Ask A Genius 1091: Walz-in’ Into a New Chapter of Political History
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/17
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you think of Walz and his record on governing, especially on abortion rights, free lunches for kids, and LGBTQ rights? Is he strong on those issues?
Rick Rosner: He’s fine. But is he weak on anything that he should be stronger on? No. When I first read about him, I called him unbesmirchable. I don’t think there’s anything about him that the Republicans can make stick with a large proportion of independents. The accusations they’re throwing at him only convince people who already aren’t voting Democratic. These arguments only rile up the MAGA base; they don’t flip any votes.
The guy was in the National Guard for 24 years. They’re trying to say he left the people under his command in the lurch when he retired from the National Guard to run for office or shortly before his unit was going to deploy to Iraq. People have been arguing about the timeline—he filed his papers to disconnect from the military, which can take up to a year, months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.
The Democrats say he did that long before they got their orders. The Republicans say, “Oh, there were rumours they were going to get deployed months before the actual orders came through.” It strikes me as horseshit. He put in 24 years.
Jacobsen: They’re also claiming he implied he’d been in combat.
Rosner: He never said he was in combat. He used some flowery language about gun control, saying civilians shouldn’t use weapons of war that he held in war. Republicans and Rupert Murdoch’s rags like the New York Post are saying that was strongly implying he was in combat. I don’t think so. I think it was just flowery language.
And he’s never claimed to have been in combat. He was deployed as part of the Afghan war and was support staff. He was stationed in Italy and another European country because they needed personnel in Europe since much of the logistics are staged out of Europe. So, his guard unit was sent to replace people who had gone to Afghanistan. He was deployed as part of the war.
People who are trying to say this is stolen valour are the same folks who swift-boated John Kerry about his war record. For those who don’t know, Kerry was the candidate against Bush and had done a tour or two in Vietnam, receiving three Purple Hearts. The swift boaters claimed he was a medal hog who received Purple Hearts for insignificant injuries.
Kerry responded to these allegations awkwardly and badly, which helped cost him the election against Bush—who probably did go AWOL from his service as a pilot for the National Guard. But I don’t think it will work this time because Walz has 24 years of service in the guard and received many medals—not battle medals like the Bronze Star, but plenty of medals for doing a good job on his assignments.
Then there’s a bunch of similar stuff that most people either won’t hear about or will only bug MAGA supporters. They’re calling him “Tampon Tim” because he signed a law that provides menstrual products for every public school kid between 4th and 12th grade. The Republicans are claiming he put tampon machines in boys’ restrooms, saying it shows he’s dangerously radical and is making our kids trans or some nonsense like that. The truth is, no, he didn’t do that.
One boys’ restroom was used as the visiting team’s girls’ locker room when they had a sports event at the school. So yes, they put a tampon machine in there because girls regularly use it. But all these accusations are desperate nonsense that I don’t think will work. I don’t think there’s anything dangerously liberal about him. He’s the governor of Minnesota, which was the site of the George Floyd riots because George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, maybe? That’s the one where the cop knelt on the guy’s neck for nine minutes until he was long past dead, and there were riots.
The right-wing press can argue that he let the riots rage, even though Trump, in 2020, called Walz, the governor, and said he’d done a good job with the unrest. When you look at the bills he introduced in Congress—because he spent three terms in the U.S. Congress—they were pretty middle of the road. He was the 7th least liberal Democratic congressman, according to some calculations. So, no, I don’t think he’s got significant weaknesses.
Oh, and he permitted undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses, which many states do—states that aren’t unreasonable—because you want people to be licensed to drive. It’s not a license to vote; you want people to be qualified to drive because you don’t want to be on the roads with people who don’t know the rules of driving and how to operate a vehicle. So no, he’s fine.
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
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