Backstage in a dressing room drinking a can of diet Mountain Dew as 900 people filled a theater in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he wouldn’t be there if not for “the void.”

The void is deep for Walz, who only in the last few weeks has begun to publicly address his and Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss with what he called “the most unsatisfying ‘I Told You So’ tour in the history of politics.” He says too many Democratic leaders are still not truly grappling with how bad things are politically for them, what he believes is President Donald Trump’s march toward authoritarianism or the anger and frustration at both parties building across the country.

“Our leadership’s not going to be the charismatic DC leader or whatever. It’s going to be the person who’s reading the room the best of where these people are at,” Walz told CNN.

As many Democratic voters have moved since November from dejection, to panic, to curdling anger at party leaders who haven’t come up with a better way of fighting back, Walz’s answer is a tour of Republican House districts to listen to stories of desperation, call on Democrats to lay out a policy agenda with clearer direct benefits for voters and try to build a new sense of community that he says he hadn’t realized his party had lost so much.