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.
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.
That is the mathematical ideal of populism.
Democracy is “government by consent of the governed”; There is no good way of democratically electing a singular individual. Which is why the presidency should be little more than a figurehead, with very little actual authority.
i wouldn’t say that statement is correct. you certainly can have fairly representative single-winner elections, just not with FPTP.
Approval Voting, for example, does quite well at selecting someone most of the electorate approves of.
You just defined “populism”.
no i didn’t.
Again: Democracy is government by the consent of the governed. The system you described made no effort to ensure constituent consent. You described a populist system, not a Democratic one.
There are many good ways to popularly elect a singular representative. The one you described is one of the better ones, but it is still two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. It is still populist: the sheep does not consent to a “government” that can put it on a menu.
A democratic system would be one in which the government lacks the power to put the sheep on that ballot: the minority has no cause to protest.
There are no good ways to democratically elect a singular representative. As soon as you allow that representative sufficient power that the minority protest, the appointment of that representative over the minority may be populist, but it is not democratic.
ok, have fun splitting hairs, bro. i’ll be over here in reality.