As soon as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz the new Midwestern daddy of all Americans as her running mate, MAGA started shouting: PROGRESSIVE.

It’s a word the right uses as a political insult, but Walz, 60, an Army veteran and former high school teacher and football coach in Minnesota, seems like the kind of person who knows when he sees bullshit.

The belief that progressive ideas are somehow outside the mainstream is simply false. Polls have shown that when American voters are presented with specific progressive policies without the name of a politician attached, these policies are widely supported.

Voters favor progressive policies. Tim Walz took them to Minnesota.

A March Data for Progress poll found that: 78% of likely voters support a billionaire tax to increase Social Security benefits; 77% support rental and mortgage assistance for families; 75% favor investment in clean energy technology; 73% support a public option that would allow people to buy government-administered health care; and 71% support limiting child care costs to 7% of annual family income.

These attitudes are not new. In 2019, a CNBC poll found that 75% of respondents favored public funding for child care, 60% favored raising the minimum wage, and 57% favored free tuition at public universities or state.

Here is another example. Republicans demonized the Affordable Care Act and heralded the dawn of socialist tyranny—and then people found out what it was doing, and now it has an overall approval rating of 60%.

In all fairness, Walz is decidedly liberal

Maybe, just maybe, progressive policies are good, and people like them because they generally imply better and fairer lives for people.

As governor, Walz made Minnesota one of the first states to protect abortion rights after Roe v. Wade; launched a statewide program that provides families with paid medical, medical and family leave; and signed a bill providing free school meals for all.