Balls to the Walz Coverage: How to Hurt Narcissists Like Trump and JD Vance
Democratic vice president candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his dad couch joke - among others zingers - bruised the egos of two profoundly humorless, joyless, malignant narcissists, former American president and 2024 current Republican president Donald Trump and his running mate Senator JD Vance. We always focus on the Presidents, as we should, but we often forget about the wind beneath their wings, their vice presidents. They can either make or break campaigns, because anyone who’s passed American civics class knows that they will be the POTUS in the event of the unthinkable. It can happen, it has happened, and unfortunately, it will happen again in the future. If Harris wins the election, it will be in no small part due to Governor Walz. From a strictly political perspective, he performs the most important part of the Vice President’s job: he adds, as opposed to subtracting, something from the ticket. During the 2008 Election, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin just gutted the McCain-Palin ticket, and saying aloud “this moron will become POTUS and have the nuclear codes, if McCain dies in office” was like shouting “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. My husband Joe told me he most likely would’ve voted for McCain if he had picked a better VP. During the 2016 election, Democratic VP candidate Tim Caine couldn’t help save Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. During the 2020 Election, then-former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) to be his VP. Comedian Trevor Noah once joked it was so she could never “dust his ass” in public again, but together Harris and Walz can now do that to both Trump and Vance in short order. So, doing what Democrats seem to never do, Harris learned not just one but two valuable political lessons. First, they went and picked a VP that would add to the ticket. Growing up in a farming community in Nebraska, Walz was a former high school geography teacher, hunter, football coach, served in the National Guard... Unless they find body parts from random hookers in his garage’s chest freezer, I think this was the best decision Harris could’ve made, and has made so far. Walz is as Midwestern American as a bacon cheeseburger and a beer, and suddenly a solid red state is starting to look a lot more purple, at the very least. Right now is the time to start sowing the seeds of discontent in Montana, Arkansas, and every other Republican stronghold. It may not yield a harvest in this particular election cycle, but maybe in the next one or the one after that… One of the many valuable political lessons to learn from the Republicans is being in it for the long run, thinking down the road… I mean, they did it with three Supreme Court justices. The Democrats also changed their messaging - less policy wonk “threat to democracy” and more “freedom” and “joy”. Republicans are always all about “freedom”, so taking it away from them is like snatching Trump’s ferret wig off his head and running away with it full-speed ahead. Project 2025 is more than just the rise of authoritarianism - which it still is, don’t get me wrong - but the squelching of human happiness. Taking away the joy of parenthood (e.g. banning in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy), making it harder to get by financially (giving corporations massive tax breaks and shifting the tax burden to the middle and lower classes), and criminalizing pornography are resonating more with the voters now than the previous worn-out message of “this is the most important election in American history”. Frame climate change not in the drier language of rising sea levels and decreasing crop yields, but in the planet you will no longer be able to enjoy - fewer brightly-colored coral reefs to explore (the water will be too warm and polluted), less freezing-cold snow to ski and snow-board, no more chocolate and/or vanilla (the global temperatures won’t be conducive to the cacao tree’s and/or vanilla bean orchid flower’s survival). Just those last two alone are enough to make me keep the rest of America’s fossil fuels in the ground forever. From 2015 until now, politics (and just single hot-button political issues) have been negative approximately 90% of the time, and it’s been exhausting. They’ve ruined Thanksgiving dinners across the nation, ended long-standing friendships and family relationships, etc. People have actually gotten divorced over politics, it has become so corrosive and toxic. Imagine drinking an Irish Car Bomb, except instead of being made with Guinness beer and a shot-glass filled with whiskey, it’s made with piss and pure acetone nail polish remover. That’s the current American political landscape in a nutshell for you. Realistically, that’s been the American political landscape since the days of the Communist threat and the John Birch Society, and so on, but it’s gotten so much worse over time. One documentary I highly recommend is the Amazon Prime “The Brainwashing of my Dad”, a documentary that made me realize that anyone can be radicalized given enough time and exposure. That’s what’s happened to a lot of us… your loving Christian parents who initially had no problem with you being child-free and your transgender brother soon were lecturing you about not living life properly, that “God doesn’t make mistakes, your sister is confused”… This one presidential isn’t going to take a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball to the divisive nature of American politics and culture, but maybe it could be a step in the right direction? In any event, advice is to keep doing what they’re doing. Give Trump and Vance no refuge or break from the Harris-Walz noise machine. Turn “insults” like #TamponTim into sources of pride, like how Vance brutally face-planted with the “childless cat lady” slur. #TamponTim brought up a flood of issues like period poverty (inability to afford feminine hygiene products), not understanding what’s happening when your first period’s starting (a lack of comprehensive sex education), and being humiliated at school (staining clothes, accidents), all things so many members of the American voting-age population remember. We may not remember that we walked into the garage pantry to grab a bottle of barbecue sauce. However, we remember *like yesterday* in eighth grade math class being laughed at for having a giant red stain on the back of our skirt and chair, and our unsympathetic teacher not letting us go to the bathroom even though we really needed to go. Governor Walz (making sure people with periods have access to pads and tampons) is the nice teacher or school nurse always looking out for you. Senator Vance is the stern, creepy teacher not letting you use the bathroom, and then makes you clean the chair with a spray bottle and paper towel in front of everyone, while you cry your eyes out. That’s the difference between these two men: the first one has empathy, and remembers that he has women in his life who go through the same bodily processes, and in that female student he sees his own daughter, Hope. The other just doesn’t fucking get it, and wouldn’t try to bother to “get it”. Show me how you deal with a subject that makes you uncomfortable (like menstruation usually is for cisgendered men) and I will tell you who you are. Show me how you treat people you have complete control over, and I will tell you whether or not I would vote for you. Trump has shown me, time and time again, how he deals with subjects that make him uncomfortable (Covid, namely) and how he treats people he has complete control over, people he seeks to have complete control over. When it comes to Senator Vance, I’ve been there, not knowing which version of an fundamentally narcissistic, cruel individual you’re going to get that day and what will happen to you in the process. Hint: that individual is still a raging asshole, you just don’t know what you’re in for and how bad it’s going to be. We don’t need this bullshit, this drama. It can stay on the couch where it belongs. Just another day, just another couch joke. Senator Vance reminds me of that 2020 Presidential Election campaign ad from the Lincoln Project where they show Trump making fun of a disabled journalist and threatening to hurt people, cutting to “it’s time for decency… it’s time for Joe Biden”. They need to make similar ads for a Vance vs. Walz campaign and pelt, pepper, flood, inundate, and lay waste to YouTube and social media with them. It would be truly, truly awesome, and if you need any help, you know where I am on the Internet… Combined with his credentials and experience, Walz clearly has the ability to connect to people, regardless of who they are. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have gone for the policies that he’s gone for. When you ban conversion therapy for the LGBTQ community and provide school lunches for hungry kids, you clearly “get it” and you’re doing this for the right reasons. When you ask a well-respected, highly effective predecessor like former governor Jesse Ventura for advice (I just watched an MSNBC interview between him and Rev. Al Sharpton), that says a lot about what kind of governor you want to be for your constituents. One thing that caught my attention was how Walz didn’t just run with it and take 100% credit for cannabis being legalized - he asked Gov. Ventura to be there when he signed it, because he (Ventura) got it going beforehand. Cannabis shops, those beanies and shirts with the pot leaves on them, relentless munchies… someone needs to plow the road first in the fight against Schedule One and the failures of the Drug War. Wrapping it up for tonight, the proud bearer of #TamponTim represents what’s needed in the higher levels of government: elected officials who act in the best interests of their constituents, even when it means they give up perks and privileges. Hopefully, Walz is the iceberg that ripped a giant hole in Trump and Vance’s already-sinking ship, and now we can all gently sway to the Celine Dion song “My Heart Will Go On” as we watch it sink in the distance. To have that be Trump’s final voyage - where his last venture is an abject failure and he gets to slowly sink into his failure - would be the best thing ever. And that is a use of the song I think Celine Dion could possibly approve of.