Is this Tim Walz’s cry for help?
The Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate said President Trump’s victory last year was a “primal scream” from voters who were furious and alienated by the Democratic party.
Walz said the loss of his Democratic ticket — which failed to win even one swing state — was emblematic of Democrats’ hemorrhaging of working-class voters.
“The party of the working class lost a big chunk of the working class,” Walz said during an address at the California Democratic Party convention. “That last election was a primal scream on so many fronts.”
“Some of it is our own doing,” Walz said.
Over recent months, Walz has traveled around the country seeking to mobilize Democratic resistance to President Trump and has delivered some searing post-mortems over his loss in 2024.
He admitted that he was likely picked as veep to “code talk to white guys” and admitted that he and Harris were never really ahead of Trump in that election.
Back in March, he argued there is a “primal scream” from voters in the progressive base who want to see the party take a more adversarial approach to Trump during his second term in the White House.
“There’s a responsibility in this time of chaos where elected officials need to hear what people are irritated about,” he said during a town hall of about 1,500 in Des Moines, Iowa.
“And I would argue that Democratic officials should hear the primal scream that’s coming from America, (which) is, ‘Do something, dammit! This is wrong!’”
Walz conveyed a similar message to California Democrats on Saturday about the need to be more feisty.
“We’ve got to find some goddamn guts to fight for working people,” he contended.
In a separate speech in South Carolina on Saturday, Walz issued a call for the resistance to Trump to be “meaner” and “bully the s–t” out of the 47th president, who is famously a brass-knuckled political brawler.
“Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner, a little bit more fierce,” Walz suggested, electrifying the audience in attendance.
“The thing that bothers a teacher more than anything is to watch a bully,” the former educator and high school football coach said. “And when it’s a child, you talk to them and you tell them why bullying is wrong.”
“But when it’s an adult like Donald Trump, you bully the s–t out of him back.”
Since his loss last November, Walz has maintained a significant national profile, with treks across the country and various interviews, delivering tough assessments of the state of the Democratic Party.
Walz’s slew of appearances has sharply contrasted Harris, who has largely laid low and rarely made public outings during the months since her electoral defeat.
Harris — a former California senator and attorney general — didn’t even show up to the Gold State’s Democratic Party convention in person, and instead delivered a video message to attendees.
Harris is rumored to be debating whether to run for California governor in 2026 or try again for the presidency in 2028 — or whether to stay on the sidelines entirely.
