It’s common, whenever someone skyrockets into mainstream fame, for folks to dig deep through their internet histories. Less common is what happened to Vice President Kamala Harris’s newly announced running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: Pretty much everything they found was extremely wholesome.
From clips of him riding roller coasters with his daughter at the Minnesota State Fair to giving tips on car maintenance, in the two weeks since his viral appearances on MSNBC, Walz has not only secured the Democratic nomination for vice president, but has also taken on the role of the internet’s collective Midwestern dad, its favorite high school teacher, and the physical representation of everything the progressives have been longing for: a candidate with genuinely good vibes.
There’s been a fair amount of chatter about political “vibes” this summer, beginning with the bad ones viewers got from President Joe Biden’s debate performance in June, followed by the weird energy emanating from former President Donald Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who managed to alienate a broad swath of voters when his fringe social views got a wider airing.
Then, with Biden out of the race and Harris’s campaign underway, it started to feel like the Democrats were having fun for the first time in recent memory: All over the internet, Harris was being memed into oblivion by people who, ironically or not, juxtaposed her “fun aunt” persona with Charli xcx’s breakout album of the summer. Her campaign embraced the jokes, and overnight the right’s attacks on her — which largely centered around her laughing and dancing — seemed to backfire. Suddenly, the Republicans were the spoilsports who couldn’t take the joke, a position stereotypically held by politically correct liberals.
When Harris went with Walz, it seemed as though the campaign was going full force on vibes. As with any discussion of politics and the internet, there’s the million-dollar question of whether energy online can translate into votes. Not being from a traditional battleground state, Walz isn’t likely to deliver votes where it matters, and there’s also the fact that Walz may not be quite as progressive as people are projecting onto him, at least not by the standards of the online left. But for now, they have a new hero — and his digital history explains his appeal.
Tim Walz, wholesome star of social media, explained
For the last few days, the political internet has overflowed with heartwarming clips and anecdotes about Walz. Consider, for instance, the cute PSA he made with his daughter Hope about Minnesota’s hands-free driving law, and the aforementioned one from the Minnesota State Fair (the video then cuts to a jubilant Walz riding the Slingshot).
There’s the screenshot he posted of a text conversation with his wife in which she informs him that their dog, Scout, has locked himself in their bedroom, many tweets about his cat, including one in which he laments not being able to score Taylor Swift tickets, and at least four tweets in which he expresses his affection for Diet Mountain Dew. During the pandemic he also posted a series of photos installing an old-school stereo setup in Hope’s room — so that she can listen to Bob Seger on vinyl.
That’s not even including the images and information being shared about him: There’s a photo in which he cradles a tiny sleeping piglet and a video where he’s being hugged by a bunch of children after signing a bill for free breakfast and lunch at schools. According to financial disclosures, Walz doesn’t own a single stock, instead invested only in pensions, making him seem even more like your average Joe who doesn’t have robust retirement savings.
For the last few days, those who know him personally have been sharing their stories, including how helpful he’s been with fixing other people’s cars, how much of a delight he was in a decade-long group chat called “Sports Buddies,” and how inspiring he was as a teacher and coach. One former coworker told a story to the Washington Post in which they tried to prank him by giving Walz a fake gift certificate for a free turkey at the local grocery store, and that Walz managed to still leave with a free turkey. “That’s just Tim Walz,” she said.
It’s the sort of wholesomeness that people online tend to embrace. But, as digital and political strategist Gina DiVittorio tells Vox, Walz’s good vibes only matter insofar as they’re backed up by his record of managing to push through progressive policy in Minnesota, like paid family leave, a 100 percent clean energy mandate by 2040, and labor protections.
“The phenomenon of Walz as a social media youth engagement goldmine is a great example of a critical pill Democratic leadership has had a hard time swallowing, which is that sustainable youth mobilization can be aided by PR, but it starts with policy,” she explains.
Because left-leaning people online equate Walz with progressive change, much of the discourse around him has been less about how he could help Harris win but the genuine emotion he rouses in them. Online, people are praising how he provides an example of “positive and kind masculinity,” and how they tear up when they listen to the story about how he signed up to be his high school’s gay-straight alliance faculty adviser, knowing that having a football coach act in such a role would help shut down bullying. “It bothers me how much American politics has lowered my bar for the absolute bare minimum,” said TikToker Dasia Sade in a video. “I was tearing up because I was witnessing adults speaking and exhibiting basic human empathy.”
In some instances, there’s a personal dimension to the adulation. One especially viral video on TikTok posits that Walz “represents the father we lost to Fox News.”
“The cult of conservatism that has grown and grown and grown has driven a wedge between millennial woman and her father,” creator Pamela Wurst Vetrini said in the clip. “It makes me sad to see him because I think what kind of person my dad would have been if he didn’t fall victim to this nightmare.” Many others stitched the video with their own emotional experiences seeing a man who shares the appearance and folksiness of their fathers but without the politics associated with older white men.
“Many of the left-leaning young people who serve as the lifeblood of the internet have rightfully become disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Ideologically speaking, Walz is only slightly more left of center than Biden,” DiVittorio adds. “But a Midwest governor who didn’t let frivolous charges of socialism stop him from enacting a couple of broadly popular policies feels like a knight in shining armor.”
How much do good vibes matter?
Vibes are, notoriously, transient. It’s very possible that once Walz takes the debate stage against Vance, in which he’ll have to clarify his position on Israel’s war in Gaza or echo Harris’s “tough on the border” stance, the magic will fade for the large swath of the internet populated by the left. Republicans, meanwhile, are stepping up misleading attacks on Walz’s military record, which may eventually affect perceptions of him among the general public.
For now, however, just as they did with Kamala, the Harris campaign has fully leaned into Walz’s persona, introducing him at their first appearance together as “Coach Walz” and posting tweets about his love of cats as a veiled attack on Vance’s comment about lonely cat ladies. As a sign of how clued in he is to the chatter online, at the same appearance Walz even referenced the (untrue) but now infamous joke about Vance and the couch. “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” he said later, to massive applause.
There are solid signs that excitement within the party isn’t just limited to posting, either. Within the span of a few hours of announcing Walz as VP, the Harris campaign netted more than $20 million in donations, a number that doubled by the next day. And when the Harris campaign released a RealTree camo Harris-Walz cap that references pop star Chappell Roan’s popular merch and Walz’s love of hunting, it sold out in 30 minutes with nearly a million dollars of hats sold.
Good feelings aren’t entirely reflected in polls (though recent data suggests Harris is polling ahead of Trump) and it’s anyone’s guess how long they’ll last. But the vibes of a candidate undoubtedly play a role in their ability to sway voters and gin up the energy required to win elections. Luckily for Walz, his vibes are about more than just being “your Midwestern dad.” Whether it’s enough for him to become your vice president remains to be seen.