- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
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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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
Exactly, these clowns hired the same types of people who barely pull off wins despite being the majority party. They’re really good at collecting money and paying themselves, but really shit at winning.
The right has been stacking the deck, blatantly, for thirty fucking years. I’m a big fan of awarding electrical college points based on congressional districts. All of a sudden those cities in deeply red states get a voice.
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.
Whereas I’m taking walz more literally. In my experience, they came out swinging, full of energy and novelty, getting that “weird” label stuck. I can even understand lack of policy or platform since apparently we no longer care about that.
… but then they started answering “no change”, the energy faded, they dropped out of the news. I don’t know if it’s just me, but they were invisible leading up to the election. Literally more concerned about not screwing up, playing it safe.
It’s not that Harris’ campaigne adhered too closely to a traditional campaign style, but that they let up on the gas approaching the finish line
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?
Dearborn is frequently spoken about in conservative circles as “being taken over by Muslims.” Maybe that has something to do with it.
Dearborn was also the center of the pro-Palestine movement within the Democratic party.
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.
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.
That’s the safest take he could have on the situation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
Yeah. The corporate team. I swear middle America can smell it from am mile away now.
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.
They’ll never learn. It’s the same thing every election cycle.
Fuck both of them. Only a progressive will go far in the party
Walz is pretty progressive, much more so than Harris.
Not enough though
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Step 2: pelosi needs to retire.
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.
Step 2: ditto Jeffries
Step 3: AOC and Bernie need to take their place.
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.
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.
Yep. Every time I hear Jeffries talk I am thinking “shut the fuck up and go fetch AOC”.
They were too far right. They pursued the “moderate republican” vote and lost spectacularly.
It is a politically suicidal idea. But they just can’t stop themselves. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is what they do best.
That was what they thought the “safe” thing to do was. “Decorum” and “reaching across the isle”. All that “when they go low, we go high!” shit, in the face of actual Nazis.
More like “when they get votes, we go bye”
Democrats think they’re in a fairy tale, still asleep having the American dream. It’s all offices with rich histories and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades in their world. Their campaign donors are “good proud American businessmen (and WOMEN!) who show the world that evil communism isn’t the answer and only centrist cooperation can achieve freedom!”
It’s why they thought they’re could win by having a brat summer. They thought “we’re clearly the good guys, the ones who like civil rights, hell we’re running a half black, half Indian woman!”
And now that they fucking lost their answer is “wear pink and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ on the house floor” when the ONLY ONE OF THEM to stand up to Trump, in the most minor of ways mind you, is censured - and fucking 10 OF THEM VOTED FOR IT! YOU WEAK, INEFFECTUAL ASSHOLES!
Decorum and traditional norms will not save you now. Get out and speak truth to power. Shit all over them on the news. EASY QUOTES THAT GO VIRAL. Vote as a bloc against everything they try to do. Filibuster, stall, use procedure against then whenever you can. BE FUCKING BULLIES for your cause, because they sure as shit have been doing it to you for 50 FUCKING YEARS. The SAME GODDAMN GUY WITH NIXON is running around dressed like a CARTOON VILLAIN who ties women to train tracks and is still RATFUCKING YOU
god DAMMIT if I’d have known that the majority of adults in this world were so goddamn stupid I’d have made much different decisions in my life
You mean touting the endorsement of war criminal Dick Cheney wasn’t a good thing?
Could have even been worse, they could have made his daughter the vp pick
No excuse for the DNC, but I think seeking the “moderate Republicans” is a condition of their big donors. Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough. And despite all polling that suggests otherwise, they keep doing it.
In general, they would get more money and power if they won, so why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot every fucking time? In my mind, even if you factor in that they don’t give a shit about the common people and are motivated by money, it only makes sense if they are being manipulated by their big donors to do this stupid shit.
They get far more money being the foil of leftist movements by making themselves the only option for anything less far right than the conservatives and then paying lip service to the left while continuing to support moderate conservative policy.
Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough.
That was true thru Obama but it stopped with Biden. Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ, even though Dem voters could have chosen even more progressive candidates.
Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ
Centrists’ big lie.
Harris’s husband and brother in law steered Harris right into defeat. She shouldnt have trusted a word those two idiots said.
See that’s funny because every single left leaning moderate I know (including myself) thinks they were/are way too left and they need to “come back towards center” so to speak.
For people even sorta in the middle both parties appear to be playing a game where they sprint as fast as they can towards extremism and most people aren’t down with that.
They don’t need to try and court moderate Republicans. They need to gain back the moderate lefties they lost over the last 10+ years.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/democratic-party-left-liberal-q-poll/index.html
I know that Lemmy has very different views on the topic, but you guys are the extreme left. So of course you find the Democrats trying to go back towards getting moderate vote again as the “wrong move”. Unfortunately you guys (I am speaking broadly at the general political leanings of Lemmy I know you guys arent all far left) are the minority of the total political spectrum these days.
Hey I’m curious, what do you think about the Democrats is “too far left”? Like actual policies because the article you linked lists 4 positions that aren’t a part of the parties platform and never have been.
I was really curious. Hopefully they will come back.
They did and are refusing to answer. They’re just a conservative that’s larping as a Democrat for internet points.
If you’re a ‘left leaning moderate’ that thinks the democrats are too left, you’re right-wing. The democratic party in the US is a center-right party.
My political stances didn’t change. I was firmly left in ~2012 and now you guys call me right wing. Who moved?
Fucking moderates.
Yeah keep that up. I’m sure you guys are totally gonna win in 2028 by continuing to alienate anyone who doesn’t agree with you 100% across the board.
Fucking progressives.
Ironic, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing, dingus?
No. I’m pointing out how disconnected from reality the far left (Lemmy) is.
Of the two political parties of the US right now only one is going to kick you out immediately for disagreeing with them on certain things. The other one doesn’t really care if you have different opinions on certain topics.
The Ideological homogeneity required by today’s left/democrats pushes out so many people that I don’t think they will be able to win another election again.
I want the Democrats to have viable candidates and run on good policy again, but more than anything I want them to shed this inflexible and dogmatic voter base they have been fostering over the last 16 years.
You do know the American political compass is special among political compasses, right? Compared to Europe (or even Canada), our definition of “moderate” is their equivalent of “conservative”. Likewise, our “left” is “center”.
Wishing the already-not-left Democratic Party starts shifting even more right is wishing for a two-party system where the options are conservatism and fascism.
I’m not talking about a global scale. I’m just talking about the US and how those terms are used here.
I’m not touching that broader conversation about political scales globally.
Here in the US both parties have been running in opposite directions and in most people’s eyes the left has been running faster. Hence the article. One of many that found similar data when polling americans. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle and that is crux of the issue.
Yeah, no.
The only thing that has shifted left in the Democratic Party is the public’s perception of them. They intentionally fuck over actual leftists (aka progressives) within their party while offering up milquetoast policies that look progressive on paper but are either completely toothless or designed to benefit to their corporate lobbyists first and foremost.
They’re a conservative party who used rainbow capitalism to masquerade as the comparatively left-wing alternative to the Republican Party. The reality is that every election cycle in the past two decades, they’re promising more “liberal” ideas while acting more conservative. Do you know who had a record number of deportations under their administration? It’s not Trump. It’s not Obama. It’s Biden.
Anybody that thinks the Democratic Party is sliding any direction other than right is either right-wing and arguing in bad faith, an anti-“woke” moron like Elon Musk, or consuming too much Fox News.
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.
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.
The democratic party is a coalition. It has wings that range from progressive to conservative.
It has conservatives and hostages.
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…
One problem the DNC has is that they keep throwing boring ass lawyers into a game that isn’t about law. It’s about being a face the country knows to run the government.
You need charisma, you need to appeal to people, and you need to be human. Obama did this perfectly. Bill Clinton had it in him. Biden at least had such a long record in politics he could wing it his first term. I don’t know how he managed to win, but he did.
Clinton, while being a lawyer, had already been the governor of Arkansas. Meaning he had the experience being that executive. He could convince people to work beyond their own interests. Al Gore, we all know, won the 2000 presidential election, but the supreme court let everything get fucked up.
Kerry? Never stood a chance. Hilary? No chance. Kamala? As much as we needed her to win, she was unappealing to stupid people.
Lawyers, by nature of their career, have to read and understand the most boring ass shit and then convince others that the boring ass text supports their side of the case. That means a lot of them are boring people.
You wanna know why Walz is popular? He fucking loves football. He can connect to highschool students. IDK about you, but if you’ve ever met high schoolers, they aren’t the brightest, and bored easily. He’s progressive, but he won’t shove it in someone’s face to be more righteous. Not many people can do that.
To win an election, you have to excite people. Trump, despite his rhetoric clearly being terrifying, was, unfortunately, exciting.
Obama covered both lawyer and entertaining. He also had an appeal similar to Reagan, confident and comforting during uncertain times. The conservative media made politics entertaining, now we have entertainers as politicians and I can’t get on board with that
It’s not something we are going to change anytime soon. Far too many people to change to counter that.
Instead, we need candidates like Walz, who have a brain on their shoulders, and have a way to excite outside of putting on a show.
Bernie Sanders was another example of it. AoC is as well.
AoC is a TikTok clown. Dems running her is going to be a hard line for me.
And thus we see that “no matter who” always and only ever meant “shut up and vote republican-lite.”
I mean, I agree with you, but this is also a huge problem. This is why you have someone who pretended to be a successful businessman on TV as a president now. I really miss the days when boring but competent people could run a country.
It’s far easier to have a better candidate than change how 80 million people think.
Is this a problem of how people think, or is it a problem of what sells views in newspapers (and that media companies are too rich)?
Boring yet competent people don’t get elected in a country with mass media. They just don’t get coverage, so people don’t know they’re there.
As example, look at the first televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy was young and inexperienced, but let them put makeup on him for the debate. Nixon had more experience but looked like a sweaty mess on TV. This helped Kennedy a lot.
That ship sailed with the first TV debates, tbh. I watched the Carter-Reagan debate and it wasn’t a contest. I hate Reagan’s dumb fucking face, that bastard fucked America up for forty plus years and set us on the track we’re on, but he ate Jimmy Carter alive and went back for seconds. They weren’t even playing the same sport. Carter, a Nuclear Engineer, was up there delivering a university lecture about why he should be the president, and Reagan went up there, turned on the actor, and gave America the best cigarette ad it had ever seen.
Biden won because he wasn’t trump. Simple as that.
its way more simple than this, america is not ready to elect a woman–let alone a brown woman, to lead the country.
she was up against a felon, who vowed to ban an entire religion his first go. it should have been a layup but our citizenry is full of sexists. the amount of failures trump has is insurmountable. but no. cant have a woman leading. ‘too emotional.’
its way more simple than this, america is not ready to elect a woman–let alone a brown woman, to lead the country.
This is a cope from DNC since Hillary. Americans are more accepting than they are actually given credit for. Many Republican voters actually even appreciate Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s anti-oligarchy run she is doing at the moment.
As an outsider looking at American politics, Harris and the DNC just isn’t willing to actually get to the bones of what actually matters more for Americans. Harris’ election promises aren’t appealing in the face of growing inequality as people can’t afford medical bills, student loans, and are living pay check to pay check. The DNC and its centrist/blue MAGA supporters still read 2000s pre-recession surveys when Medicare for all, affordable housing and abolition of student fees and debts were unpopular. Fact of the matter is, those policies are now accepted and popular for years as the middle class has shrunk by the years since the 2009 recession. The DNC and its supporters simply deliberately ignore it.
our first half white president was called our first black president. this country has deeply moronic citizenry. I would call it a cope that its the DNC’s fault for not ‘exciting them enough’ to elect a literal rapist over a woman.
its not as complicated as you think.
Obama had solid policies and in touch with everyday folks. Obama has charisma and implemented needed reforms acceptable for the time. Both Harris and Clinton are seen as part of the establishment with weak policies.
I would have voted for Harris if I am an American simply because he is not Trump, but one has to admit that Harris’ policies had been weak. She also did not have a coherent message, simply because she was a last minute replacement for Biden. She was simply mirroring Biden. That said, Harris ran on the platform of status quo while Americans have been looking for change.
he also had a penis! something both hillarry and kamala were lacking.
but oh gee whiz so weird how suddenly charismatic and normal DNC is to blame to losing to a felon rapist. how did that happen such a mystery
If you are not getting what I am getting at…
*insert Principal Skinner musing meme…
DNC: Am I not running on popular economic policies that would help alleviate the woes of young people deep in student debt; families living pay check to pay check; people saddled with hospital bills, and that’s why we lost?
No, the electorate is misogynist. Latino and black voters are race traitors for voting Trump. And the white working class in Rust belt are hillbilly hicks who don’t know what is better. And now let me look at my stocks if following Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio is the right decision.
the dnc has never run on that. not in a long time. they are moderates, literally almost conservative.
this is known.
it was because it was a woman. I repeat. america is too immature to be lead by a woman.
its way more simple than this, america is not ready to elect a woman–let alone a brown woman, to lead the country.
This is just an excuse to shut out AOC.
This is pretty much all true. Except for…
One problem the DNC has is that they keep throwing boring ass lawyers into a game that isn’t about law
The DNC wasn’t making the decisions. The Harris campaign was.
Kerry? Never stood a chance. Hilary? No chance. Kamala? As much as we needed her to win, she was unappealing to stupid people.
Somewhat true. But Hillary could have won if she had simply mixed in a few bearded Biker types in the background crowd as prominently as all the Muslim women. But these candidates were the mistakes of the voters, not the DNC.
To win an election, you have to excite people. Trump, despite his rhetoric clearly being terrifying, was, unfortunately, exciting.
I change the channel whenever Traitorapist Trump talks so that he never gets a full sentence out. Still do. I don’t want to hear one more lie.
But you and I aren’t the person Trump is trying to excite.
It’s the 25% of Americans that equate critical thought with torture. That is the chunk of people you can’t reason with. So you have to have a way for them to care at all. Unloading garbage nonsense that has the occasional inflammatory rhetoric is exciting.
Talking about football? Not exciting to me, but these 25% of Americans? You better bet your ass they like it. They like beer and they like the idea of not having to worry about finances as well.
Unloading garbage nonsense that has the occasional inflammatory rhetoric is exciting.
Oh I agree that the #1 problem is that Harris needed to use way more aggressive rhetoric against Traitorapist Trump.
if he’d stuck to calling them weird and attacking them, maybe it wouldn’t have been useless. but they dropped that, tried to buddy up with the fascists, and brought on insane endorsements like fucking liz cheney.
if they’d run sanders/walz, even late after biden convinced even party leadership that he couldn’t win, they would have crushed that shit with historic numbers.
if they had let a palestinian talk, or given the most mild ‘please tone down the genocide shit’ they might’ve had a chance.
it was like they were trying to lose at every step. truly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
if only they’d bragged about walking in on teenage beauty pageant changing rooms! why oh why didn’t they cheat on all their spouses! Why oh why didnt they own casinos and bankrupt them!
stupid dnc! always running crummy candidates
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.
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.
No Dem has helped the Middle class the entire time I’ve been alive. There was no one on the ballot who was going to make my life better. I couldn’t even get Dem representatives to reply beyond a canned message about “hard times”. I’ve never seen such a disconnect from the Dem party. They’re not even trying. I bet they’re excited for fascism so they don’t have to pretend to care about us.
They basically ONLY focused on the middle class.
Be fair. They also focused on moderate republicans.
Combined, the two constituencies are like 7 people.
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
That’s not who Democrats are.
unfortunately, yes, it is
“the middle class” does not exist, they should focus on helping the homeless, jobless and working class.
It does exist and this is the exact mentality that lost the election. The Middle class isn’t going to vote for you if you’re campaigning on putting them into the wood chipper again.
This and/or healthcare for all, and it wouldnt have even been close, they would have won easily
And you don’t even have to deliver on it, just say you will. It worked for Obama.
