Nearly seven months since his ticket lost the 2024 presidential election, Tim Walz is trying all at once to make amends for everything he thinks went wrong.

He is going to Republican areas where Democrats lost ground. He is sitting for countless interviews after former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign limited his media exposure. And as his party engages in collective finger-pointing, he is among the few Democrats admitting that they themselves made mistakes.

“I know my job and I didn’t get it done,” Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said last week on a podcast hosted by former Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.The Tim Walz atonement-and-explanation tour had its biggest audiences to date Saturday, when he delivered speeches to Democratic Party conventions in South Carolina and California.

“This dude’s the last guy I want to tell us about ‘we lost our way.’ You’re the guy who lost,” Walz said to the crowd in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday morning, imagining what listeners might be thinking. But, he added, “none of us can afford to shy away right now from asking the hard questions and doing the things we need to do to fix it so that we win elections.”

His approach stands in stark contrast with how his running mate has dealt with their loss. Harris gave a paid speech in Australia, appeared at the Met Gala in New York (though she skipped the red carpet) and spoke for barely more than 15 minutes to a political group in San Francisco. Even as she weighs a run for governor of California, it was Walz who was the main attraction at that state’s Democratic convention.

While in California, Walz also took a clear shot at the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who in March said it was “deeply unfair” that transgender athletes were allowed to compete with girls.

“I’m just going to say it,” Walz said. “Shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus.” (Newsom did not attend the convention.)

Aiming for visibility

Since March, Walz has held town hall events in Republican congressional districts in Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio. He appeared at a rally for a judicial candidate in Wisconsin and spoke at a Montana Democratic Party fundraising dinner. In addition to Tester’s podcast, he joined the “Twigg and Jenkins” show, Vox’s “Today, Explained” and podcasts hosted by Newsom and The New Yorker.

“If you don’t do an interview, you really are reducing the risk that you’ll say something stupid, but you’re also ceding the field,” Walz said in an interview Friday. “I mean, I would have thought at some time you could overexpose, but Jesus, with Trump, it’s not possible.”

Both South Carolina and California are critical for anyone thinking about the 2028 presidential primary, not that Walz admits to doing much of that. He and his aides insist there is no grand strategy to his appearances, beyond keeping open as many options as possible. He is planning as if he will run for a third term as governor next year, and said he would make a formal decision by July.

Steve Bullock, the former Montana governor who invited Walz to his state party’s dinner in March, said Walz saw a moment “where we’ve got to have voices out there, and his is one that’s really relevant and really important.”

Bullock added, “I know he has a lot more freedom than he did last fall.”

Walz is certainly testing the boundaries of that freedom. He has not criticized Harris or former President Joe Biden by name, but it is easy to sense his frustration with them.

Like so many others, he laments the abbreviated nature of the Harris campaign. And after pledging to do whatever Harris wanted as her running mate, Walz found life as the vice presidential nominee suffocating. A man who was chosen for his skills in television interviews was not allowed to do many of them because it would have highlighted Harris’ avoidance of reporters.

“If you think you’re just going to do a ‘60 Minutes’ interview and that’s going to get across, boy, that’s not it,” Walz said on Tester’s podcast, a reference to one of Harris’ rare campaign trail interviews.

Meeting South Carolina Democrats

For all the rending of garments over the 2024 results, Walz’s trip to South Carolina also represented something else: his first real postelection effort to speak to Black voters, the most critical constituency for any Democrat with presidential aspirations. Each of the party’s last three contested primaries was won by the candidate — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden — who consolidated Black support across Southern primary states.

Walz has had limited exposure to Southern Black Democrats, and his postelection analysis has dealt little with the drop-off in support from Black and Latino Democrats, focusing more on the ground the party lost with working-class voters more broadly.

“I don’t think that Gov. Walz hurt himself, mainly because the campaign hid him,” said former state Rep. Bakari T. Sellers, a prominent South Carolina Democrat, in an interview a few days before the state convention. “He doesn’t really have a resume that individuals are aware of here in South Carolina.”

Walz’s appearance in the state this weekend seemed designed in part to change that. He introduced himself in earnest, meeting with top activists, speaking at fundraisers and glad-handing at Rep. James E. Clyburn’s annual fish fry.

“Democrats, we have no shortage of good ideas,” Walz told South Carolina Democrats on Saturday. “But when we get into power, we haven’t been able to get the stuff done, at least not the stuff that people actually care about and feel in their lives.”

He also urged his party to push back vigorously against President Donald Trump: “Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner. Maybe it’s time for us to be a little more fierce.”

As for his plans for 2028, Walz compared his place in the eventual Democratic field to a member of an expedition trying to climb Mount Everest.

“No one knew who was going to the summit — it depended on who was ready on summit day,” Walz said in the interview. “You get the final camp, you push somebody up. What I’m saying is I want to be part of this team that gets there and pushes whoever it is up to the top.”