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.”
They’ll never learn. It’s the same thing every election cycle.
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!”
They just don’t get it. The game has changed, people are used to high energy fast paced delivery from social media. A presidential candidate needs to be engaging and deliver a super condensed message that’s shareable. I don’t know anybody in my personal life that was excited Kamala was running and I’m from the bay area.
Granted Biden withdrawing so close to the election left them without much time to strategize, I don’t see them really playing it too differently. The legacy Dems are old and corrupt, they don’t understand that being cozy with corporations is gross and that we want fiery new blood. They’ll probably continue doing the same shit, playing the same old games until it’s too late.
They THOUGHT they were doing all the things you listed, because they paid “top dollar” for “top democratic strategists”. The whole system the Dems run on is rotten to the core. It all needs to be thrown out
Surely the Democrats will stop moving to the center now that they understand that they weren’t properly addressing the needs of the people… right? right?
I’m sure the Dems will finally start supporting trans people, and will intervene as states like Texas make our existence illegal. I’m sure that there will be investigations into systemic issues with the police both being used against transgender people and the fact that our murders are often not investigated. I’m sure that the Dems will advocate for trans people to have protections in their employment and housing. We totally aren’t disposable minorities who’s support is wanted, but not enough to recognize us as human beings.
Fuck both of them. Only a progressive will go far in the party
I like progressive politics as well, but the fact of the matter is that we need centrist Dems/independents that will caucus with Democrats, ones that can win in swing states and districts, and while they may not entirely align with our goals it’s at least a step in the right direction. It’s going to take decades to undo the damage done by Republicans, and the unfortunate truth is that Americans saw Kamala as more extreme left than Trump extreme right (education seems to be a major issue) Democrats need a majority before any realistic change can happen. People are dumb, but that’s where we’re at, I don’t want to sound resigned or accepting of this situation, just realistic.
Walz is pretty progressive, much more so than Harris.
Not enough though
I am hopeful that this next cycle the progressives that actually want to do something will break free from institutionalized/leadership of the party of democrats.
Not hopeful they will receive that opportunity again though.
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.
That’s the safest take he could have on the situation.
They still are being soft. Why would you think it would change?
Its just white noise. If you went back two months and addressed the KHive / Bidenbro block that was fanatically endorsing this campaign, does anyone seriously think “soft” or “safe” would be a term they’d use to describe the media appearances or the ground game?
No, of course not! Harris was Girl Boss. Cheeto Mussolini was the weak one. JD Vance was too busy fucking couches to answer the hard questions like “Why do you enjoy sucking Putin’s cock?” and “Why do you enjoy sucking Elon Musk’s cock?” and “Why do you enjoy sucking Peter Thiel’s cock?”
Meanwhile, Harris was out there punching illegal immigrants. She was making those effeminate cop-hating LGBTers eat Terf. She was out there dropping Facts And Logic on those stupid Iran-loving antisemetic ISIS students. She was bringing out the big guns with Liz Fucking Cheney and making sure every voter knew that America First A#1 City On A Hill sound of F-35s flying overhead we’re going to Beat Russia and Obliterate China and Nuke Far-Right Islamic Hate.
Nobody thought the campaign was “soft” in October of 2024. They were priding themselves on their BlueMAGA credentials.
Its only after they lost that we got to retcon the campaign as too squishy and liberal and egalitarian. Maybe next time they’ll bomb Dearborn Michigan or stage a full invasion of Tiajuana to prove they’re serious about being the most reactionary party in America.
I’m reading his “safe” comment in a bit of a different light. The Harris campaign was playing “safe” politics by ooh rah-ing about the military, guns, and the border. By throwing their full support behind Israel and shouting down and cutting out concerned for the Palestinian people. By running around with Liz Cheney.
Their campaign started off strong. Kamala was brat, Walz was calling Trump and his allies weird and joking about Vance fucking his couch. There was energy but they dropped the ball by switching to the “safe” Democrat campaign book. They didn’t go out to speak to the people where they were at town halls like Walz said in the article, they didn’t have firebrand Walz shining a flashlight on how bizarre Trump’s people are, they didn’t have a message that would excite the people and really shake up a statue quo that was slowly and inexorably draining Americans of their economic prospects. They just played the safe Democrat game of incrementalism and subservience to wealth and power rather than the people.
Obviously Walz didn’t say all this, but I think the “safety” he refers to absolutely refers to Kamala’s campaign adhering too closely to a traditional campaign style that was not going to win them much enthusiastic support.
You give him too much credit
No, that’s exactly what he meant. They stuffed Walz in a box and paraded around with the Cheneys the moment they got that endorsement. They played safe by playing to the center when they started strong by picking one of the most progressive governors for VP.
I enjoyed your comment for a few reasons, but have one question. Did you pick Dearborn Michigan at random off a mental map, or was there some specific reason for that city in particular?
I think it is the city in the US with the highest percentage of Arab Americans. But also maybe there’s a bit of oil there.
Dearborn is frequently spoken about in conservative circles as “being taken over by Muslims.” Maybe that has something to do with it.
That’s why, yes. Big Somali ex-pat community. Sort of like how Columbus, OH got dumped on with the “They’re eating the dogs and the cats” line because older white residents were panicking at the influx of Haitians working the gradually renewing manufacturing sector.
Dearborn was also the center of the pro-Palestine movement within the Democratic party.
yeah that’s one way to put it.
2024 was not an election to play it safe or take the high road, yet every chance the DNC collectively got, they did just that.
They should have slung mud and gotten nasty.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get. It’s one of the reasons why they loose the power struggle so much.
Democrats and playing chess by the rules and Republicans are moving the pieces wherever they want as long as they can get away with it.
The Democrats could have delayed ACB being put on the supreme Court untill election time but they actively decided not to do so.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get.
Not every chance. They run against progressives in primaries sometimes. Then the gloves come off.
DNC leadership genuinely hate Bernie more than Trump.
Yes, Sanders is progressive, while trump is more in line with dnc leadership’s positions.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get.
This theory that Dems don’t play dirty is such a bald faced lie. Its rooted in the mythos of the party as an organization of high minded intellectuals and squishy naive good-natured hippies. But anyone who has gone through the trenches of a Dem primary or even bothered to recall the fine details of a general election, know this to be utterly false.
Dems are more than happy to smear their opponents as anti-American, even to the point of accusing them of outright treason. Liberal media orgs and influencers regularly advance personal attacks on their opponents’ personal lives (Obama himself won his Illinois Senate seat on the back of the incumbent’s infidelity), parade around “body language experts” and other hockey pseudo-scientists to degrade the reputation of the opposition, and outright fabricate claims (the Steele Dossier “pee tape” being the liberal companion to the conservatives’ “Whitey Tape” from four years prior) for the entertainment of a gullible base.
The Democrats could have delayed ACB plbeing but on the supreme Court untill election time but they actively decided not to do so.
The Dems could have put a Senator at the head of the Judiciary Committee that wasn’t drooling her way through the hearing. But Feinstein’s cemented position as senior California Senator was the result of the exact kind of cut-throat politics that has entrenched horrifyingly corrupt and incompetent politicians from Henry Cueller to Joe Manchin.
Not even nasty, just play ads of Fatputin spewing his idiotic/fascist nonsense non-stop, that would do it. There’s practically a never ending well of content from the last decade they could have used to make some truly devastating ad (grab 'em by the pussy, on a loop??), and how about going back and talking about his 1st term that ended in a year so bad it was a running joke? Nah, let’s talk about joy and leave it at some vague notion of this guy sucks, but not going into why. A coup attempt? Meh, we’ll show a clip of J6, but not bother mentioning it was a fucking coup attempt. Twice impeached convicted felon? Meh, let’s just leave it at some vague “not going back” slogan. Fucking malpractice. Again. Dems are either breathtakingly incompetent, or in cahoots.
And beyond that, democrats should have blast ads every 5 minutes about how George bush and trump both left us with the greatest recessions since the Great Depression. Bust the weird, non factual myth that republicans are good for the economy. Flip the script, the facts are there, they just suck ass at messaging and propaganda.
For sure, the well is endless, but instead they insist on believing the fairy tale that what people REALLY want, despite voting to the contrary every single fucking time, is bipartisanship and a party that chooses “they go low we go high” as a rallying cry. Let’s instead try and help rehab GWB and Darth Cheney, the guys who had worst terrorist attack in US history on their watch, followed by lying us into a war that cost untold billions and lives, ending in the worst financial collapse in almost 100 years. I’m old enough to remember Harry “keep our powder dry” Reid and Nancy “impeachment is off the table” Pelosi being my first real awakening to just how unwilling dems are to actually fucking fight the fascists, instead choosing time and again to do nothing or even help them. Working great, just need MORE of it, then it’ll work for sure! Just like tax cuts and deregulation, has turned out just great, just need it a little bit more and it will start working, honest!
That’s a fantastic idea. I hope a future Democratic campaign uses a strategy like this.
Shorter sentences, bolder statements, hell, they needed to say things that didn’t entirely make sense when you analyzed them, but sounded cool. Political campaigns clearly need to be more approachable, more relatable than what the Dems are doing. Look at AOC, Bernie, and JC, THAT is the messaging that resonates.
Also, way more calls to action. What are YOU doing and what should I do? And stop asking me for damn money - you can invoice me when the work is complete.
They should have been doing that for 40 fucking years.
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
Which makes the second time the Democrats lost to Trump by believing they were the default choice. Even after being roundly criticized for it the first time. I’m starting to think they may not be smarter than me.
Oh it gets worse, they thought they were teh “default choice” because they got the people behind Hillary’s campaign to “help”
Plus the one time it didn’t abjectly fail, it took a worldwide pandemic and mass death to happen. Their hubris is at a legendary level.
Democrat politicians should level with you all. Politicians need a tremendous amount of money to stay viable. They only answer to 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 what they want so 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
Democrat politicians should level with you all. Politicians need a tremendous amount of money to stay viable.
democrats massively outraised trump in 2024 and lost anyway. Turns out, you need votes too.
Leftists don’t generate money on the top line. The fact that actual leftist policy would create a utopian society where everyone is prosperous is completely an afterthought, and that’s because the economic system is run by a bunch of giant babies with zero impulse control or sense of delayed gratification.
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.
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.
Should have held a primary and not primarily run on abortion issues.
Should have had a primary and had some credibility on abortion.
Tulsi Gabbard went hard right. And 2/3rds of the military didn’t deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s nothing abnormal about that at all.
Also, in the military we generally refer to people as the rank they served at, not the rank they were retired at for paperwork reasons.
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.
The democratic party is a coalition. It has wings that range from progressive to conservative.
It has conservatives and hostages.
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.
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?
When playing it safe is never safe…
They represent who votes for them.
Wanna change? Vote in the primaries. Hell, run in the primaries.
They represent who votes for them.
Oh? Dick Cheney votes for them? More reliably than progressives?
Wanna change? Vote in the primaries. Hell, run in the primaries.
This is gloating about how democrats don’t do fair primaries, if they do them at all.
Wanna change? Vote in the primaries. Hell, run in the primaries.
Oof, got some bad news about those primaries…
My opinion on this matter is going to be unpopular one but here goes: I firmly believe that Left wing and Democrats failed in these elections because of Transgender push in Social Media / Movies / Series / Ads and basically everywhere it was forced down the throat of people that just got fed up. Republicans and MAGA capitalized on this HEAVILY and successfuly leveraged this issue to the extreme for their benefit.
My opinion on this matter is going to be unpopular one
Bigotry usually is on lemmy.
If your defining reason you didn’t vote for them was their position that trans people have rights, then you need to re-examine your values.
Not american, I would vote for democrats though
I disagree. One, because it isn’t forced down anyone’s throats as long as you don’t live in a fucking Fox News bubble. Two, because Democrats did extremely little to actually protect trans children during the election. And three, Republicans didn’t gain votes; Democrats just lost them.
It’s a lot easier to argue that people thought that the Democrats weren’t doing enough to address problems that existed now or that they didn’t push issues that mattered to people, like abortion. Because they took very few real stances except the ones that seemed popular to everyone, but they also failed to get that message out a lot of the time because of very dumb actions on their part.
You’re right about the unpopular.
The left and centrist dgaf, the right really care, but they were already voting.
Yeah bcz identity politics is all they have to protect their deep pocket donors. They need to be doing what Bernie is doing right now.
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.
What an absolute fucking champ-
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.”
Both of those things are such music to my ears (although ofc we should all know that it was Harris’s brother-in-law Uber exec lawyer who muzzled Walz and deserves that blame that Walz is selflessly taking on here).
Sadly I’m not even sure the US will exist by 2028.
pritzker with a walz vp would be my ideal ticket.
Pritzker stands his ground, knows what to say, and won’t just bow down to the establishment of republicans OR the dem establishment. I think he’s the best pick. He’s also great with budget, lgbtq rights, and common sense policies
