Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has criticized the Harris-Walz 2024 presidential campaign for playing it too “safe,” saying they should have held more in-person events and town halls.
In a Politico interview, Walz—known for labeling Trump and Vance as “weird”—blamed their cautious approach partly on the abbreviated 107-day campaign timeline after Harris became the nominee in August.
Using football terminology, he said Democrats were in a “prevent defense” when “we never had anything to lose, because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”
While acknowledging his share of responsibility for the loss, Walz is returning to the national spotlight and didn’t rule out a 2028 presidential run, saying, “I’m not saying no.”
Maybe they should copy what Bernie Sanders is doing. He’s not even running and packing out town hall meetings. Who knew being against oligarchs, authoritarians, corporate cronyism and for the middle class would appeal to people?
Gee who would have thought that completely ignoring the anti-war/genocide crowd and courting the CHENEYS “moderate Republicans” while keeping absolutely silent about Medicare for all and touting a “keep America lethal” platform would have backfired for one of the least popular politicians ever who was just anointed as the presidential candidate without any sort of primary at all. I’m so confused!
People on the left screamed this as soon as they took over from sleeping baby joe. We said “PLEASE put some OOMPH into it! Stop regurgitating Corporate Dems platitudes!”
They’ll never learn. It’s the same thing every election cycle.
Okay Walz, that’s a start, but we’ve yet to see you go hard. Step it up or get out of Al Green’s way and let him cane the fuck outta these Nazi shitheads.
If by safe you mean ignoring your constituents and only listening to your wealthy contemporaries. Then yes you were too safe.
If you read the article, that’s EXACTLY what he means. They told him the reason for this is that they could avoid “Having any public gaffees”
The idea is that by just not being Trump they were “Ahead”, and any public misstep would put Trump in the lead.
Walz now believes he and Harris were “never ahead” and it was arrogance that lead to them thinking they were the “Default Choice” for America
Which makes the second time the Democrats lost to Trump by believing they were the default choice. Even after being roundly criticized for it the first time. I’m starting to think they may not be smarter than me.
Oh it gets worse, they thought they were teh “default choice” because they got the people behind Hillary’s campaign to “help”
Yeah. The corporate team. I swear middle America can smell it from am mile away now.
Plus the one time it didn’t abjectly fail, it took a worldwide pandemic and mass death to happen. Their hubris is at a legendary level.
Democrat politicians should level with you all. Politicians need a tremendous amount of money to stay viable. They only answer to their donors and they get donors only if they can accomplish their goals which they do with the support of their constituents. They don’t just support their constituents out of feel good stuff. Republicans give them a free pass to do whatever they want. So they get lots of donors. The left groups do not do what they want so they don’t get donors. We’re fucked.
Look into how many call centers are around Washington. They’re all call centers for the different politicians. They’re calling donors 24/7 trying to get more funding. All the time. The Reason leftist do not get anywhere, we don’t generate money
Democrat politicians should level with you all. Politicians need a tremendous amount of money to stay viable.
democrats massively outraised trump in 2024 and lost anyway. Turns out, you need votes too.
Look into how many call centers are around Washington. They’re all call centers for the different politicians. They’re calling donors 24/7 trying to get more funding. All the time. The Reason leftist do not get anywhere, we don’t generate money
Well yeah, most of them refuse to take corporate money and SuperPAC donations. They don’t do insider trading when in office because they have consistent morals and ethics.
Also helps when they corporations who own the media refuse to cover you and your wins, and then pay for the milquetoast candidates who won’t tax them to win more.
Leftists don’t generate money on the top line. The fact that actual leftist policy would create a utopian society where everyone is prosperous is completely an afterthought, and that’s because the economic system is run by a bunch of giant babies with zero impulse control or sense of delayed gratification.
They still are being soft. Why would you think it would change?
Its just white noise. If you went back two months and addressed the KHive / Bidenbro block that was fanatically endorsing this campaign, does anyone seriously think “soft” or “safe” would be a term they’d use to describe the media appearances or the ground game?
No, of course not! Harris was Girl Boss. Cheeto Mussolini was the weak one. JD Vance was too busy fucking couches to answer the hard questions like “Why do you enjoy sucking Putin’s cock?” and “Why do you enjoy sucking Elon Musk’s cock?” and “Why do you enjoy sucking Peter Thiel’s cock?”
Meanwhile, Harris was out there punching illegal immigrants. She was making those effeminate cop-hating LGBTers eat Terf. She was out there dropping Facts And Logic on those stupid Iran-loving antisemetic ISIS students. She was bringing out the big guns with Liz Fucking Cheney and making sure every voter knew that America First A#1 City On A Hill sound of F-35s flying overhead we’re going to Beat Russia and Obliterate China and Nuke Far-Right Islamic Hate.
Nobody thought the campaign was “soft” in October of 2024. They were priding themselves on their BlueMAGA credentials.
Its only after they lost that we got to retcon the campaign as too squishy and liberal and egalitarian. Maybe next time they’ll bomb Dearborn Michigan or stage a full invasion of Tiajuana to prove they’re serious about being the most reactionary party in America.
I’m reading his “safe” comment in a bit of a different light. The Harris campaign was playing “safe” politics by ooh rah-ing about the military, guns, and the border. By throwing their full support behind Israel and shouting down and cutting out concerned for the Palestinian people. By running around with Liz Cheney.
Their campaign started off strong. Kamala was brat, Walz was calling Trump and his allies weird and joking about Vance fucking his couch. There was energy but they dropped the ball by switching to the “safe” Democrat campaign book. They didn’t go out to speak to the people where they were at town halls like Walz said in the article, they didn’t have firebrand Walz shining a flashlight on how bizarre Trump’s people are, they didn’t have a message that would excite the people and really shake up a statue quo that was slowly and inexorably draining Americans of their economic prospects. They just played the safe Democrat game of incrementalism and subservience to wealth and power rather than the people.
Obviously Walz didn’t say all this, but I think the “safety” he refers to absolutely refers to Kamala’s campaign adhering too closely to a traditional campaign style that was not going to win them much enthusiastic support.
Whereas I’m taking walz more literally. In my experience, they came out swinging, full of energy and novelty, getting that “weird” label stuck. I can even understand lack of policy or platform since apparently we no longer care about that.
… but then they started answering “no change”, the energy faded, they dropped out of the news. I don’t know if it’s just me, but they were invisible leading up to the election. Literally more concerned about not screwing up, playing it safe.
It’s not that Harris’ campaigne adhered too closely to a traditional campaign style, but that they let up on the gas approaching the finish line
They dialed it back to avoid upsetting their big corporate donors.
pretty much that, when they started courting right wingers it was over.
Well, good thing they did that, huh? This is so much better than that could have been. /s
You give him too much credit
No, that’s exactly what he meant. They stuffed Walz in a box and paraded around with the Cheneys the moment they got that endorsement. They played safe by playing to the center when they started strong by picking one of the most progressive governors for VP.
Well, Trump and the GOP are working to make sure Palestinians aren’t going to be an issue any more. By helping Israel genocide them.
Well they have a long way to go to eclipse Bidens support of racist genocide, but I’m sure they’ll try hard.
“A long way to go”??? Pretty sure removing Palestinians from Palestine is about as far as one can go.
Trump and the GOP aren’t just helping, they’re investing in the Palestinian extinction and planning to build golf resorts on their graves.
Jared kushner, and trump already have real estate planned in the area.
I enjoyed your comment for a few reasons, but have one question. Did you pick Dearborn Michigan at random off a mental map, or was there some specific reason for that city in particular?
Dearborn is frequently spoken about in conservative circles as “being taken over by Muslims.” Maybe that has something to do with it.
Dearborn was also the center of the pro-Palestine movement within the Democratic party.
michigan has a large muslim population, and dearborn is one of thier strongholds. i dont think michigan went to trump though. i said on reddit before coming here, that the gaza/ issue isnt that big of impact because most americans arnt that concerned about foreign policy, as they are about INFLATION, and social issues in the usa.
That’s why, yes. Big Somali ex-pat community. Sort of like how Columbus, OH got dumped on with the “They’re eating the dogs and the cats” line because older white residents were panicking at the influx of Haitians working the gradually renewing manufacturing sector.
I think it is the city in the US with the highest percentage of Arab Americans. But also maybe there’s a bit of oil there.
And the Dems are, mostly, still too safe. They need to start fighting while they still have a chance of stopping the insanity.
Step 1: Schumer needs to step down.
But they wore pink shirts and held up tiny auction bid signs!
Not all of them.
True! Just the wild and crazy ones!
Not just Chuck but the whole leadership of the Democrat party needs to go.
The entire party needs to go. Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
And whos stopping Republicans from going full steam ahead on gassing the Mexicans and trans people in the meantime?
It sure as fuck isn’t Democrats. Their ratchet effect enables Republicans
Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
That went horribly wrong in Russia. It turned out Lenin and Stalin didn’t represent anybody besides themselves. And their main targets weren’t people on the right, it was the other 2 socialist parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.
Communism was a mixed bag. For many east Europeans, the monarchy had observed the revolts of 1888 with horror and had concluded that technological progress would be the death of them, so they explicitly resisted industrialization. That means that while much of Western Europe was enjoying the fruit of industrialized agriculture and trains for transporting goods and people, East Europe were still living without trains; a sad experience that I can relate to as an American. In many cases, the arrival of the USSR was linked with rapid industrialization, as the soviets sought to modernize these countries that had been held back by their fearful monarchy and feudal lords. That doesn’t erase the bad stuff that happened, but there’s probably a lot more communist governments that you’ve never heard of from the global south that were actually just doing fine until the CIA said “not on my watch!” and set up violent right-wing movements to depose them. For more, see The Jakarta Method.
There’s never been a fully communist or capitalism government. The issue is we don’t hold those power to a higher standard. Under no situation should one politician or politics party should have this much power. The power needs to stay with the people more directly. The old system worked because information traveled slowly. We know what the American people want. And it’s not capitalism, nor communism.
What does ‘fully communist’ or ‘fully capitalist’ even mean? These are modes of production and schools of thought, not scales where something can be more capitalist or less capitalist.
China and even North Korea has carved out areas for capitalistic pursuits. The USSR still had “business” private industries. America has Social security and other social “businesses” For the longest time the post office turned a profit. Reagan ruined that. I’m saying there’s no way either system can work entirely by itself. Our whole idea of work, economics, and relationships with society needs a more radical approach than the apparent binary systems.
Liberals know as much about communism, and workers rights as Republicans. None
Please tell me how supportive Lenin was of the Workers’ Soviets as soon as the revolution got calmer.
While I agree, here’s what I worry about. Even if the leadership is replaced, the culture of the Democrats is to listen to consultants, voter panels etc. It’s commendable to take voters wishes into account, but what most voters want is a leader, not a listener.
Example: during the campaign voter panels talked about inflation and immigration whereas healthcare was ranked at the bottom. Therefore Democrats did not talk about healthcare.
But this is really a chicken and egg story. If nobody talks about healthcare, voters feel that healthcare is not on the ballot, and so they won’t mention the topic in voter panels. Luigi showed (once again) that healthcare in the US is fucked and that many people in fact care deeply about the topic. I am almost sure that Harris would have done better had she made healthcare the central issue of her campaign. The moral is that as long as Democrats are following, rather than leading, they will continue to lose elections.
They need to lead, but they also need to not just be reactionary. They should absolutely listen to what us voters are saying. But they should also be looking at the overall situation, and trying to understand why voters are not super stoked about how things are going instead of insisting “the economy is fine”. And then, maybe, I dunno, do some real, honest root cause analysis, and come up with some fucking creative solutions.
And by “they”, I mean the congresspersons themselves. Not an intern. Not a consultant. Not a lobbyist. The person who was elected. Do the work. Do your fucking job.
Reducing Democrats in Congress is the opposite of progress. We should be recalling Republican congresspeople that don’t represent their constituents, or we’ll be waiting until November 2026 for our next chance to flip seats.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state-officials
People vote for Republicans because if you think Democrats are never going to do anything to help you, you might as well vote for the party that will lower your taxes. There’s real problems with that logic, but it is true that Dems put serving corporations ahead of serving the people.
Trump and the GOP raised taxes on most middle class income groups in 2017, according to the official congressional JCT analysis.
We’re talking politics, not objective reality.
Step 2: pelosi needs to retire.
prison for her would be much better for everyone.
Still playing safe? They’re playing it even safer than before, and they have even less to lose. I don’t understand what they don’t get. They need to go on offense. Now is the time for it if ever. They literally have no power, so just make noise and make sure everything happening is loud and people know who’s doing it.
The dem leadership is absolutely too safe. The only ones saying what should be said are the ones that have no power.
Step 2: ditto Jeffries
Step 3: AOC and Bernie need to take their place.
Easy to say when it’s all over, but I still think they’re wrong.
They should try not being fake as fuck.
yeah that’s one way to put it.
2024 was not an election to play it safe or take the high road, yet every chance the DNC collectively got, they did just that.
They should have slung mud and gotten nasty.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get. It’s one of the reasons why they loose the power struggle so much.
Democrats and playing chess by the rules and Republicans are moving the pieces wherever they want as long as they can get away with it.
The Democrats could have delayed ACB being put on the supreme Court untill election time but they actively decided not to do so.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get.
Not every chance. They run against progressives in primaries sometimes. Then the gloves come off.
DNC leadership genuinely hate Bernie more than Trump.
Yes, Sanders is progressive, while trump is more in line with dnc leadership’s positions.
The Democrats always take the high road or the decorum path every chance they get.
This theory that Dems don’t play dirty is such a bald faced lie. Its rooted in the mythos of the party as an organization of high minded intellectuals and squishy naive good-natured hippies. But anyone who has gone through the trenches of a Dem primary or even bothered to recall the fine details of a general election, know this to be utterly false.
Dems are more than happy to smear their opponents as anti-American, even to the point of accusing them of outright treason. Liberal media orgs and influencers regularly advance personal attacks on their opponents’ personal lives (Obama himself won his Illinois Senate seat on the back of the incumbent’s infidelity), parade around “body language experts” and other hockey pseudo-scientists to degrade the reputation of the opposition, and outright fabricate claims (the Steele Dossier “pee tape” being the liberal companion to the conservatives’ “Whitey Tape” from four years prior) for the entertainment of a gullible base.
The Democrats could have delayed ACB plbeing but on the supreme Court untill election time but they actively decided not to do so.
The Dems could have put a Senator at the head of the Judiciary Committee that wasn’t drooling her way through the hearing. But Feinstein’s cemented position as senior California Senator was the result of the exact kind of cut-throat politics that has entrenched horrifyingly corrupt and incompetent politicians from Henry Cueller to Joe Manchin.
The first link is about a pro Israel PAC spending money against the Dems, so I’m not sure how relevant that is?
Of the others, the newest article is from 2019.
This is pretty tame compared to what their opposing party does, I’m not sure this is supporting your argument to the extent you want. Even Watergate is tame compared to most of the shit republicans have pulled since Obama won. I suppose you could cherry pick metrics, but honestly none of this is even bad enough to be compared to what republicans have done this week. They’re not saints, sure, but if your waiting to vote for a saint you might want to get a job as a Cardinal.
Your second link talks about an anti-trump strategy from the Clinton campaign that literally tried to highlight how stupid and vulgar he was, which only backfired because that’s what his supporters like about him
The third link is attempting to conflate some random hoax videos with the rumors of a “kompromat” pee tape putin supposedly had/has an trump, which doesn’t really have much to do with the Dems that I can tell.
The fourth link is about two Hillary supporters in 2016 admitting they spread the birther rumor, which again has what to do with the Dem party?
Yeah, of all of these, I guess the Clinton one is relevant, and yeah, everyone has long since agreed that was a terrible strategy, but I’m not sure how any of this is a smoking gun that, what, Dems are as bad as Republicans? I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make.
The first link is about a pro Israel PAC spending money against the Dems
A Dem aligned group, in a Dem primary, to support AIPAC friendly candidates by running smears on progressive incumbents
an anti-trump strategy from the Clinton campaign that literally tried to highlight how stupid and vulgar he was
She used campaign resources to promote Trump during the GOP primary
attempting to conflate some random hoax videos
Propagated by Dem proxies to promote a liberally endorsed false claim
two Hillary supporters in 2016 admitting they spread the birther rumor
Two campaign staffers
Not even nasty, just play ads of Fatputin spewing his idiotic/fascist nonsense non-stop, that would do it. There’s practically a never ending well of content from the last decade they could have used to make some truly devastating ad (grab 'em by the pussy, on a loop??), and how about going back and talking about his 1st term that ended in a year so bad it was a running joke? Nah, let’s talk about joy and leave it at some vague notion of this guy sucks, but not going into why. A coup attempt? Meh, we’ll show a clip of J6, but not bother mentioning it was a fucking coup attempt. Twice impeached convicted felon? Meh, let’s just leave it at some vague “not going back” slogan. Fucking malpractice. Again. Dems are either breathtakingly incompetent, or in cahoots.
And beyond that, democrats should have blast ads every 5 minutes about how George bush and trump both left us with the greatest recessions since the Great Depression. Bust the weird, non factual myth that republicans are good for the economy. Flip the script, the facts are there, they just suck ass at messaging and propaganda.
For sure, the well is endless, but instead they insist on believing the fairy tale that what people REALLY want, despite voting to the contrary every single fucking time, is bipartisanship and a party that chooses “they go low we go high” as a rallying cry. Let’s instead try and help rehab GWB and Darth Cheney, the guys who had worst terrorist attack in US history on their watch, followed by lying us into a war that cost untold billions and lives, ending in the worst financial collapse in almost 100 years. I’m old enough to remember Harry “keep our powder dry” Reid and Nancy “impeachment is off the table” Pelosi being my first real awakening to just how unwilling dems are to actually fucking fight the fascists, instead choosing time and again to do nothing or even help them. Working great, just need MORE of it, then it’ll work for sure! Just like tax cuts and deregulation, has turned out just great, just need it a little bit more and it will start working, honest!
That’s a fantastic idea. I hope a future Democratic campaign uses a strategy like this.
They should have been doing that for 40 fucking years.
Shorter sentences, bolder statements, hell, they needed to say things that didn’t entirely make sense when you analyzed them, but sounded cool. Political campaigns clearly need to be more approachable, more relatable than what the Dems are doing. Look at AOC, Bernie, and JC, THAT is the messaging that resonates.
Also, way more calls to action. What are YOU doing and what should I do? And stop asking me for damn money - you can invoice me when the work is complete.
Too safe? No, they were too center.
Surely the Democrats will stop moving to the center now that they understand that they weren’t properly addressing the needs of the people… right? right?
That’s the safest take he could have on the situation.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
The other big problem is that politics have become such a negative impact on people’s lives in the US that regular people don’t want to run for office anymore, which is what we really need.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
They sure as eff do!
Pelosi hated the left long before the left hated her.
It’s to the point that I might prefer either a direct democracy with no representatives at all or electing reps via a lottery system. Most of the people with the desire to run for office, and all but a handful of those with the characteristics necessary to wade through the muck of special interests and campaign finance to actually get in office, are the kind of people you want as far away from power as possible.
The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke has government by lottery.
More and more this monty python sketch was spot on. With the DNC as Arthur only caring about the lord of the castle, centrists carrying the bags and clapping the cocnuts together, and progressives as the peasants: autonomous colletcive
We have the technology for direct democracy. The reason we dont do it is that it would take the rich out of power. With direct votes we’d have universal health care and Israel wouldnt have gotten its war support. We’d have action on climate control. We’d have signed onto the ICC. We’d have much stricter gun laws. We’d hold police to professional conduct standards. We’d have term limits and codes of ethics. We’d fund our teachers and firefighters better. Our military would be much smaller.
Test potential politicians for mental illnesses and make sure they have empathy etc. Make them do mandatory counselling. I mean, counsellors and mental health workers have to do this because they’re working with vulnerable people, but politicians don’t??? Their decisions affect everyone, including vulnerable people.
Impossible. You can’t have tests like that for candidates or voters. You just end up reinventing literacy tests.
Not to mention the eugenicism this would ignite.
How so? Bad eggs would be simply rejected.
The eugenicism is because of the tests; not the politicians.
You think this would work because you assume we could write such tests with such accuracy as to evade bias (or that such requirement for testing wouldn’t be exploited by opportunists to place metrics much more aligned with whom said opportunists would like to eradicate).
I’d point out that you say the tests should test for empathy but Empathy Deficit Disorder exists and, as EDD people often point out, the lack of being able to feel empathy doesn’t stop them from wanting to help people and making choices based off that desire. They just don’t feel empathy when they do it.
Of course, you’re not using that word to mean literally understanding and relating to others’ feelings; sympathy would certainly qualify.
But how do you ensure that? Who gets to implement these tests? And what stops it from being someone who just sees Empathy Deficit Disorder and goes, “Eew…keeping them away from this….”
I always feel to like I sound like I’m being condescending but (and I mean this as genuinely as possible) you should try selling out writing and theory by disabled authors. Because of the way disabled people are erased from both culture and society as practically a matter of function, it can be really hard to even realize the ways in which our assumptions don’t factor them in. Stuff covering ability and autonomy are incredibly interesting in the ways they think about concepts due different lived experiences.
We already assess people for mental health issues. I’m saying that politicians should be under massive scrutiny to make sure that we’re not allowing people with deficits in the areas which would make them callous, self-serving and so on, to rule over people, particularly vulnerable people. Pathological liars and manipulators shouldn’t be given a platform or the respectability of office to brainwash people on a global scale. Its almost so basic and obvious as to be unspeakable, but we know now that we must structure our societies & create standards to keep these people out of power.
We in fact should select for the traits that we want/don’t want in leaders and only allow people into politics who have those traits. This testing is already happening in many professions, maybe even most. Even shitty customer service jobs use these tests - well, all I’m saying is that we need politicians to be tested as much as astronauts are. How can that possibly be a bad idea?
I don’t think the metrics and so on should be any different than what already exists. Respected people in the psychology field have already said that trump is mentally ill in such a way that he’s unfit to rule.
The problem is that now he’s manoeuvred himself into a position where he can’t be removed, and soon even us talking like this will be illegal.
I’m all for disability rights, just not to the detriment of public safety - which exists in every sensitive field. Politics is a sensitive field. Politicians should be strong in emotional, compassionate and cognitive empathy, as well as sympathy. They should also have a good track record of being moral and decent people. Stealing from cancer kids charities would be a no, no matter what disability that person had.
This could be summed up as ‘no tolerance for intolerance’ or ‘no kindness towards cruelty’.
People working in psychiatry are judged in this way, but not politicians? Politicians have way more responsibility over people’s lives. They should be under maximum scrutiny and we should be as sure as we can be that they’re the best of us, including morally. We already make them have health checks.
i don’t love the implication here that politicians are corrupt due to mental illness. they can be perfectly average mentally and still be corrupt because corruption is an innate and ever-present exploit of human psychology. empathetic people can be mistaken of where to place their empathy. mentally ill people can be a better option for a public office than someone else who is neurotypical, it all comes down to their platform and record of reliability. disability should not be mutually exclusive with ability to govern.
Power corrupts, yes, but you must see it in your life, and certainly if you’ve ever had dealings with the police or been mistreated by a teacher at school… Not all but some people in those roles are doing it precisely because they get a kick out of misusing their power, often when people are vulnerable and so can’t defend themselves.
This is a character flaw at a minimum but can be part of a mental illness. I don’t think the line is so definite between mental illness or health. People can have traits of illness without enough dysfunction to be diagnosed with the illness.
Disability which is incompatible with kindness, understanding, decency etc should not be allowed power over people, especially vulnerable people. Most people who were ill and were decent would not want to be in a position where they could harm people. Cluster B’s and such wouldn’t care. If they don’t care (consistently), then they shouldn’t be in a position of power over people. There are plenty of other jobs.
Looking at trump in particular the reliance on voters being good judges of character has to end, which means there must be a mechanism in place to prevent people like trump ever getting near power.
i think the second we open up the avenue for certain character traits to be banned from public office, it opens up a new avenue and mechanism for oppressive government bodies to prevent their opponents from gaining power against them. Who gets to decide what traits count as disqualifying? what measures do we use to identify who has met this threshold? where and how could someone be treated for these in order to gain back eligibility? how difficult would it be to change these rules if they were incorrect? how hard would it be for a bad actor to change these rules for their own gain? how much money would be spent on this and the lawsuits that return from it?
I’d guess a council of psychologists would administer their own tests under lie detector, perhaps a yearly lottery from an eligible pool of reputable and experienced specialists, maybe also other renowned experts. No positions being permanent could eliminate some problems. The difficult part would be deciding where the lines are drawn. Someone like trump should be easy to disqualify without any testing, just from his widely reported past record of scams, fraud etc.
Imagine a young Putin, whose service record is largely secret, not much other history to go off, who doesn’t give away much, surely has information about past testing and is very smart.
So it’s not going to be 100% reliable, just a tool to hopefully improve the situation. It could begin with disqualification being reserved for only the worst, and then record how candidates perform vs predictions and readjust as necessary.
As to treatment, its impossible to say, it really depends on the individual to know if it’s even possible. Also whether its a good idea to let candidates repeat what are essentially aptitude tests which they could cheat.
If anyone is subject to oppressive government scrutiny it should be politicians.
i think it would be infinitely simpler to just ban the actions you don’t want people to do and a better mechanism to enforce it than to try and police the amorphous qualities of their character and behavior. Like, our problem here is that the executive branch has been granted too much power by congress, corporations are treated like people and can vote with their dollars, and congress + the supreme court have no mechanism to enforce laws against the executive branch. If the system was actually segregated enough in duties and insulated from capital, it would be immune to the effects of someone even as bad as trump. It would also prevent all of the false positives and the mechanisms for abuse that would open when we start calling people ineligible for innate and immeasurable qualities.
Yep. Every time I hear Jeffries talk I am thinking “shut the fuck up and go fetch AOC”.
They were too far right. They pursued the “moderate republican” vote and lost spectacularly.
It is a politically suicidal idea. But they just can’t stop themselves. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is what they do best.
That was what they thought the “safe” thing to do was. “Decorum” and “reaching across the isle”. All that “when they go low, we go high!” shit, in the face of actual Nazis.
More like “when they get votes, we go bye”
Democrats think they’re in a fairy tale, still asleep having the American dream. It’s all offices with rich histories and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades in their world. Their campaign donors are “good proud American businessmen (and WOMEN!) who show the world that evil communism isn’t the answer and only centrist cooperation can achieve freedom!”
It’s why they thought they’re could win by having a brat summer. They thought “we’re clearly the good guys, the ones who like civil rights, hell we’re running a half black, half Indian woman!”
And now that they fucking lost their answer is “wear pink and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ on the house floor” when the ONLY ONE OF THEM to stand up to Trump, in the most minor of ways mind you, is censured - and fucking 10 OF THEM VOTED FOR IT! YOU WEAK, INEFFECTUAL ASSHOLES!
Decorum and traditional norms will not save you now. Get out and speak truth to power. Shit all over them on the news. EASY QUOTES THAT GO VIRAL. Vote as a bloc against everything they try to do. Filibuster, stall, use procedure against then whenever you can. BE FUCKING BULLIES for your cause, because they sure as shit have been doing it to you for 50 FUCKING YEARS. The SAME GODDAMN GUY WITH NIXON is running around dressed like a CARTOON VILLAIN who ties women to train tracks and is still RATFUCKING YOU
god DAMMIT if I’d have known that the majority of adults in this world were so goddamn stupid I’d have made much different decisions in my life
You mean touting the endorsement of war criminal Dick Cheney wasn’t a good thing?
Could have even been worse, they could have made his daughter the vp pick
No excuse for the DNC, but I think seeking the “moderate Republicans” is a condition of their big donors. Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough. And despite all polling that suggests otherwise, they keep doing it.
In general, they would get more money and power if they won, so why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot every fucking time? In my mind, even if you factor in that they don’t give a shit about the common people and are motivated by money, it only makes sense if they are being manipulated by their big donors to do this stupid shit.
They get far more money being the foil of leftist movements by making themselves the only option for anything less far right than the conservatives and then paying lip service to the left while continuing to support moderate conservative policy.
Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough.
That was true thru Obama but it stopped with Biden. Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ, even though Dem voters could have chosen even more progressive candidates.
Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ
Centrists’ big lie.
Harris’s husband and brother in law steered Harris right into defeat. She shouldnt have trusted a word those two idiots said.
See that’s funny because every single left leaning moderate I know (including myself) thinks they were/are way too left and they need to “come back towards center” so to speak.
For people even sorta in the middle both parties appear to be playing a game where they sprint as fast as they can towards extremism and most people aren’t down with that.
They don’t need to try and court moderate Republicans. They need to gain back the moderate lefties they lost over the last 10+ years.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/democratic-party-left-liberal-q-poll/index.html
I know that Lemmy has very different views on the topic, but you guys are the extreme left. So of course you find the Democrats trying to go back towards getting moderate vote again as the “wrong move”. Unfortunately you guys (I am speaking broadly at the general political leanings of Lemmy I know you guys arent all far left) are the minority of the total political spectrum these days.
Hey I’m curious, what do you think about the Democrats is “too far left”? Like actual policies because the article you linked lists 4 positions that aren’t a part of the parties platform and never have been.
I was really curious. Hopefully they will come back.
They did and are refusing to answer. They’re just a conservative that’s larping as a Democrat for internet points.
If you’re a ‘left leaning moderate’ that thinks the democrats are too left, you’re right-wing. The democratic party in the US is a center-right party.
My political stances didn’t change. I was firmly left in ~2012 and now you guys call me right wing. Who moved?
Fucking moderates.
Yeah keep that up. I’m sure you guys are totally gonna win in 2028 by continuing to alienate anyone who doesn’t agree with you 100% across the board.
Fucking progressives.
Ironic, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing, dingus?
No. I’m pointing out how disconnected from reality the far left (Lemmy) is.
Of the two political parties of the US right now only one is going to kick you out immediately for disagreeing with them on certain things. The other one doesn’t really care if you have different opinions on certain topics.
The Ideological homogeneity required by today’s left/democrats pushes out so many people that I don’t think they will be able to win another election again.
I want the Democrats to have viable candidates and run on good policy again, but more than anything I want them to shed this inflexible and dogmatic voter base they have been fostering over the last 16 years.
You do know the American political compass is special among political compasses, right? Compared to Europe (or even Canada), our definition of “moderate” is their equivalent of “conservative”. Likewise, our “left” is “center”.
Wishing the already-not-left Democratic Party starts shifting even more right is wishing for a two-party system where the options are conservatism and fascism.
I’m not talking about a global scale. I’m just talking about the US and how those terms are used here.
I’m not touching that broader conversation about political scales globally.
Here in the US both parties have been running in opposite directions and in most people’s eyes the left has been running faster. Hence the article. One of many that found similar data when polling americans. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle and that is crux of the issue.
Yeah, no.
The only thing that has shifted left in the Democratic Party is the public’s perception of them. They intentionally fuck over actual leftists (aka progressives) within their party while offering up milquetoast policies that look progressive on paper but are either completely toothless or designed to benefit to their corporate lobbyists first and foremost.
They’re a conservative party who used rainbow capitalism to masquerade as the comparatively left-wing alternative to the Republican Party. The reality is that every election cycle in the past two decades, they’re promising more “liberal” ideas while acting more conservative. Do you know who had a record number of deportations under their administration? It’s not Trump. It’s not Obama. It’s Biden.
Anybody that thinks the Democratic Party is sliding any direction other than right is either right-wing and arguing in bad faith, an anti-“woke” moron like Elon Musk, or consuming too much Fox News.
every single left leaning moderate I know (including myself)
My user note on you and vague memory of your post history determined this to be a blatant lie. You claim to be that, but you most certainly are not
Yes I’ve gone over this with various users on here already. You have me tagged as a Republican or whatever, but every single time anyone has asked me about specific stances they find that I am not.
This is exactly the type of shit I am talking about. The modern left only accepts people who agree with them on all things and think exactly like them. Any slight deviation is viewed as a threat and shoved forcefully away.
have me tagged as a Republican or whatever
I have you tagged as a Conservative, actually, which is accurate based on your repeated comments spewing right-wing bullshit like transphobic lies
The modern left only accepts people who agree with them on all things
No, just most things, especially the big and easy ones
I’m not conservative at all lmao. Y’all kill me with that shit.
Holding the opinion that biological women and trans women are not the same and shouldn’t be treated as such just means I have eyeballs and a functioning brain. I don’t think they deserve any hatred or attacks. I simply don’t think they should be playing sports along side biological women because they are not physically the same as biological women. I think trans people deserve as much love and respect anybody else. I just do not subscribe to your delusional world where they are also 100% exactly the same as their bilogical mirror. There are differences and no matter what you say it won’t change those facts.
I don’t agree with you on all things but I know you are well intentioned so I could happily co-exist with you.
I’m just guessing here (feel free to correct me) that because of my opinions on this topic you would not wish to associate with me whatsoever and you probably think I am evil right?
That is the difference I am talking about.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Denies being a duck.
You know it’s hard to tell who’s actually a duck anymore when you call anyone that blinks differently than you a duck.
Bro, look at the total stream of your comments. You spent a whole day arguing with god knows how many people about different iterations of this same accusation, basically that you are a dem but everyone keeps calling you conservative.
Maybe the problem here is you, give that a thought. Or dont. I dont care what you do. But your single note woe-is-me trolling is disengenuous and tedious, and maybe you could tone that down a bit and comment less, or with a little more diversity of thought.
I have not once claimed I am currently a dem on this website. I have said Multiple times that I used to be one. I’ve been an independent since 2016.
Multiple people on Lemmy have marked me as a conservative/Republican incorrectly because I have one or two stances that don’t align with the left and they assume that I must be a full on Trumpy because of that.
You can see right there that most of my opinions land me pretty much smack dab in the middle of most categories.
