As we have noted more than once, the Democrats are panicking over the fact that male voters, especially minorities, are deserting the Harris-Walz ticket. Thus, they have made absurdly clumsy attempts to associate their far-left, matriarchal ticket with masculinity.
Now we learn that Tim Walz is heading up a last-minute effort to draw hunters and fishermen into the Democratic camp. They placed an article in Outdoor Life magazine:
Later today the Harris-Walz presidential campaign will announce the formation of a coalition of hunters, anglers, and gun owners and tomorrow Democratic vice-presidential candidate and sitting governor of Minnesota Tim Walz will kick off his state’s pheasant opener with a stage-managed event in southern Minnesota.
That event happened yesterday, and it gave rise to peals of laughter as Walz was apparently unable to operate his shotgun. But at least Outdoor Life acknowledged that the “pheasant hunt” was a “stage-managed event,” whereas the Star Tribune, with doglike loyalty to its party, headlined “Walz takes a break from the campaign trail to hunt in Minnesota’s pheasant opener.” Right. From Outdoor Life:
Sources in the Harris-Walz campaign confirmed today that a broad coalition of rural, conservation-minded, and what the campaign calls “responsible gun owners” will hold its first organizing call on Monday. Creation of the coalition is intended to create a “permission structure for those who simply love to hunt, fish, and be outside, to join the Harris-Walz campaign,” said a campaign staffer who spoke on background.
It is very late in the day for the Democrats to try to reach out to a mostly hostile demographic and attempt to sway votes. The campaign spokesman’s reference to “permission” suggests that the real goal is to encourage the minority of liberal hunters and fishermen–there are some, of course–to stick to their guns (so to speak) athwart the pro-Trump tide.
It is not surprising that Tim Walz is heading up this initiative; Kamala Harris and the Democrats have promoted him as a small-town guy who can appeal to rural America. In fact, however, Walz is a far-left urban ideologue. If you doubt that, just ask his wife Gwen, who by her own account delighted in the George Floyd riots.
Walz is deeply unpopular in rural Minnesota, in part because of his notorious assurance to fellow Democrats that they shouldn’t worry about the broad red swaths on maps representing rural areas, because those areas consist of “mostly rocks and cows.” Beyond that, Walz’s far-left policies are not only culturally incompatible with small-town values, but have had devastating impact on rural areas in Minnesota and, because he served in Congress, across America.
Walz was re-elected as governor in 2022 on account of urban ballot machines, not because of any support in Greater Minnesota:
In fact, Walz is barely able to set foot in rural Minnesota. During the 2022 campaign, he engaged in one debate with his Republican challenger, at FarmFest, a giant agricultural trade show that is held in a field in southern Minnesota. It did not go well. Walz was booed by the largely-farmer audience, and he was so scarred by the experience that thereafter, he refused to engage in any more debates, even when he had previously agreed to do so. Thus, one local television station conducted a “debate” where the Republican candidate appeared in person, and Walz was represented by an empty chair. The next time Walz debated was against JD Vance, and you saw how that went.
In Minnesota, the spring fishing opener is a much bigger deal than the fall opening of the pheasant season, I suppose because it marks the end of winter. The governor’s fishing opener has become a major event, as every year, the governor fishes on a different lake in northern Minnesota, accompanied by the state’s press. Until the Walz administration, the opener was a nonpartisan, feel-good event.
But because Walz is so reviled in Greater Minnesota, he can no longer carry on the tradition. His photo ops were disrupted by protesting boaters who would motor by, carrying anti-Walz signs. Which led to this:
So there is a real irony in the Democrats counting on Tim Walz to carry their banner into the hostile territory of normal men. Somehow, I don’t think it is going to work.
