Tim Walz knows what went wrong 🫵

Tim Walz just diagnosed what went wrong for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. And he’s right — with a twist!

Here’s what Walz, the party’s VP nominee, told Politico over the weekend:

I think we probably should have just rolled the dice and done the town halls, where [voters] may say, ‘you’re full of shit, I don’t believe in you.’ I think there could have been more of that…

We, as a party, are more cautious…in football parlance, we were in a prevent defense to not lose when we never had anything to lose because I don’t think we were ever ahead.

Here’s the thing: That’s 100% right!

Throughout the fall campaign, I talked to Democratic strategists who worried that Harris was playing it too safe. Her openness (or lack thereof) to media interviews. Her caution on policy. Her slow response to Donald Trump’s attacks on cultural issues.

There was perhaps no bigger sign of the prevent defense that Harris was playing than her decision to pick Walz as VP.

The decision came down to Walz or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Shapiro clearly had the higher upside but was also the bigger gamble — he had ambitions for the top job and, being Jewish, could have complicated the Democrats’ efforts to appeal to Arab-American voters unhappy about the party’s positioning on the Middle East.

(Sidebar: I am very skeptical of that latter point but it was one that some in Harris’ circle were clearly worried about.)

So, Harris played it safe. She picked the humble Midwestern governor who promised he would always put her first — and had no designs on the top job.

Now, I am NOT saying that Harris would have won the presidency if she had picked Shapiro as VP. I don’t think she would have.

But, the too-careful decision-making that led to the Walz pick infected the entirety of the campaign. And likely doomed her.

Harris ran like she was ahead by 5-10 points throughout the fall. But, according to her own campaign, they never had her ahead. Which makes the campaign she wound up running truly baffling. And no decision was more baffling — given the state of the race — than her VP pick.

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