Governor Tim Walz joins Gavin to discuss how the Democrats are losing men and why the party’s brand of populism isn’t resonating.IG: @GavinNewsomTikTok: @GavinNewsomEmail: [email protected] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Why are Democrats losing popularity among men?
This is Gavin Newsom. And this is Governor Tim Walz.
All right, Governor, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for being with us.
I am. Thanks for having me. I'm kind of wondering where I fall on this list of guests, but I'm excited. You and I have been friends for a while, so we appreciate it. But you and I talked about this for a while, trying to understand during a Trump presidency, how do we best serve our folks? How do we get back there?
And the Democratic Party, I mean, we all need to be very candid, is not all that popular right now.
Chapter 2: What challenges are Democrats facing in the current political landscape?
Well, that's where I wanted to start, just right up top. I mean, the timing of this couldn't be more opportunistic for both of us as Democratic governors. Look, we're in the tank. I mean, it's not just a rough spot. It's an historically low, at least in modern polling, back to the 1990s. CNN had the Democratic Party brand now down about 29%, and it was even worse.
in an NBC poll that showed 27% of people supporting our party. You've been out on the road. You were just in a couple of red states. You've been doing town halls. We've talked about this in the past privately. It's not just about what you say and how you say it. It's also about where you say it. So I love the fact you were out there. So give us a sense.
I mean, what you're over under is about where the hell our party is right now.
Well, and I think that's what people are doing. Look, this is something hadn't been done, what you're doing. And people are, you know, and we're trying to enter spaces. And look, I don't know if all of them are going to work. But the fact of the matter is, we don't want to win elections just to say Democrats won elections. We want to win elections to improve people's lives.
When we're losing elections, chaos reigns, which we're seeing right now. I'm at a town hall and these folks are standing up. They're a VA nurse. They're concerned what's happening at the VA. They're a farmer that's concerned. They're folks that are concerned about their personal reproductive rights and their life choices. And if we can't be a respected opposition or alternative,
That really worries me. And I say this, Gavin, that I didn't go to the Democrats. They came to me with Social Security, with GI Bill. It was clear when, at least my age growing up, Democrats stood with working people, Republicans stood with the wealthy. And there was nothing necessarily wrong with that. It was at least an argument. It feels much more polarized now, but people don't see us as that.
It's they see exactly the opposite of that, that we're the party of the elites, that we don't represent. We represent, quote unquote, others. We don't represent them in this notion that the working class now has been or has embraced Donald Trump is extraordinary. And so I mean. You were out on the campaign trail.
I mean, it's such an interesting conversation for me to have with you and for those listening, because no one has more sort of a contemporary ear to the ground than you do just coming off a few months ago, the campaign trail, meeting people all across this country. I mean, these new numbers that came out of CNN and NBC, I mean, even you had to be shocked by how far we've fallen as a brand.
Yeah, look, and I felt excitement out there. And our policies are popular, by the way. When you pull our policies, like paid family medical leave, support for the environment, reproductive rights, they pull very high. We don't.
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Chapter 3: How can Democrats reconnect with voters?
They don't hear.
No, and that's. Yeah, this notion of uncomfortable conversations, not just conversations. But let me step back. I love what you said, because it's interesting. This notion of our policies are popular, but our party is not popular. And it begs the question some have asked me, and I want to pose it to you. Do you think one of the mistakes is we don't focus first?
on what we stand for and then make the case, the policy that backs that up and reinforces it. That we are not fundamentally meeting people where they are. They wanna know what we stand for.
Yeah, I think that's good. Yeah, and look, and I appreciate, I think we're gonna be in hard places and I think we're gonna get punched from both sides doing some of this, but we're not in this to, like I said, we're not banking political capital to win another election. We're trying to improve people's lives.
and let's all be very candid nobody's lives being improved right now except billionaires and i don't see that changing and so i think we're going to have to ask those questions i think a lot of times the simple answer is it's the messenger you know which i'll acknowledge maybe the messenger is not good at this i approach this always gavin like a school teacher i give a lesson and then i do an assessment of that lesson
And half the students didn't do very well on it. Well, I don't assume that those half are terrible kids. I assume that they have a different learning style or they weren't hearing the way I was teaching it. Maybe these folks were, you know, verbal learners. Maybe they were kinesthetic learners, whatever it might be.
I think we have to approach the electorate like that, that we think we're telling them where we're at. But for whatever reason, you're right. And this pains me. I tried to make the case. Look. I'm a public school teacher, went to a public university. And according to the Wall Street Journal, I'm the poorest person who ever ran for vice president. That didn't matter to them.
And so the idea here that we were trying to craft someone who, for whatever reason, there was a number of people that didn't register with. So I'm with everybody else. And again, when people ask me, I'm probably the last person you should ask for answers because I didn't get it done. But I do believe we were making inroads.
And I will have to tell you, one of the most powerful ones for me, Gavin, it's not a great use of campaign time, but we were up in Erie, Pennsylvania on Halloween before the election. And I sat down with five undecided voters and we had a 45 minute give and take on that. I think I got three of them for sure, maybe. But, you know, that's how you view it.
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Chapter 4: What strategies can Democrats adopt to improve their party image?
And he got more votes.
why is so i mean and i want and i've i've strong opinions on that but i want to sort of stress test yours again because i think it's interesting back to my notion and you say you're the last person i'm i'm going to completely dismiss i think you're the best positioned to understand what's going on but let me reflect on this notion of you being a teacher and reflecting on on how your students did
Did you have an opportunity right after the election to sit down over the course? I mean, I hope you took time off with the family, decompressed, but you had to have had with your team these conversations. Did you have them with the Harris team as well? Did you have them with the campaign team? Have you organized anything more formally, even internally, You've got books coming out.
They're going to shape those internal conversations. You've got one book coming out in a few weeks called Fight that is already starting to frame what did or did not occur. Have you started that process or has that process been advanced?
Yeah, no, you're right. And I've talked to my team about it. Look, as a high school teacher and a governor or whatever, I didn't think about writing a
book but being there I have you know I think we got to tell our story and I think there's lessons learned to not go back and do a you know a deep dive or a hot wash of this is is irresponsible in my opinion I spoke to the the vice president last week we talked a little bit about this of coming to it but we haven't done like a formal debrief and you know when you're part of you've done this that when you're part of a team on this you know you you work together and I stand by that I signed up and
And I say this, Gavin, you'd appreciate, not the cliches of coaching or whatever, but I feel like I'm the constant team player. If you are truly a team player, you have a responsibility to make your team better. And that means a responsibility to say, look, we're not making this block here. We need to do this or whatever it is.
And we need to be honest that, again, I keep coming back to that number of the folks who stayed home. How in God's name could you stay home during this election? It's pretty hard to blame that on Donald Trump. You know what I mean? That you've got a responsibility. They weren't going to vote for him. His people were.
But you had a whole bunch of these folks that just said, what difference does it make? And how did we as a party get into that? How did we lose the narrative? How much are we ceding ground to the Fox News and the right wing talking heads? How much are we ceding to them, which we don't have a pushback on it? And that's fascinating to me. I see that with me.
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Chapter 5: How can Democrats address internal party coordination issues?
So I think that polling is interesting, Gavin, that it doesn't mean that there's less Democrats. And the reason that number is so low is if you poll every single year, if you ask the Republican Party their opinion of the Democratic Party, it's very low. The reason our numbers are so low is those are Democrats.
Yep, 63% feel, and I was grateful it was 63%. Well, here's what I say.
I'm not a Democrat. I'm Democratic farmer labor. I'm the worst person in the country. We're DFL. And so, and I actually think, Gavin, this is an interesting point. While I won't cry and tell you we've kept the farmers all with us or whatever, We have kept some of them, like Farmers Union in Minnesota and these issues around water quality and different things. And we have labor.
And in Minnesota, we really do. This was a marriage between the Farmer Labor Party, which, quite honestly, was more progressive and leaning into the issues of the working class and Democrats. And so I think on a national level, we're going to have to conversation of who we are, because like you said, people don't believe we're with them. They think we're elitist.
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September 1979. Virginia's top prison band, Edge of Daybreak, is about to record their debut album, Behind Bars, in just five hours. I'm Jamie Petras, music and culture writer. For the past five years, I've been talking to the band's three surviving members. They're out of prison now and in their 70s. Their past behind them. But they also have some unfinished business.
The end of Daybreak, Eyes of Love was supposed to have been followed up by another album.
It's a story about the liberating power of music, the American justice system, and ultimately, second chances. Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 6: Why is it important for Democrats to expand their political map?
I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor-in-chief. On my podcast, This Is Working, leaders like Indra Nooyi, Ray Dalio, and Rich Paul share strategies for success and the real lessons that have shaped them. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What I love about what you did is you're meeting people where they are, going into red states, but you're also not just meeting them where they are, you're showing respect. You're not turning your back because you're looking at an electoral map and recent experience, say it's just seven swing states, and that's all I need to focus on.
And I think one of the things the Democratic Party absolutely needs to do is we need to respect the fact that we have to represent the American people, and that means all 50 states. And so going back, showing up matters.
Howard Dean was right, 50 states. And just to be candid, as one of the fringe, you know, kind of washed in with the wave in 2006 when there was the big Democratic wave, it was because of Howard Dean and a few folks that were out there that were saying expand the map. Rahm Emanuel, of all people, was one of them, too, said we need to expand the map everywhere.
They went into a district that had one Democrat since 1892 and put a little money into it. And I won. And so I think if you want to govern this country, you can't tell Montana they don't matter or Idaho or Mississippi. And look, you and I both know this. You also can't tell the Central Valley and things. We're not, everybody thinks, oh, California's solid.
Quite the contrary. Two-thirds of the map is deeply red. I mean, it's just America only more so in California. More hunters, more ranchers, more farmers than other states. And still the largest manufacturing state in America. People forget that as well. So this notion of industrial policy that's worker-centered.
I have to say, I appreciate it, and you're going on talking, and I get frustrated with some of these folks. I get frustrated with the talking heads and the folks who I think are bad actors. I don't get frustrated with my neighbors who are voting that way. I don't understand it as well, but I'm trying to get them –
You know, we have to figure out a way that we're not the Republicans have done a good job of this. We're the enemy now. Now we're in this situation where they see Russians as being more trustworthy than us. You know, that's that's a sad state to be in. Unbelievable state. Yes. And I don't know. Again, I don't. I don't know if I've got the ability to bring back those 77 million.
I do believe we've got the ability to get the disenfranchised folks who are seeing the damage here. And I think that's really important because this is truly this isn't about winning elections. This is about what's best for the country. And you'll never convince me siding with Putin in North Korea is good for the country or fighting a trade war with Canada and Mexico is good for the country.
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