The Common Good and ‘None of Your Damn Business’

The New Center: A Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

I like a lot about Tim Walz as an economic populist, and I’ve made no secret of this. When Kamala Harris first tapped the Minnesota governor as her running mate, I warned in Compact that he poses a serious threat to a Trump campaign banking on J.D. Vance’s Appalachian roots and populist message. For The New Statesman, I situated Walz as an heir of sorts to an authentic and honorable tradition of German- and Nordic-inflected Upper Great Plains social democracy. (My Compact co-founder Matthew Schmitz, a native son of the Great Plains, did the same thing for The American Conservative, though his take was more skeptical.)

Walz’s strengths as a politician shone in his address Wednesday night to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He spoke of the Democratic Party’s political vision as an extension of the neighborliness and solidarity that characterize the sorts of places in which he grew up and launched his career as a National Guardsman, a schoolteacher, and a football coach. He spoke of a “commitment to the common good” (music to my ears!) and an America where “everybody has a responsibility to contribute.”