Just published: “Tim Walz, I thought, from my vantage point here in northern Michigan, is just what this country needs. A real down-to-earth Midwesterner, good guy quietly doing good works, wears his heart on his sleeve, laughs off the bad guys while calculating how best to take them down. Joyful. Underestimated. Plain talker. No bullshit.

I know those people. I’ve lived among them all my life. I AM them. So here I am, trying hard not to be amazed at how many Americans don’t know this is how most of the upper Midwest operates.”