Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responded on Sunday to his former running mate Kamala Harris’s “told you so” quip, saying he would save his criticism for the campaign the two ran.
Walz agreed with State of the Union host Jake Tapper on Sunday that Democrats’ 2024 message did not resonate with voters. Instead, he said, the party needed to band together to find an effective way of pushing back against President Donald Trump.
Former Vice President Harris told a crowd at the Leading Women Defined Summit last week that she could see a lot of Trump’s actions coming. “I’m not gonna say ‘I told you so,‘” she quipped to the crowd. “I swore I wasn’t going to say that!”
Harris’s response wasn’t the best fit for the moment, Walz suggested.
“When I criticize, I’m criticizing myself,” Walz said. “I own this. I’m part of the ticket, and somebody has to come up with a strategy.”
Walz said the former vice president likely meant that it was “pretty self-evident” that Trump was going to do what he promised. Still, Walz said, Democrats needed to figure out how to redefine themselves beyond the elitist image Republicans have created for them.
“I do think the challenge for Democrats—and this is, I think, a structural problem that’s going to take a lot more thinking—why, with all of that out there, did they not think we were any better than that?” Walz said. “And I’m very concerned with the folks who stayed home, and these are folks that I’ll say once again—Donald Trump has identified their angst.”
Tapper also asked Walz if Democrats should have recognized former President Joe Biden’s decline earlier and acted on a candidate switch sooner. Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson are set to publish Original Sin, a book that promises to reveal the “cover-up” of Biden’s decline, next month.
“Don’t you think your party needs to acknowledge that President Biden was not up for the job of running for reelection, that this was a major mistake?” Tapper asked.
“Well, look, history will tell us to go back on that,” Walz said. “That very well could be the case, Jake. What I’m concerned about is learning from those lessons. I would hope we would never do it again. Make a mistake. Make sure we go through get someone—I don’t know where it helps us going forward.”
Instead, Walz said, Democrats should focus on establishing a unified opposition to Trump’s policies if they aim to win in future elections.
“If there is not a royal opposition, if there’s not some soul searching on our side, if there’s not reaching out to—those folks who are in the streets, they’re leading right now,” Walz said.
