Walz’s announcement marks a remarkable fall. A September 2025 YouGov poll ranked Walz fourth in Democratic voters’ willingness to support for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination, higher than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders. Five percent of Democrats even called Walz their “ideal choice,” a level surpassing former presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. Walz was exceptionally busy last year keeping his name in the news and his face before activists. He spoke at the California and South Carolina Democratic Party annual conventions, held town hall events in Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin, and attended a fund-raiser in Montana. He appeared on podcasts. He offered himself as the Democrats’ flag-bearer against Trump and Trumpism.
Yet it is clear now that seventy-nine-year-old Donald Trump will outlast sixty-one-year-old Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor’s political career fell victim to the follies and failings of contemporary American politics, shortcomings to which Walz himself contributed. The immediate cause of the governor’s downfall was, of course, a welfare fraud scandal that has cost the state and federal governments at least $1 billion with speculation that the tally could grow to a stunning $9 billion. That scandal highlights the central role that private nonprofits play in delivering public goods and services in America. The inability of the state government to prevent the fraud highlights the power that the NGO sector exercises in the contemporary Democratic Party. Yet Walz’s fall is not simply a story for the American left. It is also a tale of run-away partisanship and the cultural conquest of American politics by Walz’s nemesis. Tim Walz rose to prominence in 2024, after all, off his emulation of Donald Trump’s internet-friendly, insult-rich, profanity-laced attack-dog political style. Fighting fire with fire made Walz a beloved figure on the progressive left, but it also made him a singular target of the president and his supporters. Walz reveled in the national attention without measuring the cost of such relentless criticism, for it is precisely that white-hot spotlight which made the fraud scandal politically relevant and ended Walz’s career.