Working for the Common Good

There is a yearning in America to move beyond the hate and divisiveness promised by Donald Trump and the GOP. The Democratic ticket knows it—and is leaning into a commitment to community.

A happy crowd cheers on the happy warriors in Philadelphia last week. (Photo by Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

I’ve been lingering the last few days on the remarks Tim Walz made during the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, rally, just two days after Kamala Harris announced he would be her running mate. Not his clever, profoundly simple line that applies to the Supreme Court and the GOP stripping away reproductive freedom—“Mind your own damn business,” he says—but his unscripted words when someone in the crowd apparently collapsed from the hot summer sun.

“We have someone down. They are treating him. They’re getting him some water— and it’s good,” Walz told the audience. “Take care of your neighbors.”

He urged others to be sure to drink water and thanked the helpers of the fallen one. “Take care of one another,” he said more generally, then this: “This idea of caring for a neighbor, a kindness, a hand up when somebody needs it,” he said. “That’s who we are.”

It was a simple moment, almost corny in a world where too many cynics believe such attitudes are outdated—and one that the hateful MAGA crowd was quick to dismiss as just an obvious ploy by a phony politician to curry favor.

Except that we had just begun to learn about Walz’s biography as a teacher, a football coach, a 24-year military veteran who has committed his life to public service. We had already learned that he had passed community- and people-centric policies like free breakfast and lunch for school kids.

This moment in the hot sun was not just a chance to learn that he views “caring for a neighbor, a kindness, a hand up when somebody needs it” as ingredients that make Americans who “we” are. It was also an illustration of who he is and the kind of policies he’s not only pursued as a congressman and governor, but what he aims to do as vice president. That include caring for a neighbor who collapses in the heat and addressing climate change, an existential danger that affects everyone on our planet.

Earlier that day, Harris and Walz were greeted on a Wisconsin tarmac by a troop of girl scouts. As I noted on Substack Notes and other social media platforms—including the unfortunate cesspool now known as X—Walz squatted down to be on the scouts’ level. “That’s what a compassionate human does,” I wrote. It’s also what a good teacher does, many others also added in their replies. (Others marveled over the 60-year-old’s ability to squat.)

A simple act of compassion. (Video screenshot)

But along with such praises, this simple scene was dismissed by the critics as an obvious attempt to block the press from asking questions or the kind of frivolous behavior that reveals his and his running mate’s inability to confront the country’s big issues. Also emanating from the pro-Trump crowd, sickening comments like this: “That’s what groomers do, too.”

Such negative reactions are no surprise. For nine years, Donald Trump has been feeding his followers division and hate, urging their hostility toward Democrats and targeting the most vulnerable among us and anyone who disagrees with him. You recall one of his early pre-Iowa rallies when he urged his crowd to “knock the crap out” of protestors with the promise that he’d pay their legal bills if they did. His demagogic goal has been to fuel grievance and scapegoat migrants and people of color. His narcissistic promise has never been about working together, but insisting that “he alone” can fix what ails us. His central goal now as the GOP nominee is to seek immunity for himself and retribution against all his perceived enemies.

While Trump yearns for carnage, insisting that America is “very, very sick,” the Harris-Walz ticket is pursuing a vision that believes in the value of community and what they sum up as “the promise of America.”

In Michigan on Thursday, Harris and Walz spoke to a gathering of United Autoworker members soon after receiving the UAW’s endorsement. First, the vice president acknowledged that she and Tim Walz grew up in very different places geographically, “seemingly worlds apart.” But:

…the same people raised us: good people; hard-working people; people who had pride in their hard work; you know, people who had pride in knowing that we were a community of people who looked out for each other—you know, raised by a community of folks who understood that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.

Her running mate answered by saying “Amen, Amen.” She went on:

There’s some perversion that’s happened in our country in the last several years where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, making people feel alone. But isn’t that the very opposite of what we know—unions know—to be strength?…

Our campaign is about saying we trust the people, we see the people, we know the people. You know one of the things I love about our country? We are a nation of people who believe in those ideals that were foundational to what made us so special as a nation. We believe in those ideals. 

And Trump? He’s called Walz “very freakish” and has claimed that he “could not be more thrilled,” convinced that the choice of the Minnesota governor is a gift to his campaign. At his rally in Montana Friday, Trump sourly told his booing crowd that “if Comrade Harris and Comrade Walz win this November, the people cheering will be pink-haired Marxists, the looters, the perverts, the flag burners, Hamas supporters, drug dealers, gun grabbers and human traffickers.”

(For the record, I was at the Harris-Walz Arizona rally on Friday. There were a lot of happy, cheering people—over 15,000—and I didn’t see any who would fit that twisted vision. In fact, at some point, this crowd could even be heard chanting “USA, USA,” not “Karl Marx, Karl Marx.”)

While Trump and many of his campaign operatives may have presumed that Walz is a far easier rival to attack than Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—reportedly the choice they most feared—I think they’ve sorely underestimated the power of what Walz offers nominee Harris.

We have seen over the last three weeks since President Joe Biden patriotically stepped aside and this last week since Walz joined the ticket: There is an overwhelming yearning for a positive agenda—to move beyond the politics of fear and division and toward embracing the common good.

While this desire is made manifest in policies focused on supporting working families, over the next three months it may be best embodied by Tim Walz. As he told Michigan’s autoworkers: “Being a Midwesterner too, I know a little something about commitment to people. I was born in a small town in Nebraska, where community meant everything. My mom and dad taught me to show generosity to my neighbors and work for a common good.”

I believe that this thinking will build in its resonance with voters as they allow themselves to fully embrace what it can mean to have a Democratic ticket focused on the common good as a way to make lives better. To be sure, this is consistent with what President Biden has pursued in his commitment to democracy, tackling the climate crisis, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure that both creates jobs and provides greater economic opportunity in struggling communities. But I’m not convinced that this mindset has fully taken root or fully been able to express itself, particularly because of the Republicans’ efforts to sow conflict and division.

Let’s not doubt, however, that the belief in the value of the common good is consonant with the commitment to self-governance and the survival of democracy. At the heart of this commitment is trust and recognition of the many ways that we are all in this together—that a healthy, prosperous, just society depends on working together and rising together.

Let me finish by recalling the powerful words of Elizabeth Warren in 2011, who was then running for the Senate in Massachusetts against GOP incumbent Scott Brown. Warren was responding to criticism that her support for raising taxes on the richest Americans amounted to “class warfare.” Chances are, you remember what she said then, but it bears repeating:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory.

Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

It’s a message that someone like Trump and his Project 2025 pals—committed to pursuing an autocracy that rejects equality and participatory democracy—are determined to mock in the most appalling and ridiculous ways. The Republicans and their media friends will try their damnedest to paint the progressive economic and social agenda of the Democratic ticket as radical, indeed communist.

But this strategy will fail. Most Americans are hungry for positive, inclusive, indeed progressive change—and both Harris and “Coach Walz” are messengers who will make it feel as American as baseball and apple pie.

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