These online prognosticators called a Harris-Walz 2024 ticket—back in 2020
They called him Mr. Wheat, named the tallest building in Minot after him, and on Nov 30, 2020, he called the 2024 Democratic ticket with uncanny precision.
“Harris's 2024 running mate will be either Mark Kelly or Tim Walz,” posted an account going by the name Senator Milton Young on X, a full three years and eight months before Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate.
But the Milton Young account wasn’t the only poster gifted with Nostradamus-like powers.
“Here's a sleeper ticket: Walz/Harris or Harris/Walz,” posted @PhoenixWomanMN two years earlier in November 2018, referencing the 2020 race.
The Milton Young account isn’t the actual Milton Young, a North Dakota Republican who passed away 40 years ago, after representing the state in the Senate from 1945-1981. The real-life Young was a Republican who voted for the Civil Rights Acts in the Senate, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and backed Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first Black Justice, for his seat all while claiming a close connection to the North Dakota farmers who kept sending him back to Senate.
The Milton Young account on X with an uncanny aptitude for 2024 forecasting had a long history of boosting Walz and talking politics, something they share with @PhoenixWomanMN.
“Walz is an immensely talented politician who should be mentioned in the same breath as any of the frequently discussed Democratic governors,” the Milton Young account posted in March last year in reaction to a news story about Walz signing a bill approving universal school meals in Minnesota.
And when posters last August were discussing potential 2024 Democratic candidates to take over for Joe Biden if he dropped out, the Milton Young account quickly jumped in to push Walz, long before he had the national profile he’s picked up lately thanks to his “weird” messaging line against the Republican Party.
“The governors -- Pritzker, Newsom, Murphy, Shapiro, and Moore in particular -- are not going to get out of the way for Harris, and moreover the party can't be seen as trying to force it. She doesn't have the people inside. They will try anyway and it will be ugly,” posted another account cosplaying as former Republican president Richard Nixon.
“I would also add Minnesota's Walz to the list,” commented the Young account.
@PhoenixWomanMN also long praised Walz’s presidential potential.
“Shhh! You can't have him, he's ours!” she posted in April last year in response to a post wondering why Walz wasn’t attracting any Democratic presidential buzz. “Tim Walz is the total package: attracts [the white working class] while being a social and fiscal liberal. He'd be an excellent president but I think he doesn’t want the gig. (Though he could probably be talked into being someone's running mate.)”
And in 2022 she speculated that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) could win the White House with Walz by her side.
“Give her Tim Walz for a running mate and it's possible,” she posted.
Back in 2020 when the Milton Young account first made his Walz or Kelly prediction, he explained that he thought the vice presidential candidate had to be somebody from the Southwest or the Midwest, and that somebody with a long Senate record like Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.V.), then a Democrat, wasn’t a likely choice.
The Milton Young account also pushed back on the idea that Walz had come out of nowhere.
“If you don’t think Walz was part of the discussion three weeks ago, you’re an idiot of nearly epic proportions,” they replied to a post from the New York Times’ live blog marveling at the idea that Walz had manage to bootstrap himself out of nowhere into a vice presidential contender just by being a good communicator and having some charisma.
But while they may have long known Walz was headed for stardom, the rest of America is just waking up.
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