It’s Wednesday, August 7, 2024.
I’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Part I
Kamala Harris Chooses Governor Tim Walz as Running Mate – Let’s Look at the Walz Narratives the Harris Campaign is Falsely Pushing
Well, the Democratic vice presidential candidate is going to be Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. That was not so much a closely guarded secret as it was a highly orchestrated rollout in which Vice President Kamala Harris appeared in Philadelphia yesterday, just hours after her campaign made the announcement that her choice as a vice presidential running mate would not be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but would be Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Now, there are so many issues that all of a sudden explode onto our worldview agenda. But as we’re looking at this, we do need to recognize that it is simply a matter of historical fact that as of yesterday, we have two opposing tickets and you’re looking at the Republican ticket being former President Donald Trump with his running mate, vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance. And on the Democratic side, we have already the delegate count in when it comes to Vice President Kamala Harris being the nominee for the office of president and her choice as a running mate, Minnesota governor, Tim Walz. Well, this is all now a matter of history. But of course, in a matter of days, the Democrats are going to be in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention of 2024, and that’s likely to be a circus unto itself.
But we do need to recognize, as we have pointed out already, there’s plenty of evidence even yesterday that the mainstream media are basically operating as something of a public relations team for the Democratic ticket. And one of the ways they are playing this out is by taking the vice presidential question, turning it into such a circus, and basically promoting the vice president as the new Democratic nominee as something of a major turning of a page in American history.
Now, the reason I’m putting it that way is that when you consider that you have Kamala Harris now at the top of the Democratic ticket, and she has been there now for a matter of days, the reality is that she has not yet answered a question from the media. She has not yet had an unscripted event. She has not yet basically given almost any speech that hasn’t been covered live by cable news networks, as was the event yesterday in Philadelphia. The fact that the event yesterday was the culmination of the day of the announcement of the vice presidential pick, and given the fact that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, at least for a matter of days, have been considered the likely choice of the vice president as a running mate, the fact that the event was in Philadelphia seemed to be an indication that Josh Shapiro was the choice.
And yet on Monday night, it became more and more clear that the Harris campaign was likely to be pivoting on the question precisely because of Josh Shapiro’s support of Israel. And by the way, as we’re going to see, this gets right down into the weeds of Democratic politics and the fact that the Democratic Party is increasingly under the control of its progressive activists left, the party itself is moving, shifting significantly to the left. And on the question of Israel, well, you have the Democratic Party now openly courting votes from folks who are pretty hostile to the existence of Israel and very supportive of the Palestinian cause. And we’ve been looking at that in terms of votes, for example, in the upper Midwest. And that’s exactly where, of course, the governor of Minnesota is found. Tim Walz, he’s now the running mate, very interesting set of things coming together.
There have been many people who’ve said that this proves that there is a latent anti-Semitism that has now become rather an active anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. I think the most important and undeniable thing we can say is that support for Israel has now become a divisive issue in the Democratic Party. And because that issue cannot be separated from the Jewish identity of Israel as a Jewish state, or for that matter, the Jewish identity of Josh Shapiro as the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, we really are looking at a very interesting turn in American politics. And you can count on the fact that Israel is watching this very closely and is getting the message.
But at this point, we simply need to pivot and consider what it means, not so much that Governor Shapiro is not the choice. And by the way, that has to be explained by something major because the Democratic ticket virtually everyone acknowledges, including Democratic strategists, can’t win without carrying the state of Pennsylvania. So it would appear to be something of, well, a very dangerous move not to choose the governor of Pennsylvania who was so popular anyway within the state among Democrats. But that’s the course that the Harris campaign has taken. So now we need to pivot to Governor Tim Walz and what the choice of Governor Walz means, first of all for the Democratic Party, secondly, for the 2024 race, and thirdly for the larger worldview context of American politics. So let’s look at Governor Walz.
Now, the story that virtually everyone wants to tell you about Governor Walz is that he represents middle America. He represents heartland America. And so they’re going to point to the fact that he was born in rural Nebraska and lived in several Nebraska towns with his family. He joined the Army National Guard there in Nebraska, later transferring to Minnesota. He went to a local college, a regional state university there in Nebraska, where he gained his credentials for teaching. But as a young man, he married his wife, Gwen, also a teacher. She was in the state of Minnesota. They moved to Minnesota. And of course the rest is history as he is now known not as a social studies high school teacher in Minnesota, but as the governor of the state.
But even as the heartland issues, as we’re going to see is what they are stressing, the fact is that the choice of Tim Walz is a choice that is enthusiastically cheered, not by heartland folks, but rather by The Squad, that is the ultra liberal group of progressives in the US House of Representatives, where Tim Walz served as a representative from the state of Minnesota for 12 years. But let’s just back up a little. Before he was elected to Congress, he was a high school teacher, he was a high school coach, he was a high school football coach, and by the way, led his team to a state championship there in Minnesota.
And again, that’s a very symbolic thing. It’s a way of trying to make Tim Walz look like your just average American family man and all the rest. And I’m not questioning that he is a family man, but I am simply saying that when you look at his actual policies, you look at the legislation he has signed you, look at the positions he has taken, they’re actually quite subversive of any objective understanding of the family. And that goes back to the fact that even when he was a teacher in high school in Minnesota in the 1990s, this turns out to be crucial, when a student came to him wanting to organize what was then called a Gay Straight Alliance, he actually volunteered to be the sponsoring teacher, very affirmative of, say, even before they were called this LGBTQ issues back when it was simply called the constellation of gay issues.
Part II
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Make for Deadly Abortion Ticket: We are Looking at the Most Pro-Abortion Presidential Ticket in U.S. History
But it is at this point that things get very, very interesting. And just for the sake of time in terms of this worldview analysis, I want us to look at two speeches, both of them given yesterday, both of them in Philadelphia, one of them by Vice President Kamala Harris and the other by her designee, Minnesota governor, and now vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz. Both of them spoke to a massive democratic rally there in Philadelphia yesterday. I want to point to some of the statements made by the vice president and by her choice to be her running mate as vice president on the 2024 ticket. And I want us to note what was said and then we’re going to look further at what actually wasn’t said.
So Kamala Harris, the vice president, spoke first, and I want to point to comments she made very early in her address. She said this, “We fight for a future where we defend our most fundamental freedoms, the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride, and the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”
So you’ll notice how early all these so-called fundamental freedoms that the Democratic ticket is contending for. And you’ll notice the conflation of historic constitutional rights honored in terms of our democratic tradition with what is now defined as the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. And again, her words, the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body. Now, one of the things we need to note here is that when you have the issue of abortion front and center, it’s always interesting when no one will use the word abortion. Now, remember that Joe Biden was presented as just reluctantly supportive of abortion rights even as he, as a Roman Catholic remember, was not willing to use the word abortion, or under rare circumstances would use the word abortion. Now, as I pointed out, that was all a smokescreen, because Joe Biden turned out to be the most pro-abortion president in American history in terms of the time he has actually spent in office.
But nonetheless, it was said that the new generation was going to be talking about abortion. Well, they’re promoting a radical vision of abortion, but in this case, when it comes to the two candidates who spoke yesterday at the top of the Democratic ticket, they didn’t use the word. Instead, they used the moral camouflage again, “The freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”
Later in the same address, the vice president returned to the theme saying, “Take reproductive freedom.” And then she went on to say that Donald Trump is the enemy of reproductive freedom. But I’m going to skip down to where she commented about Tim Walz. “We’re not going back, we’re not going back. And so, let me say this about Tim Walz. He has shown up to stand against these attacks long before he stands on the stage with me. After Roe was overturned, he was the first governor in the country to sign a new law that enshrined reproductive freedom as a fundamental right.” The vice president went on to say, “And with Tim Walz by my side, when I am President of the United States and we win majorities in the United States Congress, we will pass a bill to restore reproductive freedom and I’ll proudly sign it into law.”
Now, several things here we need to know very quickly. This is so important. Number one, as I’ve said, Kamala Harris by no means would be satisfied with what President Biden has presented as political camouflage, which is that what he wants to do is to enshrine Roe v. Wade into law after the Supreme Court reversed the Roe decision in 2022. But there is no way that this Democratic Party would be satisfied even with putting Roe into legislation, because even Roe allowed for some limitations on abortion. As we’re going to see in the state of Minnesota, the legislation after the Dobbs decision that was signed into law by none other than Governor Tim Walz, it has no limitations on abortion whatsoever. Period.
Okay, after giving her address, the vice president introduced Governor Walz as her running mate, and after all the political celebration in that room and all the rest, the governor of Minnesota got up to speak. And as he spoke, he said many things trying to narrate his story, but he also said, “I learned the art of compromise without compromising my values.” So if that’s the lesson, and if he wants us to take that seriously, that means that the positions he holds are his values. That’s exactly what he’s told us here. Now, Walz is known for having quite a sparkly personality in terms of having a lot of energy, kind of a grandfatherly approach, kind of a football coach approach. He’s known for telling stories. He’s known for very interesting language, and I’ll just say in the course of his speech, we had another reminder of the fact that political speech is becoming very coarse in the United States, including profanity.
So there are entire sections I can’t quote even when it comes to a major presidential or vice presidential candidate, but he says in Minnesota, “We respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves.” He says, “There’s a golden rule, mind your own,” and I’ll just say, “Business.” He goes on to say that includes IVF. He goes on to expand that to other issues as well.
His reference to abortion was even more indirect in one sense than the vice president when he said, “When the vice president and I talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make your own healthcare decisions.”
So it’s very interesting to see how that is all being repackaged again. I think it’s very telling that even the Democratic ticket that is going to be the most pro-abortion ticket in American history, doesn’t want to use the word abortion. That tells you something. They certainly don’t want to mention the baby or even acknowledge the baby’s existence.
Part III
Tim Walz Proudly Signed One of the Most Radical Abortion Laws in the US: Reckoning with the Minnesota Governor’s Commitment to the Culture of Death
But here’s where we need to take a closer look at Tim Walz and understand who we’re really dealing with here.
So for example, when you look at his term as governor and you look at what took place in Minnesota, just understand that he signed into law on the last day of January in 2023, what is now known in Minnesota as the Protect Reproductive Options Act. The most important thing you need to know is that this legislation affirmed “an individual’s right to abortion at any stage of pregnancy and defined it as a fundamental right.” So I just want to go back to the actual bill. I pulled up the legislation. “For purposes of this section, reproductive healthcare means healthcare offered, arranged, or furnished for the purpose of preventing pregnancy, terminating a pregnancy, managing pregnancy loss, or improving maternal health and birth outcomes. Reproductive healthcare includes but is not limited to contraception, sterilization, preconception care, maternity care, abortion care, family planning and fertility services, and counseling regarding reproductive healthcare.”
So there you see how when they speak of a woman’s healthcare or reproductive healthcare, they don’t have to define their terms because they’re hiding behind the camouflage, but the terms are defined in law and you just heard them. But then, in subsection three, reproductive freedom, here’s what the Minnesota legislation signed into law by Governor Tim Walz says, “Every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive healthcare.” Now, remember that this has already been defined to include abortion. You’ll also notice that the term here is individual, every individual, not even a reference to women here, every individual according to this Minneapolis legislation has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about reproductive health.
Now, listen to the next sentence, “Every individual who becomes pregnant.” So again, women disappear. This is just an individual in Minnesota who becomes pregnant, “Has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth or obtain an abortion and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right.” That language is followed by this. “The Minnesota Constitution establishes the principles of individual liberty, personal privacy, and equality. Such principles ensure the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” Then this, “Finally, a local unit of government may not regulate an individual’s ability to freely exercise the fundamental rights set forth in this section in a manner that is more restrictive than that set forth in this section.”
So you might not have read between the lines or between the words, what’s really going on here? Number one, this Minnesota legislation and the governor was all for it. In fact, he’s claiming it as a political victory. Remember, he learned the art of compromise without compromising his values. He proudly signed it into law. And actually at the governor’s website, there are numerous photographs of the signing ceremony. He’s trying to get publicity out of this and has been doing so since the last day of January of 2023. But here’s what we need to note. When you use constitutional language like fundamental right, you’re not just using language. You’re invoking a formal category here, a fundamental right is assumed to be a right that government simply has to recognize, it’s so important, it’s so pre-existent to the society that it is not a subsidiary or a secondary right, it is a primary right. That’s why it’s called a fundamental right. That’s exactly what it’s called in this legislation. That’s exactly what the vice president was bragging about in introducing Governor Walz.
So again, that tells you how radical both of them are on abortion. Now, fundamental right also means that it is a right that should be articulated and that means explicitly, but sometimes it’s read to be implicitly articulated in a constitutional text. Now, just to make the issue clear, there is absolutely no reference to abortion in the US Constitution. Nowhere, never has been, it’s not there. So this is claiming, for example, that when you take the Bill of Rights, let’s say the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, you are saying that while you claim to be a fundamental right, and here Minnesota says abortion is a fundamental right, is as fundamental foundational as basic as those first 10 rights recognized in the Bill of Rights. Now, that’s absolute irrationality, but that’s absolutely what the state of Minnesota now claims, and that’s exactly what Kamala Harris was bragging about, and we just need to know that’s exactly where they are.
In the Minnesota law, two huge things leap out at us, not just by the way, first of all, the issue that abortions called a fundamental right, but that there’s no limitation on abortion and actually the state is prohibited from intervening in any abortion in any way all the way up until birth. So again, this is far more radical than Roe v. Wade. The second thing is did you notice that it says an individual, doesn’t even say an adult. It doesn’t speak about reaching the age of majority. So that means that in the state of Minnesota, according to this legislation proudly signed into law by Tim Walz, you have children and teenagers who have the right to an abortion without the interference of anyone else, and that includes also the parents.
Now, remember on the LGBTQ issues, even as he was introduced yesterday, Vice President Harris was bragging about the fact that even in the 1990s, he was the faculty sponsor for the Gay Straight Alliance. And in the state of Minnesota, as you can expect, the same progressivism, the same radical ideology has been showing up. And when it comes to the LGBTQ revolution, well, as I indicated, both Vice President Harris and Governor Walz indicated themselves and in affirming each other, they’re all for it, and that means all for all of it.
Congressman Walz was recognized as being so liberal that in 2012 Planned Parenthood gave him a rating of 100%. That’s 100%. He also received, at least in some years, the same score from the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, huge thing. I mean, one of the things that certainly will be focused upon in the course of the campaign or certainly deserves to be is where Tim Walz is on the question of immigration. If you’ve got immigration lawyers all for you 100%, that tells you something. Governor Walz signed into law legislation that in the state of Minnesota would give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. So we really are talking about a radical approach here.
Part IV
No, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Walz is Not Everyone’s Governor: The Incongruence of Pelosi’s ‘Heartland Values’ Argument with the Modern Democratic Party
But with the time that remains, I want to call in an unlikely authority, and that is the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. In the New York Times yesterday, Pelosi championing Governor Tim Walz as the party’s vice presidential candidate, said that he would be a good match for Vice President Kamala Harris because Governor Walz represents, in her words, heartland values. “I think he brings the heartland values, not that they aren’t values that we all share, but as are perceived by the heartland to the debate.”
And Former Speaker Pelosi said this in an interview with NBC News, she said, “And that’s useful every place in the country. What works there,” meaning presumably Minneapolis, “works almost everywhere. What works, say, in my district in San Francisco might not work everywhere, but what works in the heartland of America works everywhere.”
In other words, everybody’s going to love Tim Walz because after all, he’s the governor of Minnesota. He’s the governor of everywhere. Now, it’s also interesting that she acknowledged that San Francisco is not exactly everywhere, but the fact is that Governor Tim Walz of the state of Minnesota wouldn’t be out of place at all in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco. Not at all. And that’s very important for us to recognize. And that takes me to some final reflections that help to set this I hope in the context of American history.
Speaker Pelosi is basically just representing what is an absolutely dishonest argument about heartland values, basically trying to argue that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, is pretty much mom, baseball, apple pie, state championship, and football, he sometimes hunts, on and on, and yet that dog won’t hunt. Because as you look at the argument that the heartland represents heartland values, just recognize that in the history of the Democratic Party over the course of the last, say, half century or slightly more, the most liberal nominees for the office of president have often been people who represent the heartland, and in particular, the state of Minnesota, and its neighbor South Dakota.
So let’s just remember this, 1968, the Democratic nominee was the then Vice President of the United States and former Senator Hubert Humphrey, and he went down precisely because with so much concern about law and order, well, they didn’t elect Hubert Humphrey, who was a very liberal US senator. Instead, the voters went with Richard Nixon. Four years later in 1972, the Democrats put up another heartland representative, in this case, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, again, right there beside Minnesota. And George McGovern, very liberal, he went down in one of the biggest landslide defeats to Richard Nixon in 1972. So the Democrats put up a Minnesota liberal in 1968, they lost. They put up a South Dakota liberal in 1972, they lost in a landslide. And they went back to the state of Minnesota, to then former senator and former Vice President Walter Mondale, also a protege of Humphrey there in Minnesota. He went down to a spectacular landslide defeat in 1984, as he was running against Ronald Reagan.
Now, when you look at Hubert Humphrey, you look at George McGovern, you look at Walter Mondale, you are looking at the upper Midwest in three absolutely representative figures. And all of them involved in the Democratic politics, which includes the fact that in the state of Minnesota, the party has been known as the Democratic Farmer Labor Party and that goes back to the Minnesota Farmers Labor Party that also included a lot of socialist and even communist influences at some points during the 20th century. Now, that’s not to say that it is now allied in any way with the communist party, it’s not. But the current Democratic Party is a union of all of these historic forces together. And as you’re looking at the Upper Midwest, we need to understand there has been a very liberal populist ideology and political tradition up there that goes all the way back well into the beginning of the 20th century in the United States.
In the 1968 election, arguably, voters liked Hubert Humphrey, but they hated his liberalism. George McGovern, who was something of a military hero as well in World War II, was extremely likable, he went down to one of the biggest landslide defeats in American history. Americans liked him hated his politics, way too liberal. The same thing was true of Walter Mondale in 1984. And well, it’ll be very interesting to see if it happens a fourth time when it comes to Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. But at the very least, understand that there is a very liberal, very progressivist tradition coming from the Upper Midwest in the United States, and in particular from the state of Minnesota. No surprise here. Nancy Pelosi may say that what he represents is heartland values, but she is redefining the heartland and not for the first time.
So in conclusion, we find ourselves neck deep in worldview issues with so much on the line and so much at stake in the coming election. The choice of Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota as the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic side just helps to underline the clash of worldviews which is taking place in this clash of candidacies and clash of parties in the 2024 presidential election. There will be much more for us to talk about, but as we think about the events of just the last couple of days, we really are talking about a worldview workout.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing.
For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com.
I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
