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.
Thinking there is going to be a real election in 2028 is the most optimistic thing I’ve heard in a while.
Walz / Kelly, Kelly / Walz, Kelly / Kelly, or Kelly / AOC.
Honestly, he was OK as a candidate, but he didn’t wow me, and he shit the bed in the debate which imo makes him a poor choice. He wasn’t as bad as “they’re eating the dwawgs” but he really blew it when they asked him about his time in China. All he had to say was that he was there around that time and maybe he misspoke, but what matters was the sentiment. It’s a really easy question to answer instead he just fumbled his words like crazy.
He said he’s notoriously bad at debating, and imo that’s like saying I’m really bad at taking tests. So you are saying that you aren’t good at the part where we find out what you know? You can’t articulate your positions without a teleprompter? If you can’t debate, then you must not be that fervent about them imo, and the person that takes on trump, (assuming we have a real election) needs to be able to call him on his bullshit to his face. I think Walz had way too much of an aww shucks vibe. He’s too “Minnesota Nice”. We need AOC.
I’m the opposite. I know that snappy comebacks on live stages are not what make a presidency great. Even if someone can’t give immediate responses in a debate, I can respect them if they display anger and passion when appropriate, and reason and negotiation when that’s appropriate. You might be overestimating that a president needs to be an image of perfection all the time to every single person, when our current one survived conviction as a sex offender.
The ability to do behind the scenes work is super important. It’s half the requirement. But the other half is being able to do in the moment interactions. Look at Trump/VD with Zelenski. Being charismatic and able to handle in-person negotiations with foreign leaders is hugely important.
He can run for the primary, like everyone else…
The Harris campaign had to cover the governor’s tracks when he tripped up during a California fundraiser by stating that the constitutionally-mandated system used to select the president, otherwise known as the electoral college, “needs to go”.
How the hell is that a gaffe? It’s both the truth and exactly what people want to hear. Any lib who thinks like that needs to kindly keep their mouths shut for the next four years. This country needs radical change, the only choice you get is which one you want.
Here, let me grab a sharpie and fix that.
The Harris campaign made a cowardly attempt to walk back the governor’s statements when he said during a California fundraiser that the broken election systems used for gerrymandering and enabling the double elections of Donald Trump, “needs to go”.
and exactly what people want to hear
It’s what people who care about democracy want to hear. That certainly isn’t everyone.
Just guessing, but it might be a gaffe because it could be skewed to sound like he doesn’t believe in democracy. Of course, this makes no sense because Trump has quite literally said that we might not need another election in four years.
A more careful statement might have been, “the electoral college needs to be replaced with a system where every citizen’s vote has the same magnitude.” If that’s not the mathematical ideal of democracy, I don’t know what is.
Edit: For you pedantic mathematicians, I’ll add that everyone’s vote should have the same magnitude, and that magnitude should be greater than zero.
i’m not even sure what that text is supposed to be referencing?
I assume it’s not literally the message itself, because that would be kind of broad. I’m guessing he just said it weirdly, and that bothered people, because of course it did.
“A large number of people did not believe we were fighting for them in the last election – and that’s the big disconnect.”
does this mean he would pander to republican voters again
Walz/Sanders ticket, please.
Pile of dust 2028
Walz won’t even be at retirement age by 2028. That’s practically an infant in terms of a presidential candidate.
and Sanders has an amazing ability to get Republican voters on his side.
Please, do FUCKING NOT.
His debate performance was poor against Vance. We don’t need a kindly father-figure running against Republicans, we need an attack dog that knows police cold, who can articulate that tax cuts cost more in tax revenues than we make up in added jobs, economic growth, etc., someone that’s going to actively piss-off billionaires and then not kiss their asses once they have power… We need a leftist populist, someone that will get people fired up.
Walz is not that guy.
One lesson that I’ve seen in politics over and over again is Dems running the same candidate in a rematch, and the rematch always goes worse than the original election.
I mean he can run for primary. A lot of people should. The DNC just needs to take their finger off the scale and let the actual people decide what candidate they want.
I don’t know, he might be able to do it with decent advisors.
He was the one who kicked off that “Republicans are weird” messaging campaign which was incredibly effective until establishment Democrats shut it down. If he brings that sort of energy again I’d support him.
His debate performance was poor against Vance.
it was perfectly fine? He could most definitely run well after trump, due to the classic american flip flop phenomenon. Chances are he’d win, if the public is upset enough about how trump did, which right now, isn’t looking great. And probably will continue to be that way.
He’s literally obama, but white.
walz has also had a historically successful career in politics? Just look at what minnesota is doing.
Vance was polished, smooth, knew his talking points and bullshit claims cold. Walz, not so much. He didn’t have good counters to a lot of the shit that Vance was throwing out. The broad consensus is that Vance handily won the debate, much like the broad consensus was that Harris trounced Trump in the debate.
He’s literally obama, but white.
He is not even close to being a white Obama. Obama is a highly skilled orator, extremely skilled debater, and a scholar. Tim Walz connects well with people–perhaps especially well with midwestern people–but he is not a particularly strong orator, is fairly weak in debates, and is definitely not a scholarly type. They may be close on policy, although I would hope that Walz would be farther to the left than Obama was.
vance was a traditionally good debater in an academic fashion, sure.
But the population doesn’t like people like that. That’s why people like trump and biden get elected over people like vance. Same thing with bush.
He didn’t have good counters to a lot of the shit that Vance was throwing out.
he had good counters to the most important disinformation in that whole debate, including a lot of the more reasonable stuff that vance just parades about, walz actually has something to speak on in those moments. Vance was clearly just focusing on formality rather than actual debate skills. And to be fair, if he countered every factually incorrrect thing vance said, he wouldn’t be able to say anything at all, which is even more of a loss because then you haven’t gotten anywhere, and your opponent has spent the entire time yapping. It’s literally the neo-nazi meme.
not done specifically on the debate, but evidently i think it’s fair to claim it’s relevance here.
The broad consensus is that Vance handily won the debate
i disagree, i think you would find most people would argue that vance held a better debate, but walz was generally a better speaker. You can’t look at this strictly through a debate lens, the american public doesn’t care about them.
He is not even close to being a white Obama. Obama is a highly skilled orator, extremely skilled debater, and a scholar. Tim Walz connects well with people–perhaps especially well with midwestern people–but he is not a particularly strong orator,
i would argue that obama is a really strong speaker, like generationally so, anybody can be skilled in a debate, what really matters when it comes to debating is factual accuracy, and being able to quickly make your point. Which is historically something democrats have struggled with.
Walz i would argue is a good public speaker, maybe not in a formal sense, but again we’re talking about politics here, people like when their politicians are relatable and down to earth, and walz does really well at this. He’s not a scholarly type, but you’d be hard pressed finding anybody on either side of the isle that wants an academic in power. Walz also has significant policy experience through minnesota, which obama has through his presidency. Though it is more prestigious.
Walz is definitely more socially progressive than obama is, but obama is a bit of a weird case. He’s very center left.
Is he going to play a centrists or actually move the needle?
Don’t need another “capitalist Harris”
Seemed like a genuine awesome dude, love what he’s done in Minnesota but I lack faith that in the democratic party he’ll do any good. That and he needs to work on debating…
Rather have AOC
That said better than most of the geriatric pandering democratic ineffective options. Even though he’ll be close to 70…
For wast majority of Americans capitalist Harris is actually rapid communist comrade Harris. For significant majority of registered voters her existence is a rampant leftist propane and seven steps too far.
USians are firmly on the rigth, and unless you fix that, all your exciting candidates will achieve jack shit.For wast majority of Americans capitalist Harris is actually rapid communist comrade Harris.
You don’t seem like you really have a grasp on US politics.
Fuckin should have been the nominee in the first place - him or Sanders.
Not sure of moderates are ok with Sanders. The center and right will keep calling Sanders a socialist and communist.
They called Kamala a communist too. It doesn’t fucking matter, they’ll say it about anyone, you can’t be afraid of it.
Who fucking cares? The moderates who were supposed to swoop in and save Kamala pointedly didn’t. Catering towards a fictional segment of the electorate is (demonstrably) a recipe for failure.
The moderates who were supposed to swoop in and save Kamala pointedly didn’t.
kamala had 75 million votes, to the 77 million that trump got.
If anybody fucked up the election it was the hardline commies or super aggressive left leaning people that refused to vote for kamala because of whatever silly reason they had.
IDK why people on the internet are willingly this fucking stupid. Evidently looking at the biden results, there were about 7-8 million more votes than kamala received, which is considerably more inline with what you would expect had younger voters actually, well, voted.
You would literally need to be on fucking crack to take anything else away from the results of these recent elections. IF ANYTHING, the obvious answer is that the younger voting block NEEDS to go and vote, because historically, they don’t.
TL;DR if you didn’t already pick this up from basic civics knowledge, the vast majority of the voterbase is going to vote for “whoever is on the ticket this time” that’s why trump even gets traction at all, maybe 10-20% of his voter base actually cares about him in any substantive manner. It’s the same for the dems, 75% of the base is people who will vote for WHOEVER gets put on the primary ticket, some of those are going to be more moderate though, and if you run someone like bernie, they will pull out or switch support, which is one of the risks you take when running a more hardline candidate.
Trump was just able to viciously mobilize his segment of the population against the republican voter base (who are historically known to behave like this)
We do not have this advantage on the dem side, we literally have to mobilize the youth, that’s the ONE thing that can save us.
Voter turnout in these elections was lower than in the 2020 elections
yeah, primarily because you can’t vote by mail in the 2024 election, where as you could in the 2020 election, enfranchising more people to go out and vote, and historically, it’s not republicans that struggle to vote, it’s the democrats.
If everyone voted mainline Trump still would have won the election. Greens got 860000, while the Libertarians got 650000 and RFK got 750000.
Well, your supposedly existing leftists didn’t achieve even that. I don’t remember where I heard it, but the saying gows something like “Catering towards a fictional segment of the electorate is (demonstrably) a recipe for failure.”
Probably because Harris and Biden succeeded in alienating a group that SHOULD have been a slam dunk for them: Arab-Americans.
And also, they listened to their consultants instead of, you know, normal people. They were too busy jacking themselves off about how “great” the economy was to notice that MOST people in the country are straight up not having a good time.
The Arab-American vote was crucial in Michigan, and they threw that away. And frankly, I’d argue that they alienated a lot more moderate voters by INSISTING the economy was better (failing to realize economy != people’s actual lives) and staunchly defending the status quo on that front.
Ah yes, Arab-Americans, known for their tolerance and feminist ideals, did not turn out for the woman preaching tolerance for all and love for Israel.
To capture a more left leaning audience you are going to have to abandon this notion notoriously conservative and backwards cultures will suddenly be progressive and accepting.
“Have you considered that the people we’re genociding might be kinda problematic?”
Don’t do that
It’s true, why should we try to support a group that fundamentally disagrees and hates a large part of the base? There’s no salvaging such disagreements.
Moderates can take their own fucking advice for once and vote blue no matter who.
Left Sanders Republican reich (rnc) +-----------------------+---------+--------------+ Republican lite (dnc)
He’s got some things going for him. Male. Presumably heterosexual. Caucasian. Old (but perhaps not quite old enough). I say go for it.
Dude, just say “not AOC.”
I hate this persistent belief that much of America is still too racist and sexist to accept a black or woman president. I hate it, even if it may be true.
Walz was the main reason I voted for a right winger like Kamala anyway.
kamala isn’t right wing, at best she’s a centrist, realistically a left leaning lib.
She’s pro-capitalism which makes her right wing. But she’s not even a leftist in colloquial US terms, she’s very pro police and anti medicare for all.
She’s rainbow republican
rainbow republican is wild considering she doesn’t want to engage in any spending cuts, and the only thing that she supported, that aligns with the republican base was the israel palestine issue.
Unless he steps up and starts fighting alongside the progressives trying to do something (like joining Bernie’s current Midwest tour), I don’t see him as being a viable candidate for 2028.
I like Walz. A lot. But he’s got to show more leadership on the national stage right now, ala Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker and (in a pleasant surprise) Mills. I think he was thrust onto the national stage before he was ready by the DNC looking to swing the Midwest with a non-threatening centrist candidate, and his silence after the election (and the lack of a real response from the Harris campaign) has left it to other governors to take up the mantle of national leadership.
Would I vote for him if he were on the ticket? Yes. Would I vote for him over Newsom, Whitmer or Pritzker - probably not unless he steps up and takes the battle to Trump NOW.
I’m not convinced there will be an election in 2028…
Even Russia has elections
There will, but it won’t be a fair one. They have “elections” in Russia, too.
The one thing we have going for us is that Don’s dementia and age are going to increasingly make it difficult for him to hold his party together. And there is the chance one of those things will leave the GOP trying to field a new traitor to try and get the cult to consolidate around.
once he kicks the bucket, assuming they can’t find someone the republican base will support as fervently as trump, the entire party is done for, it will collapse into a blackhole of nothingness.
There won’t at the current trajectory. There won’t even be midterms.
I remember Republicans checking out on elections back in 2018 because they bought hard into the Trump “elections are rigged” propaganda. The GOP lost seven Senate seats that year as conservative turnout plunged.
I wonder if Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
No, I don’t think Democrats are ready to make new mistakes yet. They still won’t abandon their devotion to the old mistakes.
They made it in 2024. The results of abstaining or protest voting were obvious, and these idiots did it anyway. And here we are.
The results of abstaining or protest voting were obvious
Absolutely. The current Dem leadership is now wildly unpopular and vulnerable to primary. Just like after 2016, the seeds have been planted for a big anti-incumbent wave.
I wonder if Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
i really, really fucking hope this doesnt happen, i’m going to fucking lose my shit if it does. Because unless things change, it’s not looking great for the trump midterms right now.
Not sure about rigged, but honestly, depending on how the next few years go, it may be straight up dangerous for non-republican Americans to vote. While that’s by no means a certainty, people should keep an eye on any electoral changes made in their state.
If Republicans experience a route like they suffered in 2018, it will likely be due to the mushy indie republican-when-its-convenient voters breaking ranks in droves, just like they did in prior Dem wave years. That’s what Harris was banking on in 2024 when she paraded around her pet RINOs Liz Cheney and Jeff Flake. She just failed to understand that these wishy-washy voters are chasing less war and less disruption and more protectionist economics, something Trump was able to dangle over their heads (twice!) to win the GOP primary / national election.
Republicans don’t really seem to get it, either. Which is why they think the midterm after a wave year is the perfect time to put Grade A psychos all over the down-ballots and end up losing statewide in Alabama of all places as a result.
The “we won’t be having any more elections” crowd is heavily invested in a theory that Republicans can get their own base to sit down, shut up, and follow orders. But the last eight years of Trump should be an indication of the exact opposite. The party is being lead by the base, which means the prior generation’s power brokers like the Bushs and Cheneys and Bloombergs no longer have a place in it.
This line of thinking has preserved whatever is left of my optimism. Let us hope my fellow Americans continue to function predictably.
Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
The only thing the Democrats failed at was fielding a fat old white male felon narcissist serial rapist with ties to a foreign nation-state. If they can just do that they’ll win no matter what.
Sorry if you didn’t get a personal hug from America’s Mom and Dad but yoire kinda expected to make a value judgement between two options and choose the best. As a group, you did not.
Only blame Dems who voted for a kleptocratic felon. The rest did their best to field the best candidate they could and lost to a traitor – and those guys need to start with our apology for being stupid, same as all of Ukraine, and next Moldova.
The only thing the Democrats failed at was fielding a fat old white male felon narcissist serial rapist with ties to a foreign nation-state.
Is that why Obama lost in 2008?
Look, guys. I’m rather concerned that the states that haven’t seceded by then won’t even have electricity anymore.
There will absolutely be an election.
It will be a farce, a Russian election where there’s only one possibility to win.
If we’re not pitchforks in the street before then, I don’t hold much hope
Or maybe a Hungary-style election where the entire media landscape shills for the ruling class and people on social media are bombarded with misinformation and one-sided reporting.
sounds a lot like the last 12 years TBF
Sounds like you described the US process as well. May not be far from it now.
Certainly could never happen here, twice at least. /s
States run the elections, so I’m positive there will be one. But whether or not the results are respected… I’m not so confident in that.
I’m not confident the results in red states will be accurate to begin with.
There will be since elections are held at the state level. Many won’t be free or fair in the red states, but they’ll be good in the blue states.
If red states don’t hold elections, that’s fewer electoral college votes we need to win the presidency and we wouldn’t win in red states anyway.
Please, Texas and Florida. Oh, please, don’t hold elections. 🙏
The way I read it, electoral college votes are the one thing where individual states can somewhat easily cancel elections for President, as long as they do so before the election. States have broad discretion over the appointment of electors. All states currently appoint them based on the results of elections, but the rules around that are all set by State legislation, and can be reset by States as well. The only Federal requirement is that the rules don’t change after any election is held.
Prior Supreme Courts have ruled that things like the Equal Protection clause may be used to challenge any act where the legislature restricts voting rights once they have been granted. But who knows what this clown Court would make of that.
Congressional elections, on the other hand, must be held in order for those seats to be filled. So any state that unilaterally cancels elections across the board will be sending nobody to Congress (and likely any expired Senate terms as well). Some states may go the extra mile and cancel the election for President, but not for Congress. We’ll see how that turns out.
Nah, there probably will. Whoever is taking control of the US really don’t care about MAGA’s and 3rd terms. They’ll just put another puppet there, the new way of doing things in post-capitalism still maintains and some people will continue to get increasingly very rich doesn’t matter who the prez is. We finally reached “the future”.
There will definitely be an attempt to eliminate or “postpone” them. I’m certain Trump is looking at Putin in power and other governments in a state of war without elections as inspiration.
I’d vote for him, given that we’re still allowed to vote.
