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Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has criticized the Harris-Walz 2024 presidential campaign for playing it too “safe,” saying they should have held more in-person events and town halls.
In a Politico interview, Walz—known for labeling Trump and Vance as “weird”—blamed their cautious approach partly on the abbreviated 107-day campaign timeline after Harris became the nominee in August.
Using football terminology, he said Democrats were in a “prevent defense” when “we never had anything to lose, because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”
While acknowledging his share of responsibility for the loss, Walz is returning to the national spotlight and didn’t rule out a 2028 presidential run, saying, “I’m not saying no.”
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I agree that they and the dems in general are way too safe. But i wonder how accepting dem voters would be with a more aggressive candidate. I’m sure Millennials to Gen Alpha would probably be fine with it but i wonder if a good portion of the voters would poo poo a someone moving more towards the a more extreme (in presentation) candidate.
What if they made a hard line decision on a topic and held firm. The whole fracking thing is a good example. They should have just picked a side and stood their ground. instead it was 100% pandering to whoever was the loudest. Personally I would have voted for someone with conviction rather than someone who was waffling but I am not sure every other liberal voter would do the same.
But i wonder how accepting dem voters would be with a more aggressive candidate.
We’ve been living through passive, fearful, reactive, business-led, “nothing will fundamentally change” dem leadership for decades. Theres no need to fear change at this point because we literally cant lose any harder than we are now. We have been teetering on the edge of dissolution for so long that people are starting to fear risking changing what shitty circumstanbes we have now. We couldnt be more pathetic as a party.
Agreed. I just have started to lose faith in the voters. Reps push hateful politicians and Dems don’t seem to push hard for solid candidates.
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No shit. I didn’t feel like I was voting for progressives. It left like I was voting for “not Trump.” You could have put a piece of corn-bread at the podium and I would have voted for it instead of Trump. But still. I didn’t vote for them because I just loved what they had to say… Because they weren’t for changing anything. They wanted to keep the status quo where it was. They were only listening to their wealthy donors. It was sad to watch.
Should have held a primary and not primarily run on abortion issues. Also, Harris changing her accent was ridiculous. DNC definitely set her up for failure. They’d have a better chance with Tulsi Gabbard, who lasted longer than Harris in the 2020 primaries.
And Master Sgt Walz still amazes me that he never saw combat even though he was artillery when he served through the Gulf and the OEF/OIF wars. That says a lot.
If they had focused their campaign on helping the middle class, helping the poor, and acknowledged that Palestinians are people too, they would have a chance.
If they focused on environmental issues and the rights of individuals they would have had a chance.
If they had called Trump a criminal, because he is, at every stop, they would have had a chance.
If they did all of those things, and meant it, they would have won!
Instead they tried to appeal to business owners, Republicans who don’t like Trump, and people with money. That’s not what Democrats want. That’s not who Democrats are. That, is why they lost.
“the middle class” does not exist, they should focus on helping the homeless, jobless and working class.
That’s not who Democrats are.
unfortunately, yes, it is
This and/or healthcare for all, and it wouldnt have even been close, they would have won easily
Harris did campaign on health care for all though, right?
Either way, I agree with everyone. I have a suspicion that Harris team started out the gate with very loud messaging around social economic programs they wanted to push.
Then they got reeled in by the donor class. There’s a distinct dampening on clear message a few weeks after the confusion was settled. This is just my little theory though. I think the messaging is vague on purpose to please the wealthy donors.
And you don’t even have to deliver on it, just say you will. It worked for Obama.
I’m going to shut down Gitmo! - Obama, 2006
And here we are almost 20 years later and GOP is sending Ausländers to expanding gitmo camps.
Not only that, but they stuck to the corporate response on nearly every single question. They almost never went off script and it was just so fucking obvious and robotic. And for me, Tim’s complete lack of consideration for truth and evidence on its face and in a vacuum was nothing less than trumpian. In RL, I lie about being an OIF Veteran. At first it was shame, guilt, and self destructive tendencies but I’ve been to a LOT of therapy and I’m living better. But during that time I realized that there were others who would speak a bit more “freely” about things they may have done. If they assume you know nothing about the military then they can say whatever they want. Hearing someone mince words about their service is fairly common and IMHO - innocuous. It’s a nothing burger of exaggeration. Had Tim just admitted what was clearly on video and just said, “I was using more colorful language to affect the crowd, my bad.” I would have honestly commended him.
Instead, they lied. About the most mundane shit imaginable.
Oh man, I remember that lie, that was fucking cringe inducing. It’s always better to tell the truth, especially if you’re a bad liar, like Walz apparently is. The whole VP debate was pretty disappointing, because it felt like Walz spent the whole time pulling punches and playing softball, while Vance was his usual greasy self.
Lol, Vance. I swear his face reminds me of what a ken dolls face looks like when you try to fold it onto itself from the forehead.
How the fuck is this true? How did you even make this observation?! Outstanding.
I grew up with sisters. They were tricksters and knew that I would spend hours playing with their Barbie dolls on the empty promise to come into the woods and throw rocks at things. So their Barbie dolls always ended up marrying deformed ken. It was the only way I could cope with those dreadfully dull things. Folding his face over was my go-to move. My sisters hated that. Now he’s our VP. And I hate it. When I had enough I would put my thumb under kens chin and pop his head off like I was flipping a coin. Now I just flick my thumb at a screen when I see his dumb face on it. The mental imagery is euphoric enough to cope these days.
👍 Couch fucker
If they had focused their campaign on helping the middle class
I agree with most of that except this. They basically ONLY focused on the middle class. All the tax break incentives were great. But they never offered a damn thing for the working class. And that’s who they SHOULD have focused on.
They basically ONLY focused on the middle class.
Be fair. They also focused on moderate republicans.
Combined, the two constituencies are like 7 people.
Okay Walz, that’s a start, but we’ve yet to see you go hard. Step it up or get out of Al Green’s way and let him cane the fuck outta these Nazi shitheads.
Part of the problem was not saying the word Fascist enough
Well I do declare, that would just be uncouth and rude, let’s instead keep saying we want to work across the aisle with the fascists, people love that shit! Right? RIGHT?? Oh…
People on the left screamed this as soon as they took over from sleeping baby joe. We said “PLEASE put some OOMPH into it! Stop regurgitating Corporate Dems platitudes!”
Walz 2028?
Depends on what he does between now and election day. Its not currently a good sign that he’s running with the fascist lite crowd instead of progressives.
Is he? He’s said that we need to seriously change our strategy and be more aggressive against the republicans, which would put him in conflict with most of the democratic leadership
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And the Dems are, mostly, still too safe. They need to start fighting while they still have a chance of stopping the insanity.
Step 1: Schumer needs to step down.
Step 2: ditto Jeffries
Step 3: AOC and Bernie need to take their place.
But they wore pink shirts and held up tiny auction bid signs!
Not all of them.
True! Just the wild and crazy ones!
The “radical left,” per FOX “News,” ladies and gentlemen.
Not just Chuck but the whole leadership of the Democrat party needs to go.
The entire party needs to go. Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
That went horribly wrong in Russia. It turned out Lenin and Stalin didn’t represent anybody besides themselves. And their main targets weren’t people on the right, it was the other 2 socialist parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.
Communism was a mixed bag. For many east Europeans, the monarchy had observed the revolts of 1888 with horror and had concluded that technological progress would be the death of them, so they explicitly resisted industrialization. That means that while much of Western Europe was enjoying the fruit of industrialized agriculture and trains for transporting goods and people, East Europe were still living without trains; a sad experience that I can relate to as an American. In many cases, the arrival of the USSR was linked with rapid industrialization, as the soviets sought to modernize these countries that had been held back by their fearful monarchy and feudal lords. That doesn’t erase the bad stuff that happened, but there’s probably a lot more communist governments that you’ve never heard of from the global south that were actually just doing fine until the CIA said “not on my watch!” and set up violent right-wing movements to depose them. For more, see The Jakarta Method.
There’s never been a fully communist or capitalism government. The issue is we don’t hold those power to a higher standard. Under no situation should one politician or politics party should have this much power. The power needs to stay with the people more directly. The old system worked because information traveled slowly. We know what the American people want. And it’s not capitalism, nor communism.
What does ‘fully communist’ or ‘fully capitalist’ even mean? These are modes of production and schools of thought, not scales where something can be more capitalist or less capitalist.
China and even North Korea has carved out areas for capitalistic pursuits. The USSR still had “business” private industries. America has Social security and other social “businesses” For the longest time the post office turned a profit. Reagan ruined that. I’m saying there’s no way either system can work entirely by itself. Our whole idea of work, economics, and relationships with society needs a more radical approach than the apparent binary systems.
Liberals know as much about communism, and workers rights as Republicans. None
Please tell me how supportive Lenin was of the Workers’ Soviets as soon as the revolution got calmer.
Quite supportive! Though it isn’t accurate to ever say the Revolution calmed down, IMO, the USSR was under constant siege.
And whos stopping Republicans from going full steam ahead on gassing the Mexicans and trans people in the meantime?
It sure as fuck isn’t Democrats. Their ratchet effect enables Republicans
While I agree, here’s what I worry about. Even if the leadership is replaced, the culture of the Democrats is to listen to consultants, voter panels etc. It’s commendable to take voters wishes into account, but what most voters want is a leader, not a listener.
Example: during the campaign voter panels talked about inflation and immigration whereas healthcare was ranked at the bottom. Therefore Democrats did not talk about healthcare.
But this is really a chicken and egg story. If nobody talks about healthcare, voters feel that healthcare is not on the ballot, and so they won’t mention the topic in voter panels. Luigi showed (once again) that healthcare in the US is fucked and that many people in fact care deeply about the topic. I am almost sure that Harris would have done better had she made healthcare the central issue of her campaign. The moral is that as long as Democrats are following, rather than leading, they will continue to lose elections.
They need to lead, but they also need to not just be reactionary. They should absolutely listen to what us voters are saying. But they should also be looking at the overall situation, and trying to understand why voters are not super stoked about how things are going instead of insisting “the economy is fine”. And then, maybe, I dunno, do some real, honest root cause analysis, and come up with some fucking creative solutions.
And by “they”, I mean the congresspersons themselves. Not an intern. Not a consultant. Not a lobbyist. The person who was elected. Do the work. Do your fucking job.
Step 2: pelosi needs to retire.
prison for her would be much better for everyone.
Reducing Democrats in Congress is the opposite of progress. We should be recalling Republican congresspeople that don’t represent their constituents, or we’ll be waiting until November 2026 for our next chance to flip seats.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state-officials
People vote for Republicans because if you think Democrats are never going to do anything to help you, you might as well vote for the party that will lower your taxes. There’s real problems with that logic, but it is true that Dems put serving corporations ahead of serving the people.
Trump and the GOP raised taxes on most middle class income groups in 2017, according to the official congressional JCT analysis.
We’re talking politics, not objective reality.
Still playing safe? They’re playing it even safer than before, and they have even less to lose. I don’t understand what they don’t get. They need to go on offense. Now is the time for it if ever. They literally have no power, so just make noise and make sure everything happening is loud and people know who’s doing it.
The dem leadership is absolutely too safe. The only ones saying what should be said are the ones that have no power.
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They’ll never learn. It’s the same thing every election cycle.
Easy to say when it’s all over, but I still think they’re wrong.
They should try not being fake as fuck.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
The other big problem is that politics have become such a negative impact on people’s lives in the US that regular people don’t want to run for office anymore, which is what we really need.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
They sure as eff do!
Pelosi hated the left long before the left hated her.
Yep. Every time I hear Jeffries talk I am thinking “shut the fuck up and go fetch AOC”.
It’s to the point that I might prefer either a direct democracy with no representatives at all or electing reps via a lottery system. Most of the people with the desire to run for office, and all but a handful of those with the characteristics necessary to wade through the muck of special interests and campaign finance to actually get in office, are the kind of people you want as far away from power as possible.
The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke has government by lottery.
Test potential politicians for mental illnesses and make sure they have empathy etc. Make them do mandatory counselling. I mean, counsellors and mental health workers have to do this because they’re working with vulnerable people, but politicians don’t??? Their decisions affect everyone, including vulnerable people.
Impossible. You can’t have tests like that for candidates or voters. You just end up reinventing literacy tests.
People working in psychiatry are judged in this way, but not politicians? Politicians have way more responsibility over people’s lives. They should be under maximum scrutiny and we should be as sure as we can be that they’re the best of us, including morally. We already make them have health checks.
Not to mention the eugenicism this would ignite.
How so? Bad eggs would be simply rejected.
The eugenicism is because of the tests; not the politicians.
You think this would work because you assume we could write such tests with such accuracy as to evade bias (or that such requirement for testing wouldn’t be exploited by opportunists to place metrics much more aligned with whom said opportunists would like to eradicate).
I’d point out that you say the tests should test for empathy but Empathy Deficit Disorder exists and, as EDD people often point out, the lack of being able to feel empathy doesn’t stop them from wanting to help people and making choices based off that desire. They just don’t feel empathy when they do it.
Of course, you’re not using that word to mean literally understanding and relating to others’ feelings; sympathy would certainly qualify.
But how do you ensure that? Who gets to implement these tests? And what stops it from being someone who just sees Empathy Deficit Disorder and goes, “Eew…keeping them away from this….”
I always feel to like I sound like I’m being condescending but (and I mean this as genuinely as possible) you should try selling out writing and theory by disabled authors. Because of the way disabled people are erased from both culture and society as practically a matter of function, it can be really hard to even realize the ways in which our assumptions don’t factor them in. Stuff covering ability and autonomy are incredibly interesting in the ways they think about concepts due different lived experiences.
We already assess people for mental health issues. I’m saying that politicians should be under massive scrutiny to make sure that we’re not allowing people with deficits in the areas which would make them callous, self-serving and so on, to rule over people, particularly vulnerable people. Pathological liars and manipulators shouldn’t be given a platform or the respectability of office to brainwash people on a global scale. Its almost so basic and obvious as to be unspeakable, but we know now that we must structure our societies & create standards to keep these people out of power.
We in fact should select for the traits that we want/don’t want in leaders and only allow people into politics who have those traits. This testing is already happening in many professions, maybe even most. Even shitty customer service jobs use these tests - well, all I’m saying is that we need politicians to be tested as much as astronauts are. How can that possibly be a bad idea?
I don’t think the metrics and so on should be any different than what already exists. Respected people in the psychology field have already said that trump is mentally ill in such a way that he’s unfit to rule.
The problem is that now he’s manoeuvred himself into a position where he can’t be removed, and soon even us talking like this will be illegal.
I’m all for disability rights, just not to the detriment of public safety - which exists in every sensitive field. Politics is a sensitive field. Politicians should be strong in emotional, compassionate and cognitive empathy, as well as sympathy. They should also have a good track record of being moral and decent people. Stealing from cancer kids charities would be a no, no matter what disability that person had.
This could be summed up as ‘no tolerance for intolerance’ or ‘no kindness towards cruelty’.
i don’t love the implication here that politicians are corrupt due to mental illness. they can be perfectly average mentally and still be corrupt because corruption is an innate and ever-present exploit of human psychology. empathetic people can be mistaken of where to place their empathy. mentally ill people can be a better option for a public office than someone else who is neurotypical, it all comes down to their platform and record of reliability. disability should not be mutually exclusive with ability to govern.
Power corrupts, yes, but you must see it in your life, and certainly if you’ve ever had dealings with the police or been mistreated by a teacher at school… Not all but some people in those roles are doing it precisely because they get a kick out of misusing their power, often when people are vulnerable and so can’t defend themselves.
This is a character flaw at a minimum but can be part of a mental illness. I don’t think the line is so definite between mental illness or health. People can have traits of illness without enough dysfunction to be diagnosed with the illness.
Disability which is incompatible with kindness, understanding, decency etc should not be allowed power over people, especially vulnerable people. Most people who were ill and were decent would not want to be in a position where they could harm people. Cluster B’s and such wouldn’t care. If they don’t care (consistently), then they shouldn’t be in a position of power over people. There are plenty of other jobs.
Looking at trump in particular the reliance on voters being good judges of character has to end, which means there must be a mechanism in place to prevent people like trump ever getting near power.
i think the second we open up the avenue for certain character traits to be banned from public office, it opens up a new avenue and mechanism for oppressive government bodies to prevent their opponents from gaining power against them. Who gets to decide what traits count as disqualifying? what measures do we use to identify who has met this threshold? where and how could someone be treated for these in order to gain back eligibility? how difficult would it be to change these rules if they were incorrect? how hard would it be for a bad actor to change these rules for their own gain? how much money would be spent on this and the lawsuits that return from it?
I’d guess a council of psychologists would administer their own tests under lie detector, perhaps a yearly lottery from an eligible pool of reputable and experienced specialists, maybe also other renowned experts. No positions being permanent could eliminate some problems. The difficult part would be deciding where the lines are drawn. Someone like trump should be easy to disqualify without any testing, just from his widely reported past record of scams, fraud etc.
Imagine a young Putin, whose service record is largely secret, not much other history to go off, who doesn’t give away much, surely has information about past testing and is very smart.
So it’s not going to be 100% reliable, just a tool to hopefully improve the situation. It could begin with disqualification being reserved for only the worst, and then record how candidates perform vs predictions and readjust as necessary.
As to treatment, its impossible to say, it really depends on the individual to know if it’s even possible. Also whether its a good idea to let candidates repeat what are essentially aptitude tests which they could cheat.
If anyone is subject to oppressive government scrutiny it should be politicians.
i think it would be infinitely simpler to just ban the actions you don’t want people to do and a better mechanism to enforce it than to try and police the amorphous qualities of their character and behavior. Like, our problem here is that the executive branch has been granted too much power by congress, corporations are treated like people and can vote with their dollars, and congress + the supreme court have no mechanism to enforce laws against the executive branch. If the system was actually segregated enough in duties and insulated from capital, it would be immune to the effects of someone even as bad as trump. It would also prevent all of the false positives and the mechanisms for abuse that would open when we start calling people ineligible for innate and immeasurable qualities.
More and more this monty python sketch was spot on. With the DNC as Arthur only caring about the lord of the castle, centrists carrying the bags and clapping the cocnuts together, and progressives as the peasants: autonomous colletcive
We have the technology for direct democracy. The reason we dont do it is that it would take the rich out of power. With direct votes we’d have universal health care and Israel wouldnt have gotten its war support. We’d have action on climate control. We’d have signed onto the ICC. We’d have much stricter gun laws. We’d hold police to professional conduct standards. We’d have term limits and codes of ethics. We’d fund our teachers and firefighters better. Our military would be much smaller.
