Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz issued a warning to his party in an interview Thursday, arguing there would be backlash if Democrats win elections in November and beyond but fail to make significant structural changes.
During an interview with "The Lever" founder David Sirota, Walz was asked if the Democratic Party had an issue offering up big promises but ultimately failing to deliver.
"Yes, a hundred percent. It’s a hundred percent," Walz said. "I always use the line, as I said, we win these elections not to bank the political capital to win the next one but to improve lives. We’re too slow about it. And some of that is structural,"
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He pointed to former Sen. Joe Manchin's position that the filibuster must remain in place in the Senate.
"Look, I’m friends with Joe Manchin, but the desire to hold onto the filibuster at all costs as an institution when it had real impacts on people’s lives of real important things, and by not doing that, it played right into the hands of the Republicans. I think we’re not responsive, and then we fall into that 'But we voted for you, and you didn’t get anything done,'" Walz said.
Manchin has been consistent in his support for the filibuster. In 2022, he and then-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema voted against changing the Senate's 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation, opposing other Democrats who sought to change the rules to pass voting legislation.
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Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, warned of a "real danger."
"Here’s where I think the real danger is. If there is not significant structural change — whether it’s inequities, you know, income inequities or opportunities — the backlash, because, I said this: I got into politics because I said we’ll never find a worse president than George Bush . And I think now, if you think that this is the pinnacle of how bad things can get, I would caution you to rethink that.
"And especially if Democrats do all of this, the public turns out, they vote for us and kids still can’t afford a college education, can’t afford housing. That’s going to be a problem."
He then predicted that Democrats would regain control of the House, Senate and eventually the presidency in 2028 .
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Lindsey Drath, CEO of the Forward Party, told Fox News Digital, "We shouldn't advocate for abolishing the filibuster to drive home party-line votes with no effort to advance cross-partisan consensus law making. What hampers Congress' ability to deliver material solutions to the American people is a two-party system that penalizes working across the aisle.
"This circular dynamic, whereby Democrats or Republicans enter into a narrow majority, only to focus on maintaining power, accumulates a kind of figurative debt against the challenges facing the American people," she said. "This dynamic pushes our elected officials away from working on real solutions for actual problems and toward whatever hyper polarized means by which they can to hold on to power.
"This is why a fulcrum strategy is key," Drath continued. "The Senate today passes almost nothing on a bipartisan basis, not because the problems aren't solvable, but because neither party has any incentive to negotiate. Every compromise is a political cost. If someone crosses the aisle, they are attacked by their party. It is framed as every deal made is a loss to play at home. The incentive is to obstruct, posture and wait for the next election.
"The fulcrum strategy is that you don't need a majority to change the Senate," she added. "You need only a handful. It uses a small bloc of independents to balance power in Congress and take away full majority from either side. With an expected closely divided Congress this cycle, this is very relevant and real. It would mean both parties would have to negotiate with those few in the middle before anything passes. The party that wants their vote has to offer something real, something that actually serves the people."
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Walz announced in January that he would not seek elected office again after previously announcing he wouldn't run for a third term as governor.
He reflected on his tenure as governor in a September interview, including his handling of widespread fraud involving Minnesota social services programs.
"Fraud — should have stopped it sooner," Walz told The Minnesota Star Tribune . "We didn’t stop them. I accept that. I think there does need to be accountability with that. And part of it is that, yep, that’s with me, I’ll step aside."
The governor said the state "immediately" took action to address the fraud and then suggested that the true cost of the fraud, estimated at $9 billion by federal prosecutors, has been overstated. Walz also compared the fraud losses to the cost of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom , which he suggested was more expensive.
"I should have been down on those agencies a little more, but I will tell you this, in the scheme of things, all the fraud that's been prosecuted, by the way, and all the fraud that's probably out there is less than the ballroom at the White House," Walz said.
"So, it puts it into perspective. It doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it right."
Fox News' Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.