MSNBC began Tuesday morning in meltdown mode after news emerged that Vice President Kamala Harris had selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

Steve Kornacki, the liberal network’s primary political analyst, immediately scoffed at Walz’s selection, writing on X that the progressive Democrat does not provide the kind of “boost” that Harris needs to credibly surpass former President Donald Trump in the polls. Digging into data from Minnesota’s 2022 gubernatorial race, Kornacki cited Walz’s struggle with blue-collar, working-class voters when pitted against a credible Republican alternative. “Tim Walz’s ’22 GOV performance in the MN counties that have swung the most toward Trump post-2012,” he wrote preemptively on Monday night, adding Tuesday morning after the selection was made public, “The results of Walz’s ’22 GOV race in MN don’t suggest he provides an obvious boost with the blue collar voters Dems have been shedding in WI/MI/PA.”

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Across 25 Minnesota counties where more than three in four white residents do not hold a four-year degree, Walz’s margin of loss in 2022 is nearly identical to the levels of support for President Trump in the 2020 election. The progressive governor counts his best showing at -3% in rural Mower County, just south of Rochester, but is at an astonishing -52% in the northwestern county of Morrison, which has just 30 residents per square mile. Despite his shortcomings, insiders described a Walz selection as the “path of least resistance” for Harris, according to Politico.

“I can see them looking at the explosion of enthusiasm from young people and being spooked out of nominating him if it risks bringing Gaza back into the conversation,” said a Democratic strategist who knows the Harris team well, referencing Pennsylvania Gov. Joshua Shapiro, who is Jewish and who Harris advisors feared would stoke antisemitic attacks on her ticket from the left. Still, the vice president’s campaign will be hard pressed to explain why she chose to forgo selecting a popular swing-state governor who could realistically have given her a path to the presidency through Pennsylvania. “What does he [Walz] get her?” another insider asked the outlet.

Kornacki also pointed out that Gov. Walz has essentially spun his wheels in the more liberal counties. Since 2020, his levels of support in Minneapolis’s Hennepin County have remained virtually unchanged, as have they in seven others, two of which he trails a generic Republican by six and seven percent. These, Kornacki states, are the more highly educated areas of Minnesota that have trended toward Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden since the 2012 presidential election.

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Put together, the analyst’s data suggest Walz will reinforce support of Harris among college-educated white voters while doing little to shore up her flagging support among working-class whites. She has benefited from a surge in support among Black voters who were until presently favoring President Trump at the highest levels for a Republican nominee since the Civil Rights era. In response, President Trump questioned whether Harris recently “became Black” as she traveled to Atlanta where she was knocked for delivering her stump speech with a false Southern twang.

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