Tim Walz Tests His Party's 'Cool' Factor

The Coach Finds Out: When The 'Uncool' Fit In, The 'Cool' Change The Rules

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz's, left, "schtick is wearing thin," says pundit Nate Silver, right, an example of a social dynamic where people labeled "uncool" can never be "cool" even if they happen to have similar characteristics to those in the "cool" club.

You might not be surprised to learn that I was not considered “cool” in junior high school. I was a New York State Geography Bee finalist who sat at the “nerd” table. I was bullied, mocked, and unpopular. The few friends I had would rarely acknowledge me in school but were happy to use me for my swimming pool when school was out for summer.

I adapted. As much as I wanted to be “cool,” I was not good at faking it. I was in junior high school between 1995 and 1997, an era in which hip-hop was the dominant musical genre, even in my mostly white, upper-middle-class private school community in Queens. It wasn’t my scene. If I tried to “fit in,” I’d look like the dude from The Offspring’s “Pretty Fly For A White Guy” video or Steve Buschemi from that popular meme. I wasn’t even going to try. I hate being a phony. I would rather endure the pain of being authentic and listening to Fleetwood Mac, Donna Summer, David Bowie, Duran Duran, and U2 on my Walkman while the kids took it from me and made fun of me.

In 1996, though, one song from the hip-hop genre attracted my attention – “If I Ruled The World” by Nas. I can’t explain why I loved the song so much. I found the beat soothing, Lauryn Hill’s chorus catchy, and some of Nas’ raps powerful. Keep in mind I was 13 years old. I loved the song, even if I couldn’t relate to the scene.

One day, one of the “cool” kids who regularly bullied me took my Walkman and listened to what song I had on, expecting it to be something he could mock. To his surprise, he didn’t hear the typical “faggot” music he always accused me of listening to. He heard Nas. He laughed.

“You think you’re ghetto now?” he said. “You think you’re from the hood?”

I grabbed my Walkman back and walked away, but for the next few days, I was regularly mocked for listening to that song despite being so out of sync with the hip-hop scene.

A week or so later, one of my classmates, Jerry, who wasn’t part of the “in” crowd but very much wanted to be, approached me at recess while I was listening to the song on my Walkman. He shook his head:

“Because of you, that song is played out now¹,” he said. “Go back to listening to your fag music and stop ruining our shit.”

There was a dynamic in that Queens, New York junior high school where once I, or someone from the “uncool” crowd, liked something in fashion, it stopped being fashionable. Even if the like was genuine, as with the Nas song, it didn’t buy admission to the “cool” club; it just made the thing we liked “uncool.” If we wore Starter jackets, they stopped being “cool.” If we had Jansport backpacks, the “cool” kids would get new backpacks. Sometimes, it was made abundantly clear to us what we couldn’t say, do, possess, or participate in. A Yankees baseball cap my father bought me after the team won the 1996 World Series was thrown in a urinal and urinated and spit on by bullies because the “cool” kids weren’t going to allow me to “bite²” them and make the Yanks “uncool.”

Earlier this week, Nate Silver, the political forecaster-turned-pundit who has become a bane of liberals’ existence in the past few years, made a point about Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz that made me think of this story.

In an interview, he revisited the criticism lobbed at Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in August for picking the Minnesota governor over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Silver, who favored Shapiro, said the pick would be seen as a massive misstep if Harris loses Pennsylvania in next month’s election and suggested that the perceived strengths Walz brings to the ticket – being a white guy from the Great Plains and a former football coach – were overstated.

“I’m from the Midwest, so I thought the football coach/suburban dad shtick was kind of funny at first, and then wears a bit thin,” Silver, a native of Michigan, said in a recent Puck interview. “So I would have picked Shapiro, taken the point in Pennsylvania.”

It reminded me of a piece I wrote last year, in which I argued that Democrats are penalized for not being the “cool” kids.

I confess that outside of conservatives, who have been desperate to paint Walz as a negative since the moment he was picked, I don’t know anyone who thinks Walz’s “shtick” is wearing thin. Most people I talk to don’t know or think about him much, but I’m not in a social circle representative of swing voters. Still, Democrats put on their ticket a Nebraska-born Army vet from a rural town in a Midwest state, a father who was a school teacher and football coach and didn’t have a stock portfolio – who, if he were a Republican, would be thrust upon us as the good, wholesome representation of everyday Americans – and yet we’re told its a negative. Walz is a “freak” because he enjoys college football, or he’s a “beta” because he’s a “girl dad.” (no one thought that of Kobe Bryant, who died being a “girl dad”) We’re told Walz is a “loser” and “financially illiterate” for not having a stock portfolio even though 40 percent of American adults, including three-quarters of low-income Americans, don’t own stocks. None of these things would be a net negative for people like Silver or Walz’s other critics in the pundit sphere if it were true of J.D. Vance, Mike Pence, or Ron DeSantis. It would instead be proof of how Republicans, not Democrats, are more in tune with the “common man,” and Democrats are the party of the “out-of-touch elite.”

Since it’s a prominent progressive Democrat – not even a Democrat who has the approval of “moderates” – who fits this profile, the dynamic is now wrong because progressive Democrats can never sit at the “cool” kid’ table. It would upset the political order. It’s written in stone that Democrats and progressives are the nerds; the geeks; the dweebs, and nothing they have in common with the “cool” crowd, whether it be football or guns or the military, will ever be accepted as genuine. And if it is authentic, as with Walz, it becomes “uncool.”

This explains why Silver, who claims to support the Harris-Walz ticket, is harsher on Democrats than Republicans. He wanted Shapiro to be Harris’ running mate because Shapiro had been coded as the “moderate” choice, closer to the “cool” end of the spectrum. Walz, the progressive choice, is an olive branch to the “freaks” on the Left.

What’s ironic is even the “freaks” on the Left focus most of their ire on liberals and not right-wingers. It’s why even Chappell Roan, who prides herself on being an activist for progressive causes, has nicer things to say about her arch-conservative family, a member of whom literally voted to restrict trans rights – a top issue for her – than Democrats who are trying to undo the law her uncle helped pass. That’s why ex-progressives like former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Matt Taibbi, commentator Jimmy Dore, and Jackson Hinkle, a social media influencer for Bernie Sanders in 2016, now find themselves in the Trump orbit. Ultimately, like most Americans, they want to sit with the “cool” kids and hope to gain their favor. They realized that could never happen as outspoken progressives.

Like my classmate Jerry, they look at a progressive Democrat enjoying high school football or having guns the same way they looked at me listening to Nas, some dweeb who made a “cool” thing “uncool,” rather than someone they had the wrong impression of all along.

1. In 1990s slang, “played out” means “out of fashion” or “uncool.”

2. In 1990s slang, to “bite” someone meant to copy them and was often used as a rhetorical weapon by the “cool” kids to ensure the “uncool” crowd could not take part in popular fads and trends.