to the outbreak of urban violence in the summer of 2020 an “abject failure,” and deservedly so. In one of the after-action reports on the inaction that allowed the protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd to spiral out of control, Walz was faulted not just for inaction that cast his own state into chaos — he was also attacked for consigning much of the Western world to chaos and riot.