Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, has suggested he may run for president in 2028.
Reflecting on the Democrats’ loss to Donald Trump and JD Vance, he admitted: “A large number of people did not believe we were fighting for them in the last election – and that’s the big disconnect.”
Walz said his life experience, rather than ambition, would guide his decision.
Though his VP campaign was marred by gaffes, he remains open to running if he feels prepared.
We could do (and have done) a lot worse. My only concern is whether or not he has the backbone to refuse to be steered to the right, the way Kamala was after the convention. His Midwestern politeness definitely didn’t serve him well in the debate.
Like Harris was steered.
The DNC consultancy class are almost certainly to blame for every failure they’ve had since 2016. Or sooner, I’m just stopping there out of convenience.
I might call that steering. I don’t think Harris really believes in anything.
I get a jimmy carter vibe from him. Hopefully I am wrong.
I hope you’re right, at least to a point. Carter was following up the absolute disaster that was the Nixon administration by removing significant amounts of power from the executive, codifying norms that Nixon had flouted, and showing a conciliatory, less-combative presence on the world stage within a fairly flammable geopolitical context. All of that is exactly, to the letter, what we need from the 48th president.
Now, sure, Carter lost to Reagan. But I get the feeling that Walz wouldn’t suffer such a fool.
Walz is a completely valid candidate. The only thing that held up Harris was that she was a black woman. I’m confident that any reasonable white man would have beat Trump, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality of the American electorate
I don’t think that’s even remotely true. While it is true that the USA has it’s fair share of racists and sexists, Hillary won the popular vote, and Obama is one of America’s most popular presidents.
Harris lost because she ran a terrible campaign, on the coatails of another terrible campgaign, from a terrible president.
Harris won the popular vote too, they just refused to count it.
i think it’s got a lot more to do with the nonsense she spouted and the massive campaign failure than her being black or a woman.
let’s be real. I wanted her to win, i really fucking did. If i was American, i would have voted for her. (You can check my comment history for proof). But the way that the dems are presenting themselves and the whole communities of dems who are saying shit like this is the reason why voters feel alienated and consequently don’t vote for your candidates. Every comment like this adds to the alienation of the could-be dem voter. This causes them to not want to be associted with people like you, DrFistington. They don’t/won’t like you.
Not a lot of people can endure the bs barrage that goes along the lines of “fuck you, white straight man, you are a racist sexist!! 😡 but still vote for our candidate tho please 🥺👉👈” and still vote for the dems! They’ll vote against you just to fucking spite you and I’m not surprised that’s what lots did in this election.
Dems need to change as people if they want to ever see a dem president ever again. The dem communities need to be welcoming. We’re all in this together ffs!
As long as the Democratic Party considers whites to be automatically racist and sexist then do they actually represent the population?
Probably a mistake.
If I were him I’d install metal bars in my windows, specially if he lives in a high up condo. No reason, everything’s fine.
Unless he steps up and starts fighting alongside the progressives trying to do something (like joining Bernie’s current Midwest tour), I don’t see him as being a viable candidate for 2028.
I like Walz. A lot. But he’s got to show more leadership on the national stage right now, ala Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker and (in a pleasant surprise) Mills. I think he was thrust onto the national stage before he was ready by the DNC looking to swing the Midwest with a non-threatening centrist candidate, and his silence after the election (and the lack of a real response from the Harris campaign) has left it to other governors to take up the mantle of national leadership.
Would I vote for him if he were on the ticket? Yes. Would I vote for him over Newsom, Whitmer or Pritzker - probably not unless he steps up and takes the battle to Trump NOW.
I really do think Tim Walz has a real chance. A very likeable guy.
Doesn’t hurt that he’s white and male, too.
Of course that hurts. People want change
Tim Walz unleashed would have won this.
He was hamstrug by Harris. He’s likely the dem’s best choice for 2028.
So of course they’ll run Newsome or Shapiro or Hillary Clinton again because they’re a bunch of idiots.
And Harris was hamstrung by Biden.
She could have been better.
Imagine the timeline where Joe got assassinated before the primaries. We wouldn’t have this bullshit timeline.
Yeah, they would have blamed all the inflation on our first woman president and used it to denounce women for another half a century. If she helped Israel she would have been called out for Genocide just the same. If she didn’t she would have been called weak and emotional, unfit to be president.
Really it was a no win situation for her.
Yep. I remember a time when the Beltway insiders were acting like Amy Klobuchar was a rising star or some such, LOL.
Idk who needs to hear this, but Tim Walz is pretty moderate and centrist. You’re not going to unite the splintered left with Tim Walz.
The biggest barrier Democrats have is that left leaning voters are not going out and voting for them.
Oh man I can’t wait for right-wing/foreign propaganda to tell progressives what they should hate about Walz.
Zionism, obviously. But if course, anyone who criticizes Israel or it’s supporters must be a secret right-winger or foreign agent, nobody could possibly be legitimately bothered by an apartheid state doing genocide.
I’m more interested in seeing if democrats hold honest primaries.
Or primaries at all.
Continue to pretend that every criticism from your left is from your right. It makes it easier to blame the left you hate when you lose to the right you admire.
Considering democrats held primaries in 2016, 2020 and 2024 and they lined up with what polls where saying what would it take for you to believe that the primaries are honest?
Actually having one would be a start.
They actually had two in 2024.
Uh huh.
I get it after Bernie lost in 2016 a bunch of people lost faith in the system and the DNC using the easy excuse of ‘it’s our primary we can cry if we want to’ was real easy for right-wing and foreign propaganda to bait a hook with and fishing was real good for them.
I get it after Bernie lost in 2016 a bunch of people lost faith in the system and the DNC using the easy excuse of ‘it’s our primary we can cry if we want to’ was real easy for right-wing and foreign propaganda to bait a hook with and fishing was real good for them.
I get that you want to dismiss everything to your left as being all the way to your right so you can keep ignoring the left and moving to the right until you have become the second republican party.
The winner has to be the one Mr. Crab likes the most. That person will also go on to win the general election easily, because what Mr. Crab likes is proven to be widely popular.
Interesting response as well to that quote. How you feeling about the Republicans right now. Love or hate?
If you aren’t going to be voting in a R primary or for a R candidate, how one feels about them is immaterial.
If you do plan on voting in a D primary or eventually for a D candidate, you may have some small impact on them, their policies, or their trajectory.
“R worse” as a campaign strategy and as political philosophy is why the life raft called the Democratic party is at the bottom of the sea right now. No one who was going to vote D was going to vote R. No R’s were going to vote D.
It was only EVER about D’s doing things that would get D’s to show up, and R’s doing what R’s needed to do to get R’s to show up. R’s understood the assignment and did those things.
Democratic leadership wishes they had R’s for voters. Its the goal of leadership, to turn the D’ party into the R’ party, and has been for decades. Every instrumental decision leads them in this direction.
The problem is that what D’ voters want and what R’ voters want are diametrically opposed. If you run an R’ campaign trying to get D’ voters, you WILL lose. See Kerry 2004, Hillary 2016, and Kamala 2024.
When you run a D’ campaign focused on the wants and needs of D’ voters, you win. See Gore 2000, Obama 08, and 12, and Biden 2020.
The question your asked is a kind of intentional whataboutism that serves to distract from the real issue of why D’s don’t win elections when it matters most.
When you run a D’ campaign focused on the wants and needs of D’ voters, you win. See Gore 2000, Obama 08, and 12, and Biden 2020.
I agree with that.
Now do the Republicans. What did they do wrong in 2020 and what did they do right?
what did they do right
Why would I care about giving information or creating analyses to help the Republicans win?
Every comment you make shows a deep misunderstanding of, well, everything. So why don’t you give me some reasons why I should bother beyond a performative exercise to show how deeply out of touch you are?
What evidence do i have that you ask these things in good faith when you don’t seem bothered by your own nonsequiters?
Continued hate. How about you? Still prefer trump to any progressive?
What do you think the R’s did wrong this last cycle? Do you think they legally cheated and maybe had some actual cheating by his minions? Or do you think they won it because the democrats did everything wrong?
What do you think the R’s did wrong this last cycle?
Same thing the Democrats did wrong. Moved to the right. The difference is that their base likes it.
But they didn’t win, so if their base liked it, why didn’t it result in a win? I think you understand what I’m saying. There is no black and white, only grey.
Ok, you’ve chosen to deliberately misunderstand what I said in absolute bad faith. I should have expected nothing else.
Republicans’ base likes it when republicans move to the right. Only centrist democrats like it when democrats move to the right. Now misunderstand this on purpose as well.
they won it because the democrats did everything wrong?
This isn’t even up for debate. R’s won because D’s did everything wrong, at least during and post convention. Trump had an approval rating almost as low as Biden, and even with the incredible opportunity swapping out the candidate represented, they still managed to blow it. Its in the data.
Biden was dead in the water as far back as March of that year, but realistically, he never had a chance. I’ve posted the analyses here and can dig them up for illustrative purposes, but Biden’s probability of turning it around in March was coming in at between a 1:1000, to 1:10000 chance. It just wasn’t going to happen, and the sane among us were down voted into oblivion, banned from important subs, banned all over the place for pointing that out.
Once the candidates swapped, Harris was suddenly on a trajectory to wipe the floor with Trump. In the few weeks where we had meaningful data, before the convention, She was on pace to be in the range she needed to be in to take the game home in a lunch box. Her polling looked great, she had done no real damage to herself, and voters were mostly basing their estimates of who she was based on her 2020 primary campaign. Her trajectory was on base to be in the range of 50-55% by November in those models. Things looked really good.
Then… the convention happened. And she took all the wrong advice and made all the wrong decisions. She swapped out the progressive policies for neoliberal/ neoconservative polices. She refused to step away from Bidens deeply unpopular positions, which were many. She elevated Republican voices at the convention and silenced Gazan delegates.
And her polling tanked. She then proceeded to double down on these things that were deeply unpopular among Democratic voters. And thats the key. Doing almost nothing before the convention, and she was set to coast to victory. Every move she made after the convention was the wrong one, and cost her, substantially.
So again. This isn’t even a discussion. If you require this kind of enlightenment, you might want to just pay more attention on a regular basis because everything I’m putting out here is pretty much common knowledge and has been, since/ as/ when it all happened.
It just makes me so infuriatingly upset how right you were on just about all of it, btw. It was like watching a slow motion train wreck to watch them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
As frustrating as it was to watch it from a distance, it was orders of magnitude more frustrating to watch members of our own community, u/jordanlund , and u/FlyingSquid, convert several high-profile subs into echo-chambers effectively devoid of dissenting opinions with regards to how the Democrats were performing, how successful they were being, and what it would take to win the election.
Its one thing when its happening at a distance, but these individuals did real damage, here, in our community. And it wasn’t unique to lemmy. It happened on almost all social media platforms and in mainstream and alternative media as well. I’ve got standing ban’s in c/world and c/political_memes from expressing the exact points I’m making here, when these things were happening. The campaign was largely shielded from the dissenting opinion that what they were doing wasn’t working, and it cost them the election. Even as late as October they could have pivoted/ re-calibrated, but they didn’t think they needed to because they weren’t hearing the opinion that shit wasn’t working. I think its just more painful when its your own community doing the scum-bag thing.
Democrats won’t win an election by ignoring and silencing legitimate criticism. They’ll need to deal with and elevate criticisms and discuss how they’ll be doing things differently. The constant and pernicious gaslighting, its why they lose elections. Or maybe the right phrasing is that they couldn’t win? The relevancy isn’t clear to be because I’m unsure we’ll have elections again.
There was so much on the line and they cost us everything.
Do you think they legally cheated and maybe had some actual cheating by his minions?
What about this part? When I say legally cheated, I mean gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.
I think you replied to the wrong comment.
And don’t forget this from a russian propagandist in 2015 (archived reddit link):
“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”
To be fair it doesn’t take much to cause an idealogical split between leftists.
I mean yes, but that’s why it’s important we push back hard for leftist unity and use propaganda-like approaches to simplify the message into easier to digest chunks for everyone else.
I think it’s fair to say nazis and imperialists/colonizers/fascists/insert-word-for-oppressors-here are a common enemy we can fight against, and access to housing/food/healthcare/etc. are basic human rights.
Theory is great and all but semantics between ourselves can happen after action. It’s a small start but the economic blackouts seemed to break through to the wider populace a bit - I’ve had loved ones who were aware/tried that are otherwise pretty embedded into corpo ecosystems and they didn’t even hear about it from me.
TL;DR: Yes, but “apes together strong.” We can break stereotypes and now’s our chance to reach outward too.
simplify the message into easier to digest chunks for everyone else.
This is a must. America is a country of morons who barely read above a 5th grade level.
You’re an interesting Lemmy, I’ve been watching your work.
It already happened. I vaguely remember something my boss would tell me about him being gay or something like that. Idk it was some completely made up horseshit.
I mean this is Tim “Israel has the right to expand its borders” Walz. Unless he walks that one back he’ll probably alienate the Palestine vote.
But if he walks back that is he going to lose the Israel vote and will they finance a primary challenger?
The Israel vote basically doesn’t exist anymore. Even most pro-Israeli voters won’t go so far as to base their entire voting strategy on whether Israel gets to expand. Aleo if they’re Republican-leaning they don’t vote Democrat in a million years and vice versa. The reason this logic didn’t work for Gaza voters was because genocide is a massive red line for a lot of people (and the existence of a sizeable Arab diaspora), not because most Americans particularly care about Palestine.
The Israel vote definitely exists and the Israel lobby can make or break almost any political career.
When AIPAC has thrown its weight into a race to try to unseat a Democrat, they mostly haven’t used “Israel” to do it. If the Israel vote was actually a critical voting bloc that would sink campaigns, you’d think that would feature front and center.
The Israel vote definitely exists and the Israel lobby can make or break almost any political career.
This is my comment which almost lines up perfectly with the article you posted.
That’s not the “Israel vote”, that’s the Israel lobby. And the Israel lobby has the money to attack a vulnerable representative, not the money to swing a presidential race. They failed to oust Omar and didn’t even try to oust AOC. They’re an enemy PAC, not god of elections.
Money you can get around. Voting constituencies you can’t.
Single issue Israel voters? Do you have data for that? Because if they exist one would expect them to make more noise in favor of Harris instead of the narrative being set by Palestine voters.
Single issue Israel voters? Do you have data for that?
No because that wasn’t what I said.
Here’s some stuff about the Israel lobbyists though
Vocal anti-Israel candidate Bowman loses New York’s primary election
Pro-Israel groups spent big to oust two Squad members in primaries
Pro-Israel groups tout Dem primary endorsee winners, but yet to target safer anti-Israel incumbents
Sure is neat watching which incumbents party leadership won’t rally behind.
No because that wasn’t what I said.
The equivalent to Gaza voters in 2024 would be single issue Israel voters. With a good candidate everyone else will fall in line, so only those two need to be considered.
Here’s some stuff about the Israel lobbyists though
Yeah I know about those, but lobbyists aren’t all powerful and in something as large as the presidential election their impact will be outweighed by the Gaza vote. Israel lobbyists are so effective because they put all their weight against defectors who can be primaried and pick their battles; increase the scale of the election and their impact will wane accordingly.
Fuck you genocide supporters. You’ll loose
Well a genocide supporter won the presidency so… I think you’re wrong.
And yet the majority of people eligible to vote dont want him in office. What does that tell you?
Better than 70+. But he will be 64 at the time of the election. That means 68 at the time of the next one if he wins. I thought we were trying for younger presidents. Can we aim for someone in thier 50’s?
I want mayor Pete.
He hasn’t already declared victory in Iowa?
Buttigieg? Yeah fuck no
Honestly, he was OK as a candidate, but he didn’t wow me, and he shit the bed in the debate which imo makes him a poor choice. He wasn’t as bad as “they’re eating the dwawgs” but he really blew it when they asked him about his time in China. All he had to say was that he was there around that time and maybe he misspoke, but what matters was the sentiment. It’s a really easy question to answer instead he just fumbled his words like crazy.
He said he’s notoriously bad at debating, and imo that’s like saying I’m really bad at taking tests. So you are saying that you aren’t good at the part where we find out what you know? You can’t articulate your positions without a teleprompter? If you can’t debate, then you must not be that fervent about them imo, and the person that takes on trump, (assuming we have a real election) needs to be able to call him on his bullshit to his face. I think Walz had way too much of an aww shucks vibe. He’s too “Minnesota Nice”. We need AOC.
I’m the opposite. I know that snappy comebacks on live stages are not what make a presidency great. Even if someone can’t give immediate responses in a debate, I can respect them if they display anger and passion when appropriate, and reason and negotiation when that’s appropriate. You might be overestimating that a president needs to be an image of perfection all the time to every single person, when our current one survived conviction as a sex offender.
The ability to do behind the scenes work is super important. It’s half the requirement. But the other half is being able to do in the moment interactions. Look at Trump/VD with Zelenski. Being charismatic and able to handle in-person negotiations with foreign leaders is hugely important.
Look at Trump/VD with Zelenski. Being charismatic and able to handle in-person negotiations with foreign leaders is hugely important.
I’m curious how you’d view that interaction? I bet those with magafied brainz think that was peak charisma, on Bronzo and “JD” "Vance"s part, while normal Americans probably look at that and think they completely shit the bed and embarrassed America.
He’s a better candidate than Harris was…
That bar is at the very center of the Earth’s inner core.
Walz/Sanders ticket, please.
Sanders is old and wants to retire. Walz/Cortez instead.
Pile of dust 2028
Walz won’t even be at retirement age by 2028. That’s practically an infant in terms of a presidential candidate.
and Sanders has an amazing ability to get Republican voters on his side.
