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.”
Putting Liz Cheney on stage was a pretty risky move if you ask me.
It’s the safe move when you consider they want to be republicans
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.
Definitely
If by safe you mean ignoring your constituents and only listening to your wealthy contemporaries. Then yes you were too safe.
If you read the article, that’s EXACTLY what he means. They told him the reason for this is that they could avoid “Having any public gaffees”
The idea is that by just not being Trump they were “Ahead”, and any public misstep would put Trump in the lead.
Walz now believes he and Harris were “never ahead” and it was arrogance that lead to them thinking they were the “Default Choice” for America
Democrat politicians should level with you all. Politicians need a tremendous amount of money to stay viable. They can only answer you their donors and they get donors only if they can accomplish their goals which they do with the support of their constituents. They don’t just support their constituents out of feel good stuff. Republicans give them a free pass to do whatever they want. So they get lots of donors. The left groups do not do they don’t get donors. We’re fucked.
Look into how many call centers are around Washington. They’re all call centers for the different politicians. They’re calling donors 24/7 trying to get more funding. All the time. The Reason leftist do not get anywhere, we don’t generate money
Look into how many call centers are around Washington. They’re all call centers for the different politicians. They’re calling donors 24/7 trying to get more funding. All the time. The Reason leftist do not get anywhere, we don’t generate money
Well yeah, most of them refuse to take corporate money and SuperPAC donations. They don’t do insider trading when in office because they have consistent morals and ethics.
Also helps when they corporations who own the media refuse to cover you and your wins, and then pay for the milquetoast candidates who won’t tax them to win more.
They should have stuck with the “they’re weird”. And they definitely shouldn’t have tried courting Republican voters. All that yielded was pushing away Dem voters and Republican voters aren’t going to vote for Dems, they will just not show up for Trump. They shouldn’t have constantly called them a danger and threat because we’ve been saying that for years, and at some point people stop listening. Instead, they should have leaned into the “they’re weird” and the weird things they want to do. Making them sound like an existential threat, even if they are, just sounds like someone yelling the sky is falling, and people ignore it. But we’ve already seen how they can’t handle being mocked. So mock them. Belittle them, make them out to be the buffoons they are.
The Democrats need to embrace populism to get into office, like they did with Obama in 2008. Remember, Obama wasn’t the Democratic establishment’s first choice, but as Obama’s movement grew, they recognized that they could ride his wave back into power. Something similar happened in 2016 with Bernie Sanders, but in that case the Democratic establishment turned away from the candidate with the rapidly growing populist movement, because his language was much too explicitly and aggressively left populist for their comfort. This was a mistake. Had the Democratic establishment embraced Bernie’s movement, I don’t think Trump would have been elected in 2016.
I hope by now moderate Democrats realize a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been better than the Trump presidency. Many Democrats, apparently, didn’t think Bernie was a better option than Trump, that they were both equally bad options. Again, I hope moderate Democrats recognize now that that thinking was wrong. Bernie would have become more moderate once in office, just like Obama. Because Bernie, like Obama, would have listened to the experts.
That’s what the Democrats need to do: wait for a populist movement to form around a candidate, ride that populist wave into office, then the experts and technocrats can take over.
That all being said, Democrats also need to ensure that the experts and the technocrats are doing their jobs properly. Part of the reason these populist movements exist is because of the failures of technocrats and experts, failure to recognize the limitations or contradictions within their ideology. The technocrats must ensure that once they are back in power they are managing the country and the economy properly, so that the largest possible number of people can thrive, otherwise they will not be able to hold on to power.
Do Republicans become more moderate once they get in office? No, and their voters punish the ones that do. So why are you talking about Democrats doing that like it’s a good thing? That strategy is a big part of our current problem. We keep trying to elect more progressive candidates but a bunch of them get into office then almost immediately say “jk, all that progressive business was a ruse, I’m actually here to lower corporate taxes”. If I wanted a moderate I’d fucking vote for one.
So why are you talking about Democrats doing that like it’s a good thing?
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm. So, when a populist candidate moderates once in office, they become less populist and come more inline with the established academic and technocratic paradigm when they seek the advice and guidance of experts. Not all populists moderate once in office, because they don’t all listen to experts. Trump is a great example, and I think right wing politicians who get elected by building a populist movement are less likely to moderate once in office because they are less likely to listen to experts.
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm.
Hell no. FDR was a populist. You do NOT need to be against expertise and intelligence to oppose the billionaire elites. Rather the opposite. We need smart and competent people to beat the billionaires.
FDR challenged the establishment at the time, even the academic and technocratic paradigm at the time, which is exactly what I said.
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm.
Yeah that’s a good thing, because as you said in your other reply the established academic and technocratic paradigm is fucking stupid. You should want them to be against the established paradigm if you want anything to change.
the established academic and technocratic paradigm is fucking stupid.
Its insane to be against science and intelligence and knowledge.
[You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science]
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/
Its insane to be against science and intelligence and knowledge.
The “science” behind neoliberalism is supply-side economics, which I hope I don’t need to say doesn’t work.
You can be against the established paradigm when you know what you want and how to get there.
We want to take the money from the few, and give it to the many.
You should want them to be against the established paradigm if you want anything to change.
But simply being against the established paradigm isn’t enough to change things. You need to build a new paradigm, and that takes time, and it can’t be accomplished by just ignoring the existing experts and technocrats.
You need to build a new paradigm,
No need for that; there’s already a perfectly fine paradigm that can be used. It’s the leftist-progressive economic policy exemplified by FDR’s New Deal.
It’s the leftist-progressive economic policy exemplified by FDR’s New Deal.
Exactly. It’s not like we don’t already have a road map and historical examples of how to get it right.
You’d have to ask the experts why they abandoned that paradigm in the 1970s, in favor of neoliberalism.
But ultimately I think you and I agree that the moderates shouldn’t be so adverse to left populism.
Small correction: The DNC isn’t employing technocrats and experts; they’re employing neoliberals concerned first and foremost with extracting money from the poor and putting it in the hands of the rich. If they were concerned with improving people’s lives they’d have implemented progressive economic policy like everyone with two braincells to rub together has been telling them to.
If they were concerned with improving people’s lives they’d have implemented progressive economic policy
The DNC has no power to implement any policies. The House Democratic Caucus (HDC) and Senate Democratic Caucus (SDC) are the organizations with that power. The HDC/SDC are way more powerful than the DNC.
Neoliberalism started taking over as the dominant paradigm in the 1970s, and had become firmly entrenched in academia and the political technocratic state by the 1980s. That has changed, and is continuing to change, but there was a time when the majority of experts and technocrats were neoliberals. Many still are, unfortunately, though, I think the influence of neoliberalism is declining, albeit slowly (at least too slow for my preference).
I agree, Walz, start being unsafe. Show us what we want to see in a candidate.
Or, ya know, actually BE what we what in a candidate.
The DNC is pretty much always playing it too safe…
People really need to accept that the Democratic Party is the conservative party in the US. The Republican Party is the nationalist, authoritarian party. The US does not have a major progressive party.
The democratic party is a coalition. It has wings that range from progressive to conservative. The reason they play it safe is because candidates need to be palatable to enough of the constituents to pass their primaries. This is also why local democratic parties are much more likely to have more cohesion.
I understand they need to have a broad appeal to different groups, moreso than republicans do, but they could easily achieve that same broad appeal by actually fighting for the working class and not doing things like steamrolling Bernie. The out of touch nature of current leadership is effectively neutering the party.
It would be a good thing long term for progressives to finally split from dems IMHO, though I wish we would have a ranked choice type system in place beforehand, but either way it needs to happen.
The reason they play it safe
Hows that working out?
Democrats in charge despise the progressive wing. They wish they didn’t have to listen to silly little ideas like Medicare for All or building high speed rail. They’ve gotten fat off the idea that we all know what Republicans will do when they get elected and vote for them, anyway.
This was never going to be stable in the long run. Republicans only had to win a few times to entrench themselves. That’s because they don’t see their far right wing as nutjobs. They see them as opportunities for driving things further to the right. For example, it took 50 years of planning to get the right people in the Supreme Court to bury Roe v Wade, and it all happened because they won just enough at the right time and then used that power to get what their base wants. What their base wants is horrible and cruel, but they know how to implement the plan.
Where this leads us now is a situation where ditching establishment Democrats has little downside. We’re fucked if we keep hanging on to them. Drag them to the left or leave them out in the icy cold.
They represent who votes for them.
Wanna change? Vote in the primaries. Hell, run in the primaries.
Wanna change? Vote in the primaries. Hell, run in the primaries.
Oof, got some bad news about those primaries…
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.
The optimist in me wants to believe that the only reason they see “loudest responses” is because they announce that 2+2=4 and Empathy=Good, and everyone with common sense agrees, but doesn’t bother saying anything. Meanwhile we’ve gotten thousands of screaming matches from sorely misled (and at worst brainwashed) voters who have been told by Trump that 2+2=8 and Empathy=Bad.
It doesn’t absolve them for “tactically” shifting stances. But I’ve tried to do my part by calling my reps when they take a hard action that I agree with.
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.
100% agree
That is just one of many many reasons the Democrats lost, too many to count or even list in this post. You might want to also update the platform to not gobble the balls of the billionaires and corporate class. Abolish the electoral college, gerrymandering (though there were efforts on this front; poorly executed), lobbying, and Super PACs. Should’ve expanded the Supreme Court or instituted term limits.
Basically put in any effort whatsoever to show they wanted to prevent the loss of democracy and they didn’t do it. At least SAY things that would prevent genocide in Gaza, even if you don’t mean it. Start playing by the same rules as the Republicans and there could have been a chance.
It’s too late for any of that now.
Dems never had the super majority to abolish the electoral college, gerrymandering or the other things you mentioned.
Even if its not possible, campaign like its the goal. Tell us what you’d do with full approval from everyone and people might get motivated enough to vote to make that happen.
The electoral college is not a problem, it’s a great system. Winner takes all is the actual problem.
They’re both problems.
No they’re not. Abolishing the Electoral college removes yet another barrier to populism and it could have unintended far reaching consequences down the line. I know MAGA is already a populist movement, but it can be so much worse. Just because the popular vote will get you what you want now doesn’t mean that it won’t hurt you in the future. Much like we’ve seen the damage that the reckless expansion of presidential power has done. The founding fathers created a good system and bipartisan politics have corrupted it, it’s restoration should be top priority.
The system works if used as intended. Winner takes all is not using it as intended, just like electors voting in the same way as the voters mindlessly is not using it as intended. Yes it’s elitist. Current state of affairs prove that the founding fathers were correct in their beliefs.
The founding fathers created a good system and bipartisan politics have corrupted itOnly when compared to monarchy, or the Soviet Union.
It was always going to be corrupted, and if you think the electoral college will ever prevent a demogoge from taking power, I have a bridge to sell you on Pluto.
The system your beloved founders created wasn’t just “the person with the most votes gets the whole state” because there were no votes for president at all! It was entirely up to the political elites in each state to decide who to support between two nominees who were also not voted on because primaries were not a thing and were again picked by party elites in smoke-filled rooms based on corrupt deals with no democratic input. And even in the cases where people could vote, women and slaves were of course excluded from the process entirely.
Unless you’re either a billionaire or a high-ranking member of a major political party, your beliefs are directly opposed to your own interests. “Populism” guess what, you are part of that population, your voice and your interests are the ones being suppressed when “populism” is suppressed. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.
But really it just seems like “populism” is just a meme in your head. If you want proportional representation instead of winner-takes-all, you’re supporting “populism.” The alternative to “populism” is the suppression of democracy by a political elite. The “winner-takes-all” system is already considerably more “populist” and democratic than what the founders set up.
By the way, the “bipartisan politics” that “corrupted” the “good system” emerged immediately, before the ink was even dry on the constitution. It was an inevitable result of the system that the founders created and they didn’t understand that because they had nonsense ideas that politics could be “nonpartisan,” a process of people randomly coming up with different ideas through reason as opposed to competing socioeconomic groups asserting their material interests. But immediately one party emerged representing the southern slaveowners and another representing the northern capitalists, because that’s how politics works. You can even see this in the constitution itself, things like the Three-fifths Compromise which was blatantly a political compromise and not reflective of some transcendent truth.
Even if you were to argue that some of the founders had good ideas, it’s absolute nonsense to suggest that they all did, especially, you know, the ones who supported slavery as a precondition of signing off on the project and insisted on provisions to grant slavers more power and to bar congress from making any laws about it for a specified period and wanted to suppress “populism” out of fear that it could lead to the slaves being freed. Your reverence for them is both completely irrational and against your own interests.
I defend them because for all their moral failings they did design a system that is more resilient than any other to autocracy. We could have extended participation to all without destroying that system, and Trump would have never happened. Or if he had he would not have had the power to do the things he’s doing now. But every president takes a little bit more, and you don’t say anything if they belong to your party but cry bloody murder when the other one does it. And then when you’re back in power do you ask your lawmakers to stop the power grab? No, why would you, you like what’s being done. And that’s how we get here.
But I digress, you wrote all of that and never refuted the fact that the electoral college does in fact work. Land might not vote but states need equal say regardless of the population they have. If New York and California decide all elections, how soon until the other states start to secede because their votes count for nothing?
States have strong individual cultural and administrative identities and unless you erase that, there’s no way you can abolish the electoral college without also destroying such a thing as the United Staes of America.
Just do the following mental excercise: Texas and Florida are the two fastest growing states at the moment. Let’s say they remain red and manage to get a bigger population than all the blue cities combined (because of all the space they have) and now because of them every election a Republican president wins. Would you be ok with that? If not then you have to be in favor of the electoral college.
So you disagree with the idea of “one person, one vote,” then? Absolutely ridiculous. People living in densely populated areas have just as much ability to think and arrive at a diversity of opinion as rural people do, if anything, moreso because they’re more likely to encounter a range of views. This also doesn’t account for minority enclaves, the various Chinatowns and similar, that can exist in cities, or the more diverse populations in general. The electoral college disproportionately favors white people.
Just do the following mental excercise: Texas and Florida are the two fastest growing states at the moment. Let’s say they remain red and manage to get a bigger population than all the blue cities combined (because of all the space they have) and now because of them every election a Republican president wins. Would you be ok with that? If not then you have to be in favor of the electoral college.
That’s a terrible argument. If that happened, perhaps I would be in favor of the electoral college for purely pragmatic reasons, very reluctantly. If I’m operating on ruthless, unprincipled pragmatism (the only reason I would ever, even hypothetically, consider supporting the electoral college), then obviously, in the present situation where the electoral college is disadvantageous to me, then I should oppose it.
During the Civil War, Lincoln temporarily suspended certain civil liberties due to the existential threat the south posed - and it was probably necessary and the right call. But just because I might support suspending certain liberties in extreme situations, facing a true, existential threat, it doesn’t mean I “have to” be in favor of suspending them on some kind of principle.
Obviously, all else being equal, it’s better for everyone to get an equal say. You can conjure up a situation with a horrible population and a benevolent monarch keeping them in line and argue that in that hypothetical monarchy is superior to democracy, but that in no way proves it in the general case or as a principle. In the same way, when you conjure up a situation where the electoral college is keeping an evil population in line, that in no way proves that the electoral college is better than democracy.
IMO the problem is, they falsely assume everyone wants what the republicans are selling, and their biggest flaw is that they are pollarizing. That’s why they always start introducing as much republican lite things into their policies.
They don’t understand, that by doing that, they are effectively telling the american people that the republicans are right. IE say the republican party on immigration etc… is lock em up in the fastest way, forget about humanity and ship them out as fast as possible, fuck due process these people are dangerous and destroying everything.
Democrats: Well I can back you on making sure we get them out as soon as we can, but I think we can do it without human rights violations.
They don’t realize… that effectively to the outside observer going off of both of those policies they are hearing “both parties agree these people are dangerous and ruining everything, one wants to get rid of them as fast as possible, the other wants to prioritize us not hurting them over preventing them from harming us”.
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…
Played it safe by not holding more in person events? What? They didn’t question the legitimacy of the winner when clearly there were outliers that needed to be investigated.
