Democratic strategist David Axelrod said Harris’ new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “delivered a hard swipe” at the Republican candidate on Tuesday night, but did so with “gentle humor” that was well-received by the audience.
“I live in the Midwest and, you know, they say, ‘The Midwest is sweet,’ and he took some tough criticism, but he did it with a kind of gentle humor that actually held up well,” Axelrod said of Walz on a CNN panel Tuesday night, responding to the Democratic candidate’s primary campaign rally.
At the event, Walz criticized former President Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).
“I just can’t help but say this, you know it, you feel it, these people are creepy and, yeah, just freaking weird, that’s what you’re seeing,” Waltz said to thunderous applause from the Philadelphia rally crowd, referencing the Trump campaign’s new term for “weird.”
The Minnesota governor then criticized his rival for the vice presidential nomination, saying, “Just like most people I know who grew up in the Midwest, JD went to Yale, was funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best-seller trashing that community. No way! That’s not where middle-class America is.”
Axelrod said Democrats had a “great night,” noting the “very fun and positive” energy in the audience and onstage. He also noted a change in Trump’s confidence compared to a few months ago, when Democrats began openly criticizing President Biden as the presumptive nominee.
“Trump is becoming unsettled by this changing environment, you can see that in his tweets and so on, and there’s a certain tension in the Trump campaign right now that’s at odds with what we saw tonight, which was very fun and positive,” Axelrod said.
“I saw the potential,” he added.
Axelrod said “it remains to be seen” whether Trump’s messaging approach is successful, but he believes he may need to find something new.
“A negative campaign to portray these people as far-left or whatever could be successful,” Axelrod said, “and they’re going to have to come up with some other way to do it, because I think that’s an argument of the past, and I’m not sure that would be victorious today.”
