Opinion

You don’t have to be a Manitoban to know that our neighbours in Minnesota are not being oppressed by radical socialist tyrants. If you’re paying attention to U.S. politics, you have no trouble knowing why I am beginning our weekly visit with these words.

I wasn’t in Minnesota this week.

But I was in the U.S. celebrating a birthday. Every year at this time, the Adler family celebrates my birthday at my favourite restaurant on the planet — Sinatra, in Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra was one of the first superstars I interviewed around the time of my 20th birthday.

It should be no surprise to people who know me that half a century later I would be enjoying a birthday dinner at a restaurant where everything about the food and beverages and music and art are dedicated to Francis Albert Sinatra.

It’s impossible to spend time in Vegas without watching some TV news in the hotel room. And it’s impossible to do that without noticing the clumsy demolition job Republicans are trying to do on the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, who has been chosen by Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee for U.S. president, to be her running mate.

Guest after guest, especially on Fox News, pretended that our Minnesotan neighbours are being governed by a radical socialist — and some even say communist — tyrant.

How can anyone from Manitoba spend time with friends and neighbours in Minnesota and believe their beautiful state is run by tyrants of any stripe?

You may think the world of our Minnesotan friends and still not know at they are among the most educated Americans on the planet. According to an online education platform Guru 99 that scores this data, Minnesota is No. 2 in the United States for having an educated population: “Only 5.8 per cent of the entire population don’t have a high school diploma, the average SAT score is 1225, one of the highest figures in America.”

Minnesota is also considered among the top five happiest states in the U.S. and among top five for being business friendly.

You don’t need to spend much time in the Twin Cities to notice how many head offices for corporations are located there. The area is home to 15 of America’s Fortune 500 companies. They include Target, General Mills and 3M.

I could do several columns about the quality of health care in Minnesota, home to some of the world’s best medical teams, including the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. But the point of this visit is not to tout the exceptional standard of living enjoyed by those in the state. I simply want to point out the absurdity of the Trump campaign.

It’s true they are befuddled by not having Joe Biden to run against. But attempting to portray Walz as a hard-left tyrant is taking the Trump campaign to a political destination that is historically bizarre.

It should be noted that Tim Walz didn’t just become the governor of Minnesota last night. He was elected to the state’s top office in the election of 2018 and then re-elected two years ago. Before that, he had served in Washington D.C. as congressman from his district in southern Minnesota for a decade. Presumably, if Tim Walz was a radical socialist or communist, our well educated neighbours would have noticed something fishy a long time ago.

I always want to bend over backwards to be fair, even with those whose views may be diametrically opposed to mine. In doing a bit of homework on why some conservatives working with Trump are so down on Tim Walz, I discovered that he signed legislation to ensure that children attending Minnesota public schools are fed two meals a day. And because of Gov. Walz’s administration, families earning US$80,000 or less are being given free tuition at state colleges in Minnesota.

In 1957, I officially became a refugee from communism. I want to assure you that my parents and I did not escape the country of our birth, because mum and dad were troubled that the government of communist Hungary was making sure that I would never go hungry for food or education.

To our Minnesota neighbours: Keep up the good work.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com