Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz marveled in a post-election interview that middle-class Americans struggling with economic issues chose billionaire Donald Trump over him and Vice President Kamala Harris, a team he billed as a more middle-class ticket by comparison.
Walz, Harris' running mate, sat down for an interview with Minnesota Public Radio on Thursday where he weighed in on what he thought went wrong during the Democratic presidential campaign. He concluded there must have been a disconnect with the Harris campaign’s messaging to middle-class voters if they went on to vote for a rich candidate like Trump.
"I thought it was a real flex when the Wall Street Journal pointed out that I might have been the least wealthy person to ever run for vice president," Walz told MPR News.
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"How in the world did we lose to a billionaire or a venture capitalist, when we were making the case of a country attorney and a high school teacher?" he asked later in the interview, contrasting his ticket with Trump’s.
Walz made the point that he thought his more humble economic status should have appealed to voters, and seemed puzzled that wasn’t the case.
"And I thought that would be something people say, ‘Well, this guy knows where we’re coming from. He’s had to pay his bills and still does,'" he said, referring to himself.
Earlier in the discussion, Walz stated, "And this is the one that keeps me up at night, is I focused my whole career in focusing on the middle class… And it seemed like a lot of good ideas were coming from the Democrats."
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"I still believe that," he continued, "but apparently in this election, not the majority of Americans did. They chose to vote with a billionaire, who’s talked about not paying overtime, who has a long history of not paying his workers, someone who wants to take away the ACA."
Seeing this, Walz concluded that this happened because his party did not communicate their middle-class appeal well enough.
"So, I come back to the conclusion, is we did not do a good enough job – we as a Democratic Party and we as a ticket – did not do a good enough job of showing them that we understand where they’re coming from," the governor said.
He added, "And I feel like one of my roles is – going forward here is – figuring out a way to make the case to the public, the American public, is that the Democratic Party really is focused on the things they care about."
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In an interview with local Minnesota outlet KSTP-TV last week, the governor admitted he was surprised that his ticket lost the 2024 election.
"It felt like at the rallies, at the things I was going to, the shops I was going in, that the momentum was going our way, and it obviously wasn’t at the end," Walz said. "So yeah, I was a little surprised. I thought we had a positive message and I thought the country was ready for that."
