Summary
Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized Trump for economic chaos while taking personal responsibility for the situation during an MSNBC interview.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election — and we didn’t,” Walz told Chris Hayes. He called Trump the “worst possible business executive” and praised the Wall Street Journal’s editorial criticizing Trump’s tariff war.
Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump. Recently, he acknowledged a leadership void in the Democratic Party and admitted spending too much time combatting Trump’s false claims about immigrants.
Turns out holding back the things that work (like calling fascists “weird”) while not breaking with some of Biden’s unpopular policies was a terrible idea… who would’ve thought? At least Walz is honest enough to admit it. I doubt the DNC will let the social democrats like Walz or Bernie take the lead though… establishment dems would rather stand by and praise Reagan while Trump dismantles the constitution.
“Weird” alienated voters. It’s an example of bad messaging that the dems doubled down on that made them lose.
They lacked a platform that promised anything but more of the same that Americans were tired of. They needed to present something new and hopeful, not just lob an insult that much of America identifies with. A suite of policies to help the working class attracts votes to your side. Calling your opponents weird attracts votes to the weird anti-establishment.
Weird plays into the republican’s hands, and it annoys the hell out of me how the dems decided to throw the election to focus on petty insults that come off as compliments to most observers.
A part of the problem is that they didn’t hold back on broken and alienating messaging like “weird”. They should have focused on talking about what they can do for the people.
No, the initial comment was fine, as was the authentic reaction to it.
What made it weird and ineffective, was Kamala and other zero charisma neoliberals beating it into the ground while screaming “you like this”.
It’s like when Dee was trying to make Instagram videos and Charlie kept fucking with her:
When Walz said it off the cuff, it was a good thing. When Harris tried to make it an entire campaign, it was stupid and “weird” on its own.
Alienated which voters?
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Oh? got any proof of that? Was your proof on fox news maybe? I saw plenty of articles praising it.
It alienated me.
Most queer people identify with the label “weird”.
I also saw pro-corporate outlets praising it.
Oh see you said it alienated voters, plural.
What a ridiculous take.
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OK. First of all, words can have multiple meanings. Like the word “screw” or “bark” or “current”. We dont need to deprecate these multiple meanings in favor of just one. In conversation you pick the applicable meaning, and if you cant thats more a ‘you’ problem. I have enough problems of my own without taking yours on too. My use of the word doesnt affect you at all.
Secondly, I will stick with the normal usage that most people use. Language is an agreement between people around meaning, and the vast majority of the population doesnt agree that it has this new meaning. Sorry. Maybe in a few years “wierd” will have a more predominant meaning that you prefer, but today it does not, and again, even if it did, the word need not mean only one thing.
But it seems like your memories dont match your ability to show it now. Human memories are notoriously unreliable.
If you simply dont like that the word means what it means because you wish another meaning was more dominant, then I have a hard time feeling like you’ve much of a right to be aggreived at anyone about that. But by all means, be alienated if you want to. Just dont expect anyone else to make your alienation into a thing. Cheers.
That’s fair actually. When I first heard it without context, I also felt kind of alienated by it.
I think you can be weird in good and bad ways, context matters in this case. I think it’s fair to call out fascists for being “weird” in the sense that they are evil, crooked and - crucially - not relatable for the vast majority of voters. The “weird” thing is about the fascists not being “like us” - and thus very instinctively not trustworthy.
At the same time it’s also possible to be “weird” in an individualistic, relatable and validating way. Most people have insecurities or fears on some level and accepting this “weirdness” can be validating and actually show likeness. I think it’s very clear that Tim Walz didn’t mean it like this.
He didn’t call them weird out of the blue, but rather to sum up his other points about their unrelatable, evil behaviors. The message was something like: “The fascists are not real, believable people. They don’t seem driven by everyday worries like us. They don’t seem to have the same kind of feelings like us.”
And I think that is actually exactly the message that wins elections in this political climate. Debating the issues is getting you nowhere if your opponent has no actual beliefs to debate against. Calling them out for being fake people with no actual beliefs is a better strategy.
No, weird was a successful offensive attack on Republicans that was both popular and was great at making them get flustered and double down on their weirdness (which is itself an incredibly charitable way to describe their fascist policies)
https://www.vox.com/politics/365833/trump-harris-walz-weird-2024-election-voters-biden-poll-attack-messaging
Other messaging that was very popular
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/harris-poll-positive-message-8-8/
https://blueprint-research.com/polling/distance-biden-ads-message-test-10-15/
Progressive policies that a majority of Americans support
Democrats’ Working-Class Failures, Analysis Finds, Are ‘Why Trump Beat Harris’
2024 Post-Election Report: A retrospective and longitudinal data analysis on why Trump beat Harris
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
Just because it flustered republicans doesn’t mean it didn’t alienate voters.
I agree with the rest of your message listing progressive policies that the majority of Americans support. That’s the winning strategy.
Where’s the proof that it alienated voters? The vox article has evidence voters received it positively
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You don’t find Republican policies that dehumanize immigrants, attack women’s rights, and demonize LGBT rights weird? To put it as nicely as possible, fascist policies are weird
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I’m not, I’m pointing out that even that miniscule amount of pushback during the campaign was well received. You seem to be the one opposed to even that
The Democrats are a controlled opposition, genuine opposition must come from grassroots organization and solidarity. Peaceful opposition backed by militant support is preferred, but I’m completely on board with revolution as well discussed by Franz Fanon
You were never going to vote for Dems anyways, you keep saying alienation but you have not provided any proof. The fact that your being flustered means it’s actually working against Republicans, yes we know you are one.
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This is the Clinton-era way of thinking. A losing campaign must have done everything wrong, and a winning campaign must have done everything right.
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Bernie’s chances of running are pretty much up and over. He’s like 83. The time to have gotten him in was definitely 2016, but the DNC wanted Clinton and that got them to lose. 2020, he lost again because everyone tone deaf wanted Biden because they believed “well, he was around Obama during his two terms, he should be in because he’ll just continue what Obama built!”. They only got lucky to have won 2020 with Biden, just lucky.
I cannot see Bernie Sanders ever running again.
I don’t think Bernie will run again in 2028, but he is still relevant right now because nobody else is taking the lead. I hope people like Walz will step up and try to turn the DNC around. It’ll be an uphill battle even with the DNC, not to speak of the actual election.
I think Bernie should run, alongside AOC, Walz, Al Green, and others. The primary can sort out who is truly best as president. That is the whole bloody idea of a primary, one the DNC never honestly permitted after Obama’s tenure.
The reason why the conservatives found an effective candidate in Trump, is that he was allowed to legitimately compete in their primaries. It is a stress test, and the DNC refused to allow their own primary to work as intended.
AOC has not interest though, she said it would best if she stayed in the house
The best he can do is rile people up and it works.
An article I read about this talked about how DNC-funded advertising discredited Bernie not by attacking his actual policies, but via a message of “his promises are good, and you may like them, but how many voters out there won’t vote for a scary socialist?”. I think that’s ultimately what did him in; it’s impossible to make a reasonable person hate the stuff Bernie was promising (unless they think it’s gonna placate the proletariat and make them lose the will to seize the means of production or some shit), but it is possible to convince them that some unspecified “many people” wouldn’t vote for him and therefore he’d lose the election.