MSNBC election analyst Steve Kornacki provided his network’s far-left audience with sobering election data after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her presidential running-mate.
Walz — a progressive Democrat who presided over the George Floyd riots in 2020 — had become popular in online left-wing spaces in recent weeks. Left-wing X users were largely ecstatic with the pick, as many believe Walz will be able to appeal to white working class voters and Republicans while still remaining true to progressive causes.
MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki threw cold water on the notion that Walz has widespread appeal to these voters, however. He began by pointing to data from Stearns County, Minnesota, and noted that Democrats have been losing ground in recent years.
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“Now here’s the key, because this county, Democrats used to be much more competitive in. Look at this, in 2012, Barack Obama won 43% of the vote in this county. It was only a little bit more than 10 points that he lost to Romney by here. The floor fell out for Democrats here when Trump came along in that Clinton race in 2016, and they haven’t recovered it since,” he said.
The longtime elections analyst noted that Governor Walz underperformed Biden’s 2020 results in the county and stressed that it was “a far cry from what Obama was doing here
“And again, I’m showing you one. This is a stand-in for dozens of counties in Minnesota where you saw the same thing with large rural populations, blue-collar white populations, where Obama, and some of them he was winning, others he was holding his own just a dozen years ago,”Kornacki said.
“This is where Democrats have lost ground. And Walz in 2022, he didn’t gain any ground that the Democrats had lost. He didn’t do that here, he didn’t do that in other counties. Walz really owes his victory, that big margin, he got 8 points there statewide, he owes it to the Twin Cities area. The area where Democrats in Minnesota and all these other states are already doing well.”
Kornacki concluded by rejecting the notion that Walz has widespread appeal to rural and suburban voters. “And the idea that he’s got this automatic appeal with these small town areas in those three key battleground states, you don’t see it in what he actually did on the ballot in 2022.
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