Opinion |Tommy Johnson
“Top Cop” Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate to serve as vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Walz, 60, originally from Nebraska, has served as the phony progressive Governor of Minnesota since 2019. He ruled over the state during the uprisings against the police which erupted in Minneapolis in late May 2020. While under criticism by Republican commentators for a delayed response to the uprisings, a closer look highlights just how reactionary he is, and therefore how complementary he is to Harris’s bid for president.
In 2020, Walz not only mobilized the National Guard relatively quickly, unleashing their brutality on the masses, but he also denied that the protests had anything to do with George Floyd’s murder and instead cast the blame for unrest on “outside agitators.” Walz was using what is often called “low intensity” counterinsurgency tactics, a grab at hearts and minds: on one hand, send in the troops to beat local protesters, while on the other, attempt to separate them from one another by a crass measure of who is acceptable to the very police and system they are protesting.
Walz claimed the situation in Minneapolis was about “attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.” This claim was made in support of unleashing even more police terror on those who were opposing it. Walz was forced to issue a sheepish apology to the monopoly media after the goons he unleashed brutalized and arrested a team of CNN journalists.
Walz has a long record of serving US imperialism, having been a member of Congress for 12 years before acting as Governor. In 2008, Walz fought to increase and continue funding for the wars of aggression in both Iraq and Afghanistan, funding that directly contributed to the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in both countries.
The class forces behind Walz are the imperialist ruling class, who will not forget his services, as well as the labor aristocrats and the top tier of the bourgeois union bureaucracy. Last week, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain told CNN that Walz was one of his picks for vice president. Fain also claims that the imperialist Harris “stands for the working class.” The union bureaucracy in Minnesota went so far as to write a letter to Harris recommending the selection of Walz before it was made. The Worker has previously detailed the desperation of the imperialist ruling class to gain legitimacy through courting working class votes.
