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Tim Walz cries over spilled milk in first interview since election walloping

December 7, 2024 | | Print Article

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was surprised that he and Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential race.

Speaking this week with Saint Paul station KSTP, he admitted that he’d been confident of a victory going into Election Day.

“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,” he said. “And it obviously wasn’t at the end, so yeah, I was a little surprised. I thought we had a positive message, and I thought the country was ready for that.”

But his surprise is itself a bit of a surprise given a recent admission from Harris’ team about her campaign’s final internal polling numbers.

Appearing on “Pod Save America” late last month, Harris senior campaign adviser David Plouffe said he was “surprised” to see public polls showing Harris beating Trump in September and October because internal polls were showing the exact opposite.

“We were behind,” he said. “I mean, I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”

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So either Walz wasn’t aware of this internal polling or he’d simply chosen to only trust and follow the public polls.

In a separate interview with local CBS News station WCCO, Walz also expressed shock that President-elect Donald Trump had won over middle class voters.

“To have Donald Trump seen as a champion of the middle class, I fully don’t see how that would happen, but I recognize that’s where people voted,” he said. “I think we have to both decide, is the message the right one?”

Questioned by KSTP as to whether he himself had helped or hurt Harris’ presidential campaign, the Minnesota governor demurred.

“History will write that,” he said. “It wasn’t my decision to make. It was the vice president’s decision. As I said in this campaign, when you asked the question, were there things you could have done differently? Since we lost, the answer is obviously yes. On this one, I did the best I could.”

Some have claimed Harris’ decision to choose Walz as her running mate ultimately hurt her and that she would have been better off choosing Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish man, for the post.

Besides being Jewish, Shapiro was also seen as less radical than Walz, who has a history of encouraging the Black Lives Matter riots, setting up “snitch” lines during the COVID pandemic, putting COVID patients in nursing homes, defending the unnecessary closure of schools, and proudly touting Minneapolis’ decision to be a so-called sanctuary city.

With the election over and Republicans having gained more seats in the the Minnesota Legislature, Walz is now focused on building bridges with his new Republican peers.

“I’ve been spending these weeks calling these new leaders, having meetings together,” he told KSTP. “I think our politics have gotten really difficult. The presidential campaign is brutal and this one was particularly ugly and all of those things, but we do have to get [a budget] done for Minnesotans.”

Walz also spoke about being chosen to be Harris’ running mate, describing the morning he got the call from her as frantic. A few hours after the call, he was reportedly flown to Philadelphia to be introduced to the world at Tempe University.”

“I’m standing at the curtain with the vice president of the United States with 15 to 20-thousand people and the national press out there and she turns to me and says, ‘Well let’s not screw this up’… and we went out there,” he told KSTP with a laugh.

Asked whether he intends to run for reelection as governor once his term is up, he again avoided delivering a direct answer.

“What I’ve always said is that has more to do with where the people are at,” he said. “If there’s a desire that it might make sense if they’d like to see us run again, we’d talk to folks, but at this time, I’m just trying to get through the session.”

Also asked whether he might ever run for a Senate seat, he said that’s not one of his goals.

Vivek Saxena
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