Edit: well, a lot happened since we wrote this. I have to confess that early on, Walz was for more effective than I would have expected. He was able to seem progressive enough for liberals (those that didn't know him better, anyway), but he kept his "down home, common sense" feel that worked well with centrists and swing voters. I might hate the man, but until the campaign lurched to the right and lost momentum, Walz probably helped.

That said, getting himself associated with a GOP immigration stance and Kamala's rude, ridiculous "I'm talking here" response to Palestinians was completely in character for Walz, and now we will have to hear Democrats wax on romantically about how great Walz can be for years to come

Original article below:

Minnesota governor Tim Walz is now a contender for VP. Walz represents everything wrong with the Democrats. He’s a center-right, fake progressive, corporate servant more concerned with not offending conservatives than earning votes by improving peoples’ lives.

One of Walz’ early official acts was to pretend to care about Enbridge Line 3 - a tar sands pipeline of low value and high environmental risk that threatened Native lands. Walz made a short public fight against the pipeline, but despite having the power to stop the pipeline, he eventually pushed it through “for the economy”.

One of Walz next official acts was to pretend to care about police violence. Walz put an ex-police chief, John Harrington, in charge of the department of public safety. Besides being the chief of two notoriously violent police departments, Harrington went to the legislature to co-author a bill with Republicans that eliminated civil review boards’ ability to discipline officers.

Walz had Harrington co-create a working group on police violence. This dog and pony show was more than half police and police lobbyists. There were no experts on police reform or police violence in the group. Of course, this group produced nothing beyond a mild acknowledgement that there were issues with police violence. Imagine if Walz had put a real commission together that led to action on accountability. Maybe George Floyd and other people killed by Minnesota police would still be alive.

Walz heads the State Board of Investment, which decides how state pensions are invested, and he refuses to listen to the workers and community that they do not want their dollars invested in supporting the genocide of Palestinians by Israel.

During the uprisings over the killings of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, Walz ordered violent suppression of people expressing their first amendment rights. For George Floyd, he brought in the national guard, and just recently, he has been arguing online with Donald Trump. Walz is upset that Trump is taking credit for crushing people’s civil rights, when Walz himself was responsible!

In the Brooklyn Center protests over the murder of Daunte Wright by police, Walz supported tear gassing an entire neighborhood for a week. Tear gas is an abortifacient with other potential long-term health risks. Using tear gas on foreign soil would be a war crime. But with Walz’ blessing, police filled blocks full of apartment buildings with tear gas nightly because of the protests outside.

In both uprisings, protesters were brutalized, and “less-lethal” weapons were misused in manners that caused death or permanent injury. Each morning during the Brooklyn Center protests, Walz would go on TV and use protesters throwing plastic water bottles at cops in riot gear as justification for the uncontrolled violence towards the public.

Police were targeting medics and journalists with violence during the uprisings - something between a constitutional violation and a war crime. A federal court order was issued a ruling forbidding the practice. Walz, the authoritarian prick, responded by fighting this court ruling - he literally argued cops needed to be able to harm journalists and medics. How big on a fascist do you have to be to argue for violence towards medics? And this man should be vice president?!

Around this time, there was a permitted and peaceful Indigenous event on the lawn in front of the state capitol. During a religious ceremony and for no apparent reason, Walz’ state patrol pushed in, broke up the gathering, and arrested some leaders.

The night after the 2020 election, over one-thousand people gathered to demand the election results were honored by the Trump, and that Democrats follow through on their progressive promises. The march went briefly on to I-94, and would have been off the highway within 10-15 minutes. But Walz “wanted to teach protesters a lesson”.

He had hundreds of police in riot gear from over a dozen agencies trap the protesters on the highway for six hours. Traffic was needlessly stopped in both directions the entire time. Protesters were forced to stand in the cold without shelter or bathrooms for six hours. After being processed for arrest, the police dropped people at random spots all over the city. Afterwards. Walz pressured the city attorney not to drop the charges against the 646 arrestees.

Walz pollution control agency, the MPCA, is so desperate to protect businesses from environmental regulation that it sided with a south Minneapolis foundry that had been poisoning the community for decades against the EPA when the EPA caught the foundry effectively running no air cleaning at all. (The MCA Protects Polluters, Not the Environment)

In general, Walz is a backstabbing weasel who acts like he supports progressive issues such as police accountability or purchasing the toxic Minneapolis Roof Depot site, but then will not hold the legislative session open to allow or force legislators to do the work.

If local government implements laws that threaten Walz bootlicking relationship with business, he overrides them - such as when the Minneapolis city council tried to ensure workers had livable wages.

And finally, Walz, always eager to pick business over peoples’ well-being rushed reopening after COVID, including pushing kids into school before children were generally able to be vaccinated.

Walz is an awful politician and a terrible choice for vice president. His authoritarian tendencies and his constant sabotaging of progressive causes should disqualify him. It's incredible that the Overton window has shifted so far right that people as if Walz is "too progressive".