‘If the circumstances are right, in 2028...I’ll do it,’ the former Democrat VP hopeful said
Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, has suggested he may run for president in 2028.
Reflecting on the Democrats’ loss to Donald Trump and JD Vance, he admitted: “A large number of people did not believe we were fighting for them in the last election – and that’s the big disconnect.”
Walz said his life experience, rather than ambition, would guide his decision.
Though his VP campaign was marred by gaffes, he remains open to running if he feels prepared.
Him calling the GOP weird was not a gaffe but the campaign made him walk away from that language because it might offend potential turncoats. The fact he is internalizing the criticism worries me.
My only "problem" with the weird-comments were that they were overused. While it is certainly true, and Waltz had every reason to call it out, supporters often kept repeating it in the context of "look how triggered Republicans are by this". After a while it gave me the same vibe as people shoehorning "let's go brandon" into every situation.
But the thing about the "weird" verbiage is that it pissed them off way more than the harder insults. Especially if you phrase the accusation correctly.
For example, here's a good response to a MAGA shitting on trans children, "it's really weird that you care so much about children's genitals."
It's because they don't have a defense for it. They can do mental gymnastics for the harder stuff pretty easily because those terms are in black and white. Weird is a very grey area term, and they have to explain why the behavior is normal.
They can do mental gymnastics for the harder stuff pretty easily because those terms are in black and white. Weird is a very grey area term, and they have to explain why the behavior is normal.
They also spend most of their time trying to argue that their political party is on the side of normal; so they find it very necessary to discuss at length how normal they are which only makes them look weirder.
It really was an effective line of attack. I guess that's why it had to be jettisoned in favor of parading around with Liz Cheney.
Yeah, but they don't care if you call them fascists. Calling them weird made them freak out, because not fitting in is what makes fascists target you next
They all think "if I were in charge of the world it would be great, and they're all just like me! We just have to get rid of a few problems mucking up the works"
Weird works because if they were looked into even slightly, they're creepy as hell. They've got all kinds of SA allegations, say creepy things they've been thinking about kids, and they go around accusing others of their kinks
They can shake off being called a Nazi, you could bring up their rape charges, but none of that matters
It's vibes based, so you have to question their vibes before you can apply logic
The point was it was something you could say to someone in real life to let them know those political positions aren't okay, without getting their defensiveness up. Just, "I dunno man that seems weird to me, want another beer?"
Yeah, but there's a lot of people that were on the fence. And being social creatures we usually tend to float things with our friends to check the vibe. There's no point in sharing a beer with a die hard MAGA supporter but your union buddy who is getting seduced by talks of lowering regulations?
Yeah, interesting how the Harris campaign had all the momentum after the Waltz nomination, then pivoted back to neoliberal wonkiness and then crashed and burned again.
It was her perpetual problem too. She'd start out with energetic support for progressive policies, get momentum, and then a few days later (presumably after talking with advisors and donors) clarify that actually she didn't mean it and what she really wanted was strictly limited neoliberalism. It's why she failed in the 2020 primary and I wish she learned something from that.
context of "look how triggered Republicans are by this".
If you want to shake the cult's faith in their cult leader, then yes, you want to trigger them. They're triggered because they sense the loss of innate, automatic strongman support.
When you're trying to get a political movement going, there's no such thing as an overused slogan. The fact that it was getting used so much was evidence it was working, and part of that was because it got at the right in the same way that they try to other minorities