Tim Walz says he and Harris were too ‘safe’ during 2024 presidential campaign : politics

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 6 days ago

I called it that Biden's support of genocide would cost him the election in late 2023. I was super angry that he wouldn't just tell Bibi, "fuck you, you're done." But he called him an asshole on a hot mic (a little performance for the media) and shit like that. Fuck you, Israel. You knew you were gunning for Trump. Fuck you Biden. You had no self-awareness about the young people on campuses who saw through your bullshit. Fuck you Harris for saying you'd change nothing about the policy.

We got what we sowed and reaped. We're fucked and it's the fault of the people at the top, but also all of us for letting it get this bad. Too much propaganda has brainwashed people to not understand very simple facts. You'll note that I don't allow this as an excuse for our collective failure.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 7 points 5 days ago

Too much propaganda has brainwashed people to not understand very simple facts. You’ll note that I don’t allow this as an excuse for our collective failure.

Yeah. This is the real issue. I'm not trying to excuse Democrats for supporting genocide, but also, the fucked-up state of the American electorate where a politician doing anything other than supporting genocide is this incredibly risky proposition, because an overwhelming majority of the American people think the Palestinians are terrorists and Israel is just defending themselves, that's the real underlying issue.

And yes, it's not going to get any better unless people like us take responsibility for fixing it. The increasing spread and power of propaganda is a massive problem. It already was a bad problem, when it was the evening news telling people that Israel was the good guys, and it's gotten exponentially worse since then.

[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 36 points 6 days ago

He and Harris were too Republican

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 22 points 6 days ago

It barely matters. Biden broke with decades of Democratic fuckery of the working class, and no one noticed. Everyone blamed Harris for all of Biden's decisions about Gaza, and no one really noticed or seemed to care that she hadn't been the one making the decisions. They just kept using the same messaging that she was supporting a genocide, unmodified from the form it had been in for Biden, and it kept working great. A majority of people were convinced that Trump would be better (!) for the economy.

The Democratic party definitely has an overall-shittiness problem, sure, and if you want to hold Harris responsible for any particular failure to break with that, I won't really stop you. But that wasn't what lost her the election.

[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 23 points 6 days ago

Everyone blamed Harris for not charting her own course, for declaring she wouldn't have changed a thing that happened under Biden. The DNC assumed people would support a black female version of Biden that mirrored everything we hated about him, all while shifting further to the right. This is what holding politicians accountable looks like.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 13 points 6 days ago

Yeah, you really showed 'em. Good job holding them accountable. It worked great.

[-] SubjectivelyGood@slrpnk.net 11 points 6 days ago

I don't get why you're angry with the people on the same side of the fight as you.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 17 points 6 days ago

Anyone who describes what just happened as "holding politicians accountable" is not on the same side as me.

I'm actually not angry or anything. I just think empireInDecay is being dishonest, and blindly repeating various talking points and a particular seductive framing for what happened in the election, in a way that makes no attempt to be grounded in any reality. They don't seem to be here for any kind of conversation. They seem to want to broadcast a particular point of view and ignore anyone who says anything different, and hope that the judgement they're broadcasting about what just happened in the election, why it happened, and what to do about it in the future ("hold politicians accountable" some more, presumably) will take hold through sheer repetition, instead of through any kind of reasoned justification of it being accurate.

[-] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 5 days ago

Yeah, I get strong tankie vibes off them. There is a big difference between saying, "I'm not voting for Dems because they won't stop Republicans", and saying, "I'm glad Dems lost (to Republicans)". They seemingly have more animosity towards neolib Dems than actual fascists.

[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

Because Neolibs are actual fascists.

[-] evilviper@beehaw.org 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I'd imagine fair number of Democratic voters are on the side of "progress for the average american". Something that's been sorely lacking for a very long time from both parties. In fact, I would imagine a fair number of voters have to vote "against" a candidate rather than "for" one.

But yea, anyone who abstained from voting is not "on my side" because it was extremely clear which "side" would do active harm to america and would in fact revert progress for the average american.

Trying to take the intellectual high ground of "holding politicians accountable" is silly, especially for the office of president where you only get 1 choice per party. If they really wanted to hold them accountable you should start voting in non-incumbents in offices that allow for multiple choices per party. Or at the very least offices where the power is spread among a group of people instead of in a single role.

[-] SubjectivelyGood@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 days ago

Abstained from voting? It's totally fair to be upset with people who abstained from voting, they aren't taking part in the democracy. However, I feel like there is this belief to assume that just because someone didn't vote for the two major parties, they didn't vote at all. This belief only perpetuates the "throwing away your vote" idea that has made the Democratic and Republican parties comfortable enough to be for their own interests rather than the interests of all. I can't be upset with anyone who voted for Democrat, Republican, or third party because they took part in the democracy.

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[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago

They lost didn't they? That sounds like a win. They can either start complying with the demands of those holding them accountable or continue to lose. It's liberals that allowed them to do whatever they wanted to for 50 years with no repercussions is why things have gotten so bad

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 18 points 6 days ago

They lost didn’t they? That sounds like a win.

Yes, I'm aware that you think this way. Ukrainians, Gazans, people in the West Bank, "illegal" immigrants, legal immigrants, scientists, working people, journalists, and lots and lots of other people have already been sacrificed so that you could get your "win." Good stuff! Have you talked to them about how proud you are of the desired outcome? We're only a couple months in. It's going to get much, much worse for them.

If you want to make the US system better, including the Democrats, that sounds absolutely fucking fantastic. Simply not voting for them until they get better on their own, usually pushes them to the right, not the left. That's pretty much what happened from 1969 to 1993, and what turned the party of JFK, LBJ, and Jimmy Carter into the party of Bill Clinton, and ushered in our current shattered state. If you want to keep going that direction, you are not on the left.

[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

Keep the marginalized out of your mouth, liberals only care about them to whiteknight and use them as political pawns so they can stay in power. If Democrats actually cared like they claim they wouldn't be marginalized.

Failure of voters holding them accountable is what turned the party from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to barely left of Trump. Voters allowed them to do whatever they wanted with no consequence so, like a dog that gets a treat after pissing on the floor, they kept pissing on the floor. Now you are buried in 50 years of piss and shit.

Anyone voting for, or advocating a vote for Democrats is not the left. You are enablers of right wing fascism.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 points 6 days ago

Bro, you patted yourself on the back for fucking over Ukraine, Palestine, and America. I didn't put those marginalized people in the conversation, you did.

Failure of voters holding them accountable is what turned the party from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to barely left of Trump.

Lol

How did the voters fail to hold them accountable? There was one Democrat that won one single term over those 24 years, until the Democrats finally tacked all the way to the right with Clinton. What are you saying the voters should have done differently? They pursued exactly your strategy.

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[-] 0ops@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That sounds like a win.

If your a god-fearing white American man, maybe... Nah not even then if you aren't wealthy. But everyone else in the states is unambiguously more boned than we've been since pre-civil rights era, let alone the Biden administration. And outside of the United States, what country other than Russia has found themselves in a better place since the inauguration?

Look you have a point, the Dems are beyond worthless, and now that we're post-election this is the perfect time either get them into shape or replace them "tea party" style. Those fossils need to be gone. But nobody fucking "won" last election, save a privaleged few including Putin and Netanyahu. And Trump & friends obviously, but that goes without sayin.

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[-] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 17 points 6 days ago

Exactly. They were too busy trying to court the right that would never vote for them.

[-] ranandtoldthat@beehaw.org 6 points 6 days ago

Yup. Courting the Cheneys, supremely unpopular politicians, likely lost more votes than it gained.

[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 23 points 6 days ago

They supported genocide. No amount of handshakes would have overcome that.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 43 points 6 days ago

Phew! Good thing we avoided them getting into office then.

I love how people were convinced to avoid the party that didn't stop genocide, and vote in the party that actively promoted genocide. Pat on the back! You earned it.

[-] LukeZaz@beehaw.org 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Blaming voters for not being enthused about picking between two genocidal options is a one of the greatest losing strategies of all time. Nobody should be surprised at all that a chunk of the Democrats' base didn't have it in them to hold their noses tight enough for something that utterly vile — least of all Biden & Harris's campaigns.

They should have known. They were given opportunities to learn before the election even hit. They ignored them.

It was a massively idiotic move that either campaign could have avoided with a stupid level of ease, and they chose not to. Voters that didn't vote did so because they believe mass-murder is bad; whereas the best-case scenario for the Democrat's campaign is legendary incompetence, and the worst is outright genocidal malice and greed. If you're going to get mad at one, I recommend the latter.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 13 points 6 days ago

It was a massively idiotic move that either campaign could have avoided with a stupid level of ease, and they chose not to.

I think you're vastly overestimating the level of humanity of the average American voter.

More Americans support Israel in the "war" than support Palestine. The same messaging that convinced them that Trump was better on the economy could easily have convinced them that Harris was in bed with "terrorists," if she started coming out swinging to stop the genocide, and betrayed our good partner Israel. She probably would have lost the election even harder.

If the election was held on Lemmy? Sure, it would have been a winning move. Everyone Lemmy knows it's a genocide. That's not what the American people think. It would have gotten her a tiny handful of votes from activists and lost her a ton of support from the idiots.

If you think she should have done it anyway, I get that. If you want the Democrats to ditch this whole consultant-operated messaging machine and adopt Bernie Sanders's authenticity instead, which probably would start winning them elections, I definitely get that. Like I said in a different comment, the problems go about a thousand miles deeper than "more town halls." On that I think we can agree. But this whole fantasy-world where the election was hers for the taking if she'd only taken the side of the Palestinians is pure fantasy. Most people thought Trump would be better on the economy, and that's why he won. The messaging which relentlessly connected Harris directly to the genocide in Gaza is only what they deploy against you, because it'll resonate better with you than stuff about the price of eggs and how Biden caused inflation.

[-] LukeZaz@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

I wasn't really ever suggesting that supporting Palestine would've outright won the election. I agree it was more complicated than that. Frankly, I think she lost because her campaign promises were incredibly weak and basically amounted to "Biden, again." Almost nobody wanted that, so of course she lost! My goal with my comment was simply to push back against all the voter-blaming I see, which I consider both insane and callous for the variety of reasons I've already elaborated on.

Anyway, for what it's worth, while it's true that most Americans still support Israel, that number is dropping fast and is drastically different amongst Democrats. Which is rather important for a Democrat's election campaign. Besides, let's not worry about what Trump's messaging would've been; if you don't give fascists ammo to shoot you with, they make it up themselves. Basing your strategy around whether he'll call you names is a losing move, because he'll do it regardless.

The messaging which relentlessly connected Harris directly to the genocide in Gaza is only what they deploy against you,

Gonna be blunt for a sec: Maybe we heard it a lot because hospitals were being bombed? Leftists tend to get mad about that kind of thing.

Seriously, Biden's admin sent Israel all the military equipment it could ask for, and Harris indicated several times she planned on continuing that trend. It's not a right-wing psy-op, it's war crimes.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 3 days ago

What's the impact of Biden's policies on climate change? So far and then as calculated for the future?

What's the impact of his policies on working class wages, as of the end of his term?

I'm curious if you know the answers to those questions. In another reality, those would be vital issues to some people in the same way that Gaza was a vital issue to some people, but I'll wager that the relative importance that the media you consume placed on those three issues is basically skewed towards Gaza by an amount so close to 100% that it might as well be.

And, those were affirmative actions on his part, not just sort of "aiding and abetting" extensively with some efforts to stop it. Not that I'm saying it excuses his war-criminal support for Israel. I'm just saying that, when it's not complicated, he came out swinging in a big way to do actually good things, which is pretty unusual for an American politician. I don't know if you realize it, but "“Biden, again.” Almost nobody wanted that" is a textbook propaganda framing, sort of indirectly implying (quite effectively) that he did nothing of value.

And, of course, refusing to vote for Harris because of Gaza is about the stupidest strategy you could possibly pursue. It's now more likely than not, I think, that Gaza simply won't exist by the end of Trump's term.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 8 points 6 days ago

So first, you might want to take a look at this. Poll is linked in the article. Gaza was a lot more important than you seem to think.

But this whole fantasy-world where the election was hers for the taking if she'd only taken the side of the Palestinians is pure fantasy.

Yes, but it would've made it a lot easier. She'd have only had to be a halfway decent candidate, instead of an actually good candidate.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 5 points 6 days ago

I phrased my statement the way I did for a reason: "More Americans support Israel than Palestine." A lot of the polls about this like to zoom in on little subsets, or ask strange questions like "Do you support a ceasefire?" and then draw some kind of conclusion when a lot of people answer "yes."

Want to see something that'll break your heart?

https://apnorc.org/projects/public-opinion-of-the-israel-and-hamas-conflict-nearly-a-year-after-the-october-7th-attacks/

"25% sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians while 15% feel the opposite."

15%.

It's not surprising to me that if you zoom in only on the people who voted for Biden, and then chose not to cast a ballot for Harris, that 29% of them were motivated by the propaganda about how Harris was responsible for Gaza. I'm actually surprised the percentage is that low. What I am saying is that:

That reflects a success of propaganda. Notice that the other strong option for why they might not have voted for Harris was "the economy," even though Trump is an objective catastrophe for the economy and Biden pulled off a minor miracle for working people even having come in during still-pretty-apocalyptic conditions with double normal unemployment and a big chunk of people still dependent on Covid assistance.
The relevant question isn't "did some people decide that Harris was responsible for the war in Gaza and decide not to vote as a result." Of course the answer to that is yes. The question is "did more people decide that, than the people who would have decided that she was supporting terrorism if she took a different position, and made her lose even harder?"

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 6 points 6 days ago

"25% sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians while 15% feel the opposite."

True enough, but crucially Republicans are overrepresented in those 25%, and being Republicans they can be disregarded for the sake of Democrat electoral strategy.

For example, more Republicans than Democrats (46% vs. 10%), ... sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians

The numbers are this bad in part because Republicans are morally bankrupt, which isn't really news. Another poll with more focus on partisan politics from the same time period got this result:

That reflects a success of propaganda. Notice that the other strong option for why they might not have voted for Harris was "the economy," even though Trump is an objective catastrophe for the economy and Biden pulled off a minor miracle for working people even having come in during still-pretty-apocalyptic conditions with double normal unemployment and a big chunk of people still dependent on Covid assistance.

Trump economy voters are nuts no questions asked, but it should be stressed that the only reason that propaganda was so effective is because the Biden/Harris campaign, and later Harris/Walz campaign, gave it room to be effective. Biden said he was going to keep doing what he was doing, which simply wasn't enough. He also claimed that the economy was good when it really wasn't and patted himself on the back for it, which was just... no. More people than ever were (and are) living paycheck to paycheck and the dunces in the DNC decided that campaigning on status quo politics was a good idea. GOP propaganda also had a big role, don't get me wrong, but this was an it takes two to tango affair.

The relevant question isn't "did some people decide that Harris was responsible for the war in Gaza and decide not to vote as a result." Of course the answer to that is yes. The question is "did more people decide that, than the people who would have decided that she was supporting terrorism if she took a different position, and made her lose even harder?"

From the data above, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. For example, 67% of Democrats put reaching a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as very important, while 25% put supporting Israel in the war as very important. And, perhaps more importantly, pro-Palestinian voters were much better positioned to tank Harris's campaign in crucial swing states compared to pro-Israeli voters, who are more evenly distributed.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 6 days ago

So only 50% of Democrats think Israel is even "going too far." Yeah, sounds about right.

He also claimed that the economy was good when it really wasn’t and patted himself on the back for it, which was just… no.

Yeah, tell me about it.

https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/heritage-explains/the-truth-about-joe-bidens-economy

Oh shit, sorry. Wrong link.

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/

There we go.

I realize that very few people on Lemmy are in that bottom 10th percentile part of the graph that has that huge growth. Most are tech-savvy people, students, relatively privileged as compared with a lot of the people whose Biden's policies most directly impacted, so a bunch of the stuff he did was invisible to them. That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago

So only 50% of Democrats think Israel is even "going too far." Yeah, sounds about right.

I mean yes, and more than 35% are "not sure". Less than 15% of democrats felt Israel what Israel was doing in Gaza was appropriate. Therefore, the answer to what you said was the question is "yes".

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/

Yeah here's the thing: Inflation as a statistic is rigged to make things look better than they actually are. Now Biden did good things for low-wage workers don't get me wrong, but the idea that things got better for them is outright wrong, as evidenced by how many of them voted for Trump—the "things are horrible and I'll fix them—candidate. Things just got less bad for them than they did for everyone else, which is a good thing and something he can take credit for but it's not the massive accomplishment that Biden and the DNC seem to think it is. It certainly doesn't allow them to gloat about how good things are, because things simply weren't good. To reiterate, things were simply less bad than they could've been, not good, for all segments of the population other than the ultra-rich. Almost nobody could afford more things in 2023 than in 2019.

And even if we accept the proposition that things did get better for the bottom 10%, there are a whole 80% of the population between the bottom 10% and the top 10%. For those people things undeniably got much worse.

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[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 13 points 6 days ago

lol I voted for her anyway, because I thought she was better than the alternative. If I only knew…

My point is that her timid, business-as-usual stance was a dealbreaker for a lot of people. How many voted 3rd party, or didn’t vote at all, because she refused to explicitly oppose genocide? How many Democrats like me still voted for her, but weren’t nearly as enthusiastic as they could have been?

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 5 points 6 days ago

No, Biden supported genocide. They did messaging you didn’t agree with.

[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 17 points 6 days ago

Okay, let’s play infantile, pedantic word games.

I tend not to agree with people who won’t make a clear, strong, ethical stand against genocide. Fuck me, right?

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 11 points 6 days ago

Anyone who didn't vote against Trump refused to make a clear, strong, ethical stand against genocide.

The messaging which hammered constantly, to a certain audience, on Biden's complicity in Gaza, was a big part of the effort to get Trump elected. No one knew that he came out swinging for working people in a way that hasn't been seen since LBJ. No one knew that he took the biggest action on climate change of any American president by almost ten times over. Everyone on Lemmy knew that he was sending Israel weapons, and we heard it every single day.

Is his refusal to break with half a century of American foreign policy which is enabling of genocide, even in the face of an escalation of the genocide and the clear appearance of its finish line on the horizon, a stain on humanity? Sure. Absolutely it is.

Harris didn't do that, though. The messaging which was originally deployed against Biden (to a certain audience on the activist left; to other audiences it was that he wasn't doing enough to support Israel or he caused inflation or something else), switched over to Harris with barely a blip, and for some reason people didn't notice. So no, I am not proud of you for your principled stance, no.

[-] megopie@beehaw.org 23 points 6 days ago

They shouldn’t have listed to the consultants who told them to run a middle ground safe campaign.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 10 points 6 days ago

Yeah. I'm honestly not really sure why I posted this. I guess it was a little interesting, but between Democratic politicians who mostly just want campaign contributions, consultants who are sure that if the candidates keep channeling Reagan they'll start winning elections, and media which is absolutely committed to telling anyone who will listen that Trump is stronger on the economy and Biden never did anything important, it hardly matters what "strategy" Harris and Walz came out with. The problems go about a thousand miles deeper than "we should have had more town halls."

[-] megopie@beehaw.org 7 points 6 days ago

That they’re admitting they fucked up in any way other than “ we should have run a primary” or the BS excuse of “we weren’t mean enough to trans people” is news in it’s own right.

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[-] picassosBunker@beehaw.org 15 points 6 days ago

There was too much ratfuckery by Elon and Russia. The election was rigged Trump admits it but the American public is being suppressed and/or eerily quiet. I think it is too much for most to consider that our elections have been interfered with. So we collectively hold the fantasy that this government is still a democracy. Perhaps it's the long moral arc of the universe, the correction of karma for the U.S. governments geopolitical sins of interfering in other countries elections?

[-] Visikde@beehaw.org 11 points 6 days ago

I vote for the candidate that would do the least harm for the most people, just like I always do, nearly always the Dem

I believe there is a mandate Since the largest group of voters did not vote, they apparently thought everything was fine the way it was They passively voted for the Status Quo There is a clear Mandate for the Status Quo! Winning by less than 1% & losing seats in the house is no mandate to become a Monarchy, to be ruled by Royal decree

Making it all seem like shyt is the GOPux brand
Proving government incompetent by their actions

The Dems keep running on We Suck Less!

In general we would rather critique the bad faith arguments of conservatives than talk about policy, which is mind numbingly boring....

As long as the donor class calls the tune it's gonna continue Third Way, Neo Liberal...

[-] Midnitte@beehaw.org 8 points 6 days ago

They're trying to argue they lost because they didn't learn any lessons from Clinton's defeat? 🤦🏻‍♂️

Former vice-presidential candidate claims pair should have held more in-person events around the US

[-] EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago

They didn't need more in person events, we heard all we had to hear and made a decision.

[-] Midnitte@beehaw.org 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I'd be surprised if the average voter could state one item from her policy proposal.

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