How Tim Walz Learned To Throw a Punch

Democrats let loose with roars Wednesday evening for the version of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that they have come to know over the past month: The new favorite mascot of progressives, the guy who lands a stinging partisan punch, the flannel-shirted happy warrior from the heartland.

Listening to his lines, and the thundering applause they summoned, my mind went back to a different version of Walz I experienced not very long ago.

It was the summer of 2020 — in the middle of the pandemic, just a couple months after George Floyd’s murder on a Minneapolis street corner prompted a convulsive national reckoning over race — and we were seated outside for a properly distanced interview on the patio of the governor’s residence in St. Paul.