Governor Tim Walz grilled on ‘major mistake’ of Biden seeking re-election

Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., was grilled by CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday about whether members of the Democratic Party needed to acknowledge that former President Biden wasn't up to running for re-election. 

"Don‘t you think your party needs to acknowledge that President Biden was not up for the job of running for reelection, and that this was a major mistake?" Tapper asked, as Walz argued that Biden made the decision to drop out. "You all went along with the idea that he was up for it and he wasn‘t, and everybody saw it. And the country rejected it."

Walz, who was former Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 running mate, also told Tapper that the Democratic Party needed to do some soul-searching in the wake of their loss to President Donald Trump. 

"History will tell us to go back on that. 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 and get someone. But I don‘t know where it helps us going forward," Walz said, before pivoting to Trump. 

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Tapper also pressed Walz on Harris' recent remarks, during which she said, "I’m not here to say I told you so," during a speech in California on Thursday.

"What does ‘I told you so’ really mean here? I mean, people heard her message. They did not vote for her. She lost every battleground state. You yourself have criticized the Harris-Walz campaign for being too cautious. She may have told the American people, you know, she may have warned the American people, but she didn‘t do it compellingly enough to win," the CNN host said. 

Walz said he owned the loss and criticized himself for it. However, he said Harris tried to warn people of what Trump was planning to do.  

"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? And they didn‘t, and I’m very concerned with the folks who stayed home," he said, acknowledging that Trump did a good job identifying voters' anxieties. 

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The CNN host also asked about criticisms that the Democratic Party was gaslighting Americans about inflation, the border, and Biden's fitness. 

"And then, fundamentally, this idea that President Biden was up for another four years of the job while Americans in poll after poll, for year after year, were saying, ‘he‘s too old to do the job,’ your party stood against all of those things," Tapper said. 

Walz argued that Biden led the country out of the COVID-19 pandemic and that he did a good job, but that the Democratic Party failed to message correctly on issues such as immigration.