Summary
Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized Trump for economic chaos while taking personal responsibility for the situation during an MSNBC interview.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election — and we didn’t,” Walz told Chris Hayes. He called Trump the “worst possible business executive” and praised the Wall Street Journal’s editorial criticizing Trump’s tariff war.
Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump. Recently, he acknowledged a leadership void in the Democratic Party and admitted spending too much time combatting Trump’s false claims about immigrants.
“I think Americans have had it,” Walz explained. ”… Look, I own this. We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election ― and we didn’t.”
Good to see someone from the campaign acknowledge “getting votes” was the campaign’s entire job, and losing the election is the fault of the campaign.
I hope Walz runs in a competitive primary and gets the nomination.
But if they try to just hand a baton off, we’re gonna see the same result.
Primaries are only competitive if the people show up to them.
Primaries are only competitive if we actually have them
I feel like if Biden had stuck with something like, “I’m going to be one term and let some younger folks lead, we need some folks who are going to see the consequences of their actions running the show, not 70 and 80 year olds.” and had an actual primary, Harris wouldn’t have been the nominee and said nominee would have won. There’s a few other things that could have helped, but the short campaign was definitely a huge stumbling block.
We did, in fact, have primaries. There were like 9 choices for the Democratic nominee in my state. Better challengers could have run but didn’t. Yes I know the DNC using funding to “encourage” or “discourage” but that doesn’t change the fact that challengers could have, and did, run in the primaries.
Count the number of states where “others” were not on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Ballot_access
Your proof that we didn’t have primaries is to link a source that shows that not only did 48 states have a primary (I wasn’t aware that Florida and Delaware did not, so TIL, and thank you for that), but also that all of them had at least one challenger on the ballot? Show me who qualified to be on the primary ballot in their state, showed up to register for it, and was denied.
I’m not who posted it, but that list is either wrong or varies by county. My state is listed with a couple other candidates in various colors including green, but my actual primary ballot was Biden or nobody. (Or Trump or nobody). I just recycled it.
That sucks. Was there anybody who met the requirements and tried to register but was rejected?
Primaries are kind of a moot point for the incumbent if they want to run again.
Trump in 2020 had 2,549 delegates. The next closest was Bill Weld with 1.
Biden in 2024 had 3,905 delegates. The next closest was uncommitted with 37.
Obama in 2012 had 3,514 delegates. The next closest there was also uncommitted, with 72.
Bush in 2004 had a clean delegate sweep of 2,509.Yep. But it’s generally (just learned that Florida and Delaware Democratic parties cancelled theirs in 2024) not because the state parties just reject any other names to be put on the primary ballot. But there’s still a lot of people saying there was no primary or that the DNC wouldn’t let any challengers run. Just generally misplaced anger that they didn’t have better Presidential candidates to vote for when the reality is that better people just chose not to run. Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?
Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?
There’d have to be a primary challenger who beat the incumbent first, and I don’t think that one has happened. I know Ted Kennedy got relatively close (Well, closer then the others I’ve mentioned, still blown out 1900 to 1200 delegates) to knocking out Carter on the Dem side, other then that, Reagan and Ford in 1976 was decided 1,121 to 1078 for Ford.
Nobody voted for Harris in the 2024 Democratic primary and she was still the nominee, picked by the head nerds at the DNC
That is partially true. We the voters did not vote for Harris, but the Biden delegates who the primary voters sent to the convention did.
Yeah, and Biden was old. Even before his obvious deterioration, there was always a chance he wouldn’t make it through the term and Kamala would have to step up. If you voted for Biden in the primaries and were NOT ready for a potential future of a Harris presidency, I don’t know what you were thinking.
Like I said: The head nerds at the DNC picked her.
yes, but those head nerds were elected by the primary voters.
Good. Maybe we can finally convince some people around here.
Unlikely.
Its like pod save cracked open all their heads, took a crap, and sealed them all back up.
Turns out holding back the things that work (like calling fascists “weird”) while not breaking with some of Biden’s unpopular policies was a terrible idea… who would’ve thought? At least Walz is honest enough to admit it. I doubt the DNC will let the social democrats like Walz or Bernie take the lead though… establishment dems would rather stand by and praise Reagan while Trump dismantles the constitution.
Bernie’s chances of running are pretty much up and over. He’s like 83. The time to have gotten him in was definitely 2016, but the DNC wanted Clinton and that got them to lose. 2020, he lost again because everyone tone deaf wanted Biden because they believed “well, he was around Obama during his two terms, he should be in because he’ll just continue what Obama built!”. They only got lucky to have won 2020 with Biden, just lucky.
I cannot see Bernie Sanders ever running again.
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“Weird” alienated voters.
No, the initial comment was fine, as was the authentic reaction to it.
What made it weird and ineffective, was Kamala and other zero charisma neoliberals beating it into the ground while screaming “you like this”.
It’s like when Dee was trying to make Instagram videos and Charlie kept fucking with her:
I said I wanted staged moments that felt authentic!
When Walz said it off the cuff, it was a good thing. When Harris tried to make it an entire campaign, it was stupid and “weird” on its own.
No, weird was a successful offensive attack on Republicans that was both popular and was great at making them get flustered and double down on their weirdness (which is itself an incredibly charitable way to describe their fascist policies)
Other messaging that was very popular
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/harris-poll-positive-message-8-8/
https://blueprint-research.com/polling/distance-biden-ads-message-test-10-15/
Progressive policies that a majority of Americans support
Democrats’ Working-Class Failures, Analysis Finds, Are ‘Why Trump Beat Harris’
2024 Post-Election Report: A retrospective and longitudinal data analysis on why Trump beat Harris
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
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This is the Clinton-era way of thinking. A losing campaign must have done everything wrong, and a winning campaign must have done everything right.
Alienated which voters?
“Weird” alienated voters.
Oh? got any proof of that? Was your proof on fox news maybe? I saw plenty of articles praising it.
Nope. This is on Biden. It’s his fault Harris/Walz were put into an impossible situation.
That senile old fuck was supposed to be a one-term president. If they’d spent 4 years planning for 2024 instead of sitting around with their thumbs up their asses maybe they could have run a winning campaign.
But no, Joe was too proud or stupid or both to stick to that plan. This election was lost the instant he doddered his way on to the debate stage on 6/27/24.
It’s on Biden and Garland for not throwing Trump in prison the second his term ended.
Amen. 4 years to build a case? January 6th, spend 6-12 months and file charges. What the fuck were they doing for 4 years?
Running out the clock.
A cascade of failures. Beyond Joe not man enough GTFO, the DNC once again anointed a letter instead of letting the public decide. yes, Joe should never have run for a second term. Given that he did, he should have dropped out sooner. Given that he didn’t, the DNC should have had an open convention rather than putting their thumbs on the scale in back room deals.
Tim is 100% right that we would not be in this mess if they had won, but when is the DNC going to stop trying to manipulate everything and lie to us about it? They are to blame as much as Repugnacans.
Because they and R are same team. I bet it’s like lawyers who viciously go after each other in court, them have golf and martinis on weekends.
Lots and lots of balls were dropped. Garland didn’t get Trump in jail when he could have. Biden didn’t stick to only one term. A democratic candidate wasn’t really elected when Biden stepped down (for the record, I think that Harris was more than qualified, but a lot of people were upset that she was just “chosen”). Harris didn’t try to stand out and be her own candidate - she mostly just stuck with the status quo and never disagreed with Biden. Etc etc etc.
Warning bells started going off in my head the moment that the Democrats announced that Harris was going to be the candidate after Biden dropped out, not because I thought she was an unqualified candidate but because there was no time taken to search for other candidates. Maybe it was too close to the election to take the time to go through the rigamarole of all that but I think even a cursory effort to do so would have gone a long way towards making it feel like people’s opinions actually mattered. Biden dropping out was huge (at least to me) because it felt like an acknowledgement of the voters who had consistently felt like they were held hostage for their votes because the alternative was a fascist.
It doesn’t help either that they went on to repeatedly shoot themselves in the feet while chasing moderate Republican votes, getting other prominent Democrats to chastise certain classes of voters and breeding the same voter apathy that hurt them in 2016, and their refusal to acknowledge that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide that we shouldn’t help Israel perpetrate.
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Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump.
Biden shares a lot of the responsibility, but Harris and Walz were running on fundamentally faulty assumptions.
Harris made choices. She could have chosen not to adopt every single one of Bidens policies. What was biden going to do, fire her? If you look back at her presidential run she really struggled to articulate any policies back then too.
Biden made an appropriate decision to back out. He should have done it much sooner. But I’m not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden’s fault. I don’t really feel that’s fair.
Harris’ main draw was that she didn’t want to do anything, which pissed off progressives. She was pro-establishment and pro-status quo. She didn’t need Biden’s help to not get votes… I have no love for Biden, but the truth is the truth.
But I’m not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden’s fault.
Inasmuch as they ran as a continuation of his policy, I’d say there’s some blame to be had.
This is on anyone who was within arms reach of Trump in the last decade and didn’t take matters into their own hands.
Yeah a bunch of people want to make excuses for 90 million people who just… Didn’t think it was important who won.
Campaign was flawed but if people showed up to vote against fascism we wouldn’t be here. And there’s zero excuse for all 90 million of them to not show up.
Edit- well, Im reading your post in a different light but, yes that too.
If you didn’t notice, Democrats were aligning with fascism.
Funny, I noticed they were the only ones running campaigns with a legitimate change of winning against the fascists.
Talking about winning against fascism and actually doing something or not the same thing, they talk a big game and then end up capitulating to Republicans.
Winning elections is the only way to keep power from the hands of fascists that doesn’t involve extralegal actions.
Which fascist is gonna keep fascism out of power, the blue one or the red one?
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Meanwhile Democrats are lining up Rham Emanuel and Gavin Newsom to run. Lol
Dear fucking God not Newsom. That dude is a bigger turd than Hillary.
And Gavin Newsom started a podcast and is cozying up to crazy right wingers.
It’s gonna be newsom, and they’ve already chosen for us.
I hope I’m wrong.
It wasn’t really Tim’s fault. I will never understand why Kamala decided it was more important to try to court Republicans than get Democrats excited. Democrats, and I know this will be a big surprise to Democratic leadership, don’t want to vote for conservatives.
I just want a candidate who calls out the fleecing of the American people to the benefit of the 1%.
To stop breaking everyone down to this or that identity. The Repugnacans are doing a great job of making this look like it’s about identity politics and the Dems keep taking the bait. It’s not. It’s about money and power. They are happy to throw red meat in the pit and walk off all the richer while we squabble.
She’s a genocidal cop (aka prosecutor). She has literally spent her whole life opposing leftism. Ofc she campaigns to/with republicans.
The voters deserve a lot of blame here.
You can lead a horse to water…
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect, and no single candidate is going to align 100% with your stance. Demanding that they do, or else you’ll vote for literally the worst possible option, or sit out, or vote a “protest” vote, all so that someone, somewhere will “learn” something is just fucking childish and stupid. And this will be continue to be true no matter how many times the Tone Police show up to admonish people about blaming voters. Sorry, not sorry: I blame the voters.
I agree, I’m also happy that people like Walz seem to want to give people a better option, making a protest vote even less appealing.
I blame the voters.
It means you never have to listen or change in any way, so of course you do.
Defeated Democratic candidate: accepts responsibility in the lightest possible way
Liberal fanboy: Noooo, it’s not your fault, it’s the children who were wrong!
DNCs fault for blocking Bernie
You know what? Yes we are in this mess - BECAUSE of you. You didn’t call on Trump for him admitting that he allowed the election to be rigged in his favor. You didn’t hold up the election for it to be truly verified. You just allowed Harris to verify it because you wanted to try and make yourselves look good that you didn’t cause an insurrection for brownie points. You didn’t work hard enough to change the course of your campaign with Harris because you decided to centralize it on a narcissistic whore like Trump.
Aside from 71+ million uneducated fucking morons that call themselves American, you have a part of fault in this. The “at least we’re not Trump” play didn’t work in 2016, what made you think it’d fucking work in 2024? You didn’t build off of any of the momentum from Biden and you didn’t dare try to say or do things differently than what Biden did.
While it is not entirely your fault, it is partially your fault too. You better fucking have something better by 2026 or this country mind as well be called the United States of Amerinazis if it isn’t already classified that.
Walz was the VP pick, he had no choice but to toe the line with the top-ot-the-ticket (Harris and the DNC), who sidelined Walz and prevented him from promoting many of the progressive policies that Walz passionately supports. As VP you can’t just come out in opposition to the runming Presidents platform, that was one of the major problems of the campaign.
Yeah, I really don’t like the Democrats and don’t agree with Waltz 100% at all, but it’s clear he is at least a genuine person caught up in a shit organisation.
I’m not American. but it always seems to me like the Democrats immediately tie themselves in knots trying to meet the Republicans halfway, when everyone knows they have no intention of budging an inch.
It’s like if two people share a meal, one person goes “Should we split this bill 50/50” and the other one just says “No fuck you, you pay 100%.” Then the first person, instead of telling them to fuck off, says “Okay I’ll pay 75%, how’s that?” and the other one just refuses until they eventually pay about 5%, then complain about it for the next year and tell they first person that they still owe them for the 5% they paid.
Then the first person invites them for dinner again.
As an American, you are 100% correct. That’s exactly what’s been done for decades now.
Because very few of them actually represent their working class constituents.
The flaw in your analogy is neither one is paying.
They’re arguing about how much we should pay, even though we only ordered a plain salad and water, and they both had surf and turf and champagne.
The Democrat starts off by saying it should be 1/3 each, but the Republican argues until the Democrat gives in.
The Democrat tells us we have to pay the bill, but they’ll cover the tip if we let them pick the restaurant next time, and we agree.
Then they don’t leave any tip.
Fucking finally. A Democrat we we can respect, because they don’t rely on their role inthe damage.
I blame the DNC and Harris far more than him, he was a relatively minor politician recruited by them pretty late in the game. Everyone was worried he’d be too boring, but despite the background character designation, he still came across better than Harris.
Clearly he’s a Russian plant. Everyone knows we should only blame voters and never the politicians who lost.
There’s no leadership void in the Democratic Party, it’s been Bernard Sanders for quite a while. Them denying this is to their (and everyone elses) detriment. Just run Bernie/AOC and let’s get this over with.
Well, I mean the worst Walz did personally was maybe his performance against JD, but that’s pretty small compared to a lot of other errors that can be attributed to the collective campaign decisions and DNC as a whole. And yes, Biden. And really, 2020 and 2016. Actually fuck it, compared to all the butterfly effect possibilities, Walz is such a small part of why we’re in this mess, lol. I still want the 2000 supreme court to support the Florida recount that actually says Gore won.
Still, kudos for taking responsibility.
I wouldn’t place any of it on Walz, this is all about Harris/Biden. He did well in his debate, he was obviously more progressive than Harris and was pretty much just reined in.
I think if the ticket had been reversed, they’d have won. The center wasn’t ready for a black woman to start with, and when she was just parroting the same party line re: Gaza, and cozying up to fucking Cheney’s, for crying out loud, it turned off the progressives that might have voted.
Dude should get a pep talk from the lib shills on Lemmy: Blame the voters!!! \s
But only the ones to your left. Still have to court the fascists.
finally! I hate when peope are always blaming trump or maga or republicans for this shit when its been the democrats every time. reagans deregulation and tax cuts, bush juniors war on terror, trumps total idiocy. ALL DEMOCRATS! We need to stop fighting the republicans and work with them against our common enemy.
Republicans ARE our common enemy, at this point… Democrats have been an “enemy of my enemy” scenario for decades now, but they are LITERALLY the lesser of two evils. Howsabout we get rid of this BS two-party system that’s allowed the Overton window to go so far right? Maybe start there, not "work with cuntservatives.
news to me. Everything I see is lets fight the current administration by bitching about the democrats not quite doing enough in the past. Its only by rectifying the past that we can solve the future. do not be concerned about the present.
Democrats have been an “enemy of my enemy” scenario for decades now
Unconvincingly.
