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.
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.
Except that…worked?
One of the takeaways from the 2024 election is that if you have something that works, repetition is key for the idiot American electorate.
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.