On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris—the Democratic nominee for president—announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and the memes are already flooding across social media. In that short time, the internet has anointed Walz a “Midwest princess.”
At face value, the moniker is a nod to Gen Z pop star Chappell Roan’s 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which refers to her upbringing in rural Missouri. But in this context, it’s also a reference to the polite and down-to-earth, quintessentially Midwestern virtues attributed to Walz. It frames him as both a Gen Z hero and an endearing, approachable (perhaps even cute) representative of America’s heartland. It also positions Walz as an ideal foil to Republican VP candidate JD Vance of Ohio, whom Democrats have characterized as out of touch and “weird.”
Walz has a background that many residents of the so-called Blue Wall—Democratic-leaning states Harris wants to capture in the November election—can identify with. He was born and raised in Valentine, Nebraska, a small town that he told MSNBC had a total population of 400. After high school, Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard, where he served for 24 years. During that time, he moved to Minnesota, earned his undergraduate degree from Chadron State College in Nebraska, and, later, his masters in education from Minnesota State University. He worked as a geography teacher and football coach at a public high school before transitioning to politics.
The meme-ification of Midwest values
So far, the meme-ification of Walz’s persona has centered on a Gen Z interpretation of his Midwestern roots. “BIG year for midwest princesses,” one X (formerly Twitter) user captioned a side-by-side of Walz and Roan, which has garnered 98,000 likes as of this writing. “Kamala is brat and Walz is a Midwest Princess,” another user posted, echoed by a tweet lamenting, “Can’t believe the 2024 Dem ticket is Brat/Midwest Princess.” There have also been several iterations of Walz’s face photoshopped over Roan’s album cover—some more unsettling than others.
“As a kid raised on mr rogers, who benefited from some amazing teachers in smalltown rural america, walz epitomizes what the midwest is all about,” Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeffrey Bigham wrote on X. Media strategist Michael Del Moro posted, “Walz was a football coach, but also the faculty advisor for a gay-straight alliance in **rural Minnesota in the 1990s**.”
A VP pick with small-town roots who seeks to draw big contrasts
In interviews, Walz has emphasized his personal connections to small-town America and its values, especially in contrast to Vance. While discussing his commitment to public education with MSNBC, Walz made a jab at the fact that while Vance grew up in a small town, he eventually attended Yale Law School: “That angst that JD Vance talks about in Hillbilly Elegy? None of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale!”
In that same conversation, Walz noted Vance’s time as a venture capitalist, arguing that he “knows nothing about small-town America,” and calling MAGA enthusiasts “weird.” The Harris campaign has run with the word weird to characterize the Trump-Vance ticket, making a play for greater relatability with voters. And given his background, Walz is perfectly primed to draw a distinction between his own connection with small-town America and Vance’s coastal elite connections, a juxtaposition that helps make Vance seem phony.
Midwest nice for “good luck, babe”
Kamala HQ, Harris’s official campaign account on TikTok and X, appears to agree. The first video posted after the official announcement this morning features clips from that same MSNBC interview about small towns, edited to a trippy background beat and spliced with images of Walz walking through a field and feeding farm animals.
Now it seems that the internet is jumping on Walz’s apparent Midwest cuteness as the ultimate example of normalcy in contrast to Vance’s distant weirdness. There’s been praise of Walz’s wholesome trip to the Minnesota State Fair with his daughter, references to his ice fishing and hunting hobbies, and plenty of tweets declaring that “VP stands for ‘very precious.’” It’s a unique kind of hype that almost borders on infantilization, focusing more on his people skills than on his political prowess.
The internet’s lightning-speed reaction to Walz joining the ticket is further proof that meme culture, driven by Gen Z, has become part and parcel of Harris’s campaign. The question now is how long the ticket can ride this wave before potentially descending into cringe-worthy territory.