I sat down with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Saturday at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Remember Tim Walz? His running mate, former Vice President Kamala Harris, has been keeping a relatively low profile since leaving elected office earlier this year, but Walz is still out there talking — to Rachel Maddow, to Molly Jong-Fast, to David Remnick, and now to me — about what the Democrats could, should, and need to do to oppose Donald Trump and MAGA. I asked him what he’s running from — and if there’s anything he’s running for.
Below you’ll find an excerpt of our conversation for Today, Explained that’s been edited for clarity. You can also listen to the interview below or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Do you think these guys are still weird?
Oh, hell yes. Look, obsessing with choices people are making about their own lives that has absolutely zero to do with you. That is weird. That might be too soft. That is really unnecessary.
Did you watch the joint session this week?
Yeah, parts of it. I did.
I felt like the messaging from the Democrats was muddled at that joint session. Some didn’t show up at all. Some left early, some wore pink and held up these feeble signs that said, “False!” or “This is not normal.” We all saw Representative Al Green protest. But there wasn’t a unified message. Did you want to see something more unified from your party?
Yes. Other than bidding on an antique tea set or whatever was happening? Yes, I wanted something more than that. I’m hearing it from my constituents in Minnesota, and I’m hearing it across the country. There’s a primal scream of “Do something! Do something!”
Now I have the advantage — as a governor, I can do something. We can put up firewalls against them. You’re not going to demonize our people. We’re going to continue to make sure our children are fed. I called the premiers of Ontario and Manitoba and said, “Look, the official policy is theirs. But we like you. We like Canadians. We like what we trade together.”
When I get asked, “What should we be doing?” I’m probably the last guy. I didn’t get it done. And we needed to win. And that’s where we’re in this pickle because we didn’t win. But I’m being reflective of what I could have done better, what I should have done better.
I don’t have a big solution. But what I think for all of us, which is encouraging to me, these town halls — the kind of organic folks bringing up — there’s not going to be a charismatic leader right in and come up with this just perfectly delivered message. It’s going to get us out of this. It’s going to be a whole bunch of people who don’t want to see kids go hungry, who don’t want to see health care ripped apart, who don’t want to throw Ukraine under the bus on the side of Russia. Those folks are going to stand up and make a difference.
So yes, in answer to your question [on Democrats’ response to Trump’s speech]: Yes, it’s frustrating, but it’s hard. I served for 12 years in Congress and someone said, “Would you like to go back?” I said, “I would rather eat glass than go back to Congress.”
James Carville said in a New York Times op-ed that the Democrats [should] sort of roll over and play dead, let the Republicans have their way with the government, anger voters to the point that they’re repulsed by their policies, and then go for a shot in the jugular. What do you think of that strategy?
Well, I don’t agree with it, and I don’t agree with this idea that people need to feel the pain. I’m going to do all that I can as governor. I said to my team that we protect the most vulnerable. We protect our gains. That’s what we’re going to do.
This isn’t simple disagreement on tax rates, simple disagreement on how much we should do on defense spending versus domestic or whatever. This is an all-out assault around Article I of the Constitution.
Again, I don’t want to overreact, but I said this last week and I stand by this: The road to authoritarianism is littered with people saying, “You’re overreacting.” And I think that piece of it, of speaking out, matters.
Have [Trump’s team] done anything you liked? They’ve done a lot.
Two things. I’ll mention this especially today, tonight. I think I come down on Trump’s side on Daylight Savings Time. So we started talking about that. I’ll give you that, I’ll give you that one. And believe it or not, this is bizarre, I heard Donald Trump talk about this and I’m with him: I think we should get rid of the penny. I think it’s outlived its thing. So yeah, the world’s melting down around us. But Donald and I are solving the penny crisis.
So let’s talk about 2024 for a minute here. Not because I want to dwell on the past, but you brought it up that you guys didn’t win. I want to better understand why not. You guys didn’t swing a single swing state in your direction. A lot of people were stunned by that. Were you stunned?
Yeah. In this business, you’ve got to be steely eyed and coldhearted about where things are at. I spent my time in about seven swing states, and felt like I was getting down to where folks were at. Obviously not. And I think the soul searching that comes with that is: Why did our message about focusing on the middle class, expanded health care, Medicare, help for home health care work, environmental issues — why did that not work? Because it felt like to me that it was resonating and it did not.
And I think the team around me said this: We’ll either win all seven or we’ll lose all seven on this. I think that they thought because — these things are so nationalized now that it didn’t matter that I’m in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, talking to folks or up in Erie. Or you’re in Waukesha in Wisconsin. The national narrative over the top of that was going to drive it, and it felt like we were there. And I [was], you know, drinking my own Kool-Aid or whatever. And that’s on me. I said I own that.
You’ve been doing soul searching. If there’s one thing you can take back or do over, what do you think it would be?
Yeah, I think I would have taken back getting myself sucked into the conversation around what was happening in Springfield, Ohio. It so struck me, like, reprehensible that they were saying this about people that I was in like a three- or four-day debate, making my case that this is not happening in Springfield, Ohio. And every time I was saying that we were talking about Springfield, Ohio, and immigration — we weren’t talking about other things that mattered to people. And I went down that line trying to do, I think morally the right thing.
It turns out, how much have you heard about Springfield, Ohio, by the way, since that election? What Donald Trump has mastered is he floods the zone to the point where you don’t get to make your point. And it doesn’t matter if it was eating dogs and cats, because it was immigration and people were uncomfortable with immigration. And so I would, I would do that differently.
I don’t think Vice President Harris has been asked this, but I bet one thing she wished she could take back was that moment in that interview with The View, where she said she wouldn’t change a single thing the Biden administration was doing. I’m sure the right loved that, and I think a lot of people on the left were stunned by that. Had that question been posed to you, what were the things that the Biden administration could have been doing better for the American people?
Yeah, he should have been out there telling us that inflation was real. And this hurt. In retrospect, I think there should have been talk about sending, especially in the summer of ’23, potentially sending stimulus checks to folks to try and counter some of that and making it clear that we were fighting for them. Look, I think you were always going against this idea of change. It was a change election. It’s happened globally. We needed to be the change. And what that statement, more than anything, was — a lot of great work was done by the administration. We do have the best economy, but that doesn’t matter on a micro scale to someone if they can’t afford the rent payment.
But in fairness to the vice president, had it been me in that moment, I might have [said] that same thing. And I think that we as Democrats better do some soul searching about that. Why would we do that? It’s not like we’re blindly loyal, like, you know, the Trump folks are. But it’s okay to criticize people you like. In fact, that’s what you need.
You watch the RNC, you don’t see the Bushes on stage. You certainly don’t see the Chaneys, but you watch the DNC and you still see the Obamas and the Clintons. Do you think it’s time the Democratic Party refresh a little bit, put some fresh faces on there? Because here we are, and there’s still — no one has any idea who’s coming next.
Well, I will say this: The DNC was a good party. I thought it would do something better than them. But yes, let’s have our 2028 candidate have hair.
So the Trump campaign seems to mostly run on the economy, immigration, but they get to office and it feels like they’re mostly focused on draining the so-called swamp and, and “wokeness.” Now the wokeness they seem to be campaigning against, some of it started in your state with the murder of George Floyd. And it seems like they are betting that the majority of the American people, or at least their base, thinks that there was an overcorrection after the death of George Floyd — whatever happened with BLM and DEI. What do you think about that?
I think we have not done a good job of explaining it. I think we need to name [racism] when it happens. But we also need to tell the average person — who I do not believe is racist, but [who] doesn’t understand what we’re saying. And they have been conditioned by the other side that we are somehow passing over well-qualified white males to put these people in there. I think we as Democrats have a great example to rebut that: Just look at this current cabinet. If that’s the best and brightest coming from the other side, we should make that case about accountability.
There’s some cognitive dissonance in this country right now, because some people can’t believe that we’re canceling aid to African children, that we’re deporting migrants the way we’re doing it, that we’re treating trans people the way we’re treating them. And then it seems like half the country’s pleased as punch about it all, which is confusing. It feels like we’re losing a sense of ourselves.
But you just spent months crisscrossing the country, shaking every hand in sight, and you seem like a glass-half-full kind of guy. What would you say to people who are losing faith in their American identity right now? Because it feels like you’ve still got faith.
It’s tough. I don’t want to whistle past the graveyard, but it’s not a cliche: Every generation has to renew the democracy. And again, I will admit it. I would like to live in precedented times. I’m sick of living in unprecedented time. I want normalcy, I don’t want to see these people. But there’s also an opportunity and a privilege for us to, to reimagine.
I think we’re still exorcizing ghosts that haven’t been exorcised since the beginning of this country. I think they’re just coming back out. I think they’re raising their head up again, and we’re going to have to deal with them. So I think it’s our responsibility, I think the privilege of being in that battle.
I got asked the other day, “Who’s the leader of the Democratic Party?” I’m like, “Hell if I know. I think it’s the people who are out there. I think it’s the working class.” Because we are not cultish.
It’s pretty clear if you ask a Republican who’s the leader of the Republican Party? Because they can’t say it fast enough, put on their red hat and dance to the tune. We’re not going to dance to that tune. But we have a set of shared values. And so I am optimistic. I do believe that arc in the moral universe bends, but I don’t think it bends by itself. I think you got to reach up and pull it some to get there.
You’re talking to us right now at SXSW. I saw you on Maddow. I saw you talking to Molly Jong-Fast, David Remnick. Are you running for somethin’ right now?
I am not. I have the potential, if I would be given the privilege, to run for a third term of governor of Minnesota. We just need to make sure that we have a winning candidate for ’28 — not because they’re [a Democrat], but because they care about people and they adhere to our values.
Recent Comments