‘Our party used to have the courage to do big and bold things,’ the former vice presidential candidate said.
Former vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz told Democratic Party voters in South Carolina on May 31 that their party had lost its way and needed to revive its identity as Democrats prepare to challenge for control of Congress and governorships in 2026.
Walz, who was former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, gave the keynote address at the South Carolina Democratic Party Convention and opened with a general critique of President Donald Trump’s second administration, mentioning topics including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Department of Government Efficiency, tax policies, and the president’s decision to accept Qatar’s gift of a Boeing 747.
He accused Trump’s administration of “cruelty and corruption,” specifically calling Qatar’s gift an example of corruption and the deconstruction of the federal budget as an example of cruelty. He criticized congressional Republicans for being “fully complicit,“ adding that his own party is a part of the “mess.”
“We gotta be honest with ourselves,” he said. “We’re in this mess. We know who Trump is. He told us, and he does it every day. But we’re in this mess too, because we lost our way. We lost our way a bit as a party.”
He said the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, and it bothered him “to no end” that not only did they lose a chunk of the nation’s working class voters in the last election, they lost it to a billionaire. And he admitted that the billionaire made the working class feel heard.
“You could hear the primal scream of folks,” he said. “Working-class folks were in pain. They were yelling from the top of their lungs, ‘Do something. Do something. The system’s not fair. You can’t own a home. I can’t get health care. I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about gun violence.’”
Walz told the crowd that it was the Democratic Party that created Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill, and Pell grants. He said the Democratic Party stood for civil rights and abortion and labor unions.
“That’s the DNA of the Democratic Party, working for working people,” he said. ”Our party used to have the courage to do big and bold things.
By T.J. Muscaro
