Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who ran as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket in last year’s election, has identified three key areas that he believes their campaign failed to address, leading to the party’s disastrous defeat to Donald Trump and JD Vance in November.
Speaking to The Washington Post after a “People’s Town Hall” event in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday, Walz said he believed the Democratic mission to stop Trump floundered because they failed to reach Latino voters, did not do enough to acknowledge voters’ anger about the war in Gaza and did not have a sufficiently agile media strategy.
“People ran what they had in the moment, what they thought was best, but I do think it’s irresponsible to not look back and say, ‘OK, what could we do to win?’ Walz told the Post.
“It’s not enough to blame something else. I don’t blame the voters. I blame: What did we not do? I put my suggestions out there. If those aren’t the ones that are chosen, I work as hard as I can for the ones that were.”
A popular figure when he hit the national stage last summer thanks to his attacks on Trump and Vance as “weird”, voters also responded to Walz’s folksy personal manner and relatable back story as a high school teacher and football coach – but ultimately he and Harris fell short.
On their inability to match Joe Biden’s outreach to America’s Latino citizens four years earlier, Walz reflected: “I think especially with the Latino community and an immigrant community, these are driven people to succeed, and that is the American Dream.
“And I think sometimes we’re a little bit, we’re a little bit too much, you know, you should be ashamed for being successful.”
On public opposition to Israel’s military response to the events of October 7, 2023, which led to heckling at Harris’s rallies over the Biden administration’s perceived inaction to prevent the bloodshed, Walz said: “It needs to be spoken that there’s the angst over Gaza and things that needed to be addressed.
“I think we have to understand: How do we articulate that we’re better for that? It’s obviously self-evident now that for folks in Gaza, Donald Trump’s not going to be the [one] to help them. We got to make sure that they believe that we would have been.”
On their campaign’s failure to engage with new media, Walz acknowledged that Trump had been astute in taking advice from his teenage son Barron Trump about appearing on Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s influential podcasts, which helped him to secure the support of their young male listenerships.
Walz regretted that he and Harris had not been “looser” in their approach and revealed that he had discussed how best to reach young men via the media and platforms they enjoy with his own son Gus Walz, who suggested there is a perception among his peers that right-wing politics is more fun.
“Trump doesn’t know squat about football, but he shows up at football games,” the governor said.
“He doesn’t know squat about NASCAR, but he shows up at NASCAR. We do know those things, and we should be out there.
“I’m not saying it’s me – send Cory Booker out to do these things. Send Elizabeth Warren; she knows basketball… We should do more of the spaces where they’re at authentically, not performance-like.”
Democrats from Walz to the progressive duo of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have increasingly taken to holding town hall events in red states since Trump’s inauguration, responding to angry scenes at equivalent Republican gatherings going viral in which constituents have been seen confronting and often berating their representatives over the administration’s actions, particularly in relation to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) instigating mass firings of federal workers.
“Donald Trump did a wonderful job of articulating why these people are angry,” Walz told the Post, pointing to the crowd attending his listening tour.
“He’s done nothing to improve that, and they don’t believe we have either. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
He admitted that he doesn’t have the answers and conceded that “the guy who got his ass kicked in the last election” may not be the right message-bearer right now but said he believed there was value in taking part in events that are effectively serving as group therapy sessions for disaffected voters.
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