At Harvard University on Monday, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) spoke about the loss of the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket.
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00:00Let's just jump into it, because I know there are reporters watching and they're on a deadline, so I am very respectful to their time.
00:05You've been traveling the country, going through red districts, talking to voters, some who are on your side, probably many who aren't.
00:11My question to you is, has your prognosis of why the ticket lost changed after these conversations?
00:20Well, I don't know if it changed, I think, trying to assess this, and I think it's a healthy thing to do.
00:25I got asked right away, and it's an obvious first question.
00:28They said, would you have done anything different to be on this?
00:31First of all, the sense of gratitude I had to be on the ticket with Vice President Harris and knew what our mission was.
00:38We had about 100 days to prevent what's happening from happening, and I knew that that was important.
00:44And this is a, look, there's no second-place trophy in this.
00:48It's, you know, it's zero sum.
00:51But when I got asked, they said, would you have done anything different?
00:54Well, yes, we would have won.
00:55That's what I'd have done different.
00:56And with that being said, how do you assess this?
01:00And I think, for me, what I'm learning going up, and I don't know, like when I got asked, you know, you're out here assessing, you know, what the Democratic Party needs to do.
01:09I recognize I might be the last person you'd want to ask.
01:12I'm the guy that just got beat in this and part of that.
01:14So I recognize that part of it.
01:16But what I am most, you know, interested in is that you run for these jobs to improve people's lives.
01:23I don't believe their lives are going to be improved, and I was out there to try and understand, why did you not believe that before November?
01:30Why did you not believe?
01:31And the folks I'm really focused on are those who stayed home, of why they stayed home.
01:35And I think what I came out of that with is, we talked about this a little bit upstairs with your students, that there's a lot of people that said, what difference does it make?
01:42They're all the same.
01:44And that's a pretty stinging indictment because I think we're very different.
01:48I have no intention of limiting people's reproductive rights.
01:51I do believe climate change is real.
01:53I think you should have the right to collectively bargain.
01:55I believe you invest in our children and education, and health care is a universal human right.
01:59So those are the things I talk about, but I think people are saying, yeah, that's fine, but we don't really have any of those things yet.
02:05And it became clear to me that there's some pieces that were missing out there, and I took it in Minnesota to do this.
02:12When you have political power, you better not just be banking it to get reelected.
02:16You better be burning it to improve lives.
02:18And this idea of have we not done that enough?
02:22Did we not convince people?
02:23And why is it that people were questioning?
02:26Tens of millions said, I'm just going to stay home because things will work out.
02:29Pretty much the same anyway.
02:31What is left when you watched President Biden navigate a global pandemic, navigate us out of a recession that could have been, put us in a position to do this in a way that was talking about a soft landing and improving people's lives.
02:46And yet still a majority of Americans didn't believe that.
02:50So that tells me there is a disconnect, and I think it behooves us to soul search a bit, listen, go out there, especially these areas.
02:59My district in Minnesota is a great example of this.
03:01I won that district.
03:02And look, there had only been one other Democrat since 1892.
03:05I won in 2006.
03:07I won by 30 points in 2008.
03:10In 2016, I won by less than two points.
03:13And Donald Trump won by 17 points.
03:15What changed in southern Minnesota, farm fields, Mayo Clinic, you know, Mankato State University, Mankato, these places, what changed during that time?
03:24And how did we go from overwhelmingly have those people support to not only not having their support, having their disdain in a place where these were my neighbors?
03:32So I'm out there, whether it's Wheeling, West Virginia, or up in Youngstown, Ohio.
03:37We went down to Houston, Texas, or actually Fort Bend, down to Omaha, and asked these folks, you know, what is it?
03:44And one of the reasons going out there, too, was is I was hearing it.
03:47People were like a primal scream of, my God, stop this.
03:50This is craziness.
03:51What can we do?
03:52And asking what we can do.
03:54And that's what I'm asking them, what they want to see us do.
03:56And some of those voters, Democrats or people, probably voted for you as governor and for Donald Trump as president.
04:01They did.
04:02So it's an interesting overlap to try to reckon with.
04:05I listen to that still.
04:06So thousands, thousands.
04:09But that was still there.
04:10But look, the folks here at the Institute who know these numbers, it was not that unusual that you would see a scatterplot that upwards of well over 100-plus districts a few decades ago would vote for a member of Congress from one party and the president from another.
04:25That continued to shrink.
04:27And by the time my last election in 2016, that year, there were four districts that Donald Trump won by 15 points or more that also elected a Democrat to Congress.
04:37Three of them were in Minnesota.
04:39We were just the last state to succumb to this, that it went.
04:42But then we became.
04:43And the other one was in Pennsylvania, not surprisingly.
04:46So you have these districts where people are still splitting their ticket.
04:49That's basically the last time that they've done that.
04:52And that's a troublesome trend, in my opinion, that you used to see conservative, you know, Republicans crossing over from or liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats used to be on each side of that scatterplot.
05:07Now we've pulled apart.
05:09And that's really troubling.
05:10And it is pretty much split on urban-rural divide.
05:14And that's a real challenge.
05:16And, Governor, this is a strong, clear Democrat.
05:18And that's a strong, clear Democrat.