Summary
Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized Trump for economic chaos while taking personal responsibility for the situation during an MSNBC interview.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election — and we didn’t,” Walz told Chris Hayes. He called Trump the “worst possible business executive” and praised the Wall Street Journal’s editorial criticizing Trump’s tariff war.
Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump. Recently, he acknowledged a leadership void in the Democratic Party and admitted spending too much time combatting Trump’s false claims about immigrants.
“I think Americans have had it,” Walz explained. ”… Look, I own this. We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election ― and we didn’t.”
Good to see someone from the campaign acknowledge “getting votes” was the campaign’s entire job, and losing the election is the fault of the campaign.
I hope Walz runs in a competitive primary and gets the nomination.
But if they try to just hand a baton off, we’re gonna see the same result.
Primaries are only competitive if the people show up to them.
Primaries are only competitive if we actually have them
I feel like if Biden had stuck with something like, “I’m going to be one term and let some younger folks lead, we need some folks who are going to see the consequences of their actions running the show, not 70 and 80 year olds.” and had an actual primary, Harris wouldn’t have been the nominee and said nominee would have won. There’s a few other things that could have helped, but the short campaign was definitely a huge stumbling block.
Yes indeed, but also primaries can help to attract voters. I think the Sanders campaigns, though he didn’t win, made young people more likely to vote Democrat.
I’ve seen people argue Biden and Jamie Harrison had a following out, and that Biden never really planned to run again, he just wanted to spoil the primary and push a very unpopular Harris onto the ticket.
We did, in fact, have primaries. There were like 9 choices for the Democratic nominee in my state. Better challengers could have run but didn’t. Yes I know the DNC using funding to “encourage” or “discourage” but that doesn’t change the fact that challengers could have, and did, run in the primaries.
Nobody voted for Harris in the 2024 Democratic primary and she was still the nominee, picked by the head nerds at the DNC
That is partially true. We the voters did not vote for Harris, but the Biden delegates who the primary voters sent to the convention did.
Yeah, and Biden was old. Even before his obvious deterioration, there was always a chance he wouldn’t make it through the term and Kamala would have to step up. If you voted for Biden in the primaries and were NOT ready for a potential future of a Harris presidency, I don’t know what you were thinking.
Like I said: The head nerds at the DNC picked her.
yes, but those head nerds were elected by the primary voters.
Primaries are kind of a moot point for the incumbent if they want to run again.
Trump in 2020 had 2,549 delegates. The next closest was Bill Weld with 1.
Biden in 2024 had 3,905 delegates. The next closest was uncommitted with 37.
Obama in 2012 had 3,514 delegates. The next closest there was also uncommitted, with 72.
Bush in 2004 had a clean delegate sweep of 2,509.Yep. But it’s generally (just learned that Florida and Delaware Democratic parties cancelled theirs in 2024) not because the state parties just reject any other names to be put on the primary ballot. But there’s still a lot of people saying there was no primary or that the DNC wouldn’t let any challengers run. Just generally misplaced anger that they didn’t have better Presidential candidates to vote for when the reality is that better people just chose not to run. Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?
Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?
There’d have to be a primary challenger who beat the incumbent first, and I don’t think that one has happened. I know Ted Kennedy got relatively close (Well, closer then the others I’ve mentioned, still blown out 1900 to 1200 delegates) to knocking out Carter on the Dem side, other then that, Reagan and Ford in 1976 was decided 1,121 to 1078 for Ford.
NO! NO! NO!
NOOOOOOO!
Do not nominate Tim Walz you stupid assholes. He was the blue republican addon to make the progressive Harris campaign appeal to centrists and republicans. He wanted to “expand israel’s borders”. He was elected in a district that ran straight red like the blood of the innocence for a long time before he won it, and then he lost that district during the election.
He was the blue republican addon to make the progressive Harris campaign appeal to centrists and republicans.
The what Harris campaign?
We have free public school lunches for all our kids here in Minnesota because of Governor Walz. How the fuck is that “blue republican”?
He might be further left than any republican but hes as far right as a Democrat can be. As I have said before I will vote for him, but I gurantee you millions of leftists won’t.
Good. Maybe we can finally convince some people around here.
Unlikely.
Its like pod save cracked open all their heads, took a crap, and sealed them all back up.
Nope, because the majority of the people that are in these comments in this post and in several others that are acknowledging that the Democrats fucked up will start punching left again in about three years. And they will repeat their failures from 2016 2020 2024.
Nope. This is on Biden. It’s his fault Harris/Walz were put into an impossible situation.
That senile old fuck was supposed to be a one-term president. If they’d spent 4 years planning for 2024 instead of sitting around with their thumbs up their asses maybe they could have run a winning campaign.
But no, Joe was too proud or stupid or both to stick to that plan. This election was lost the instant he doddered his way on to the debate stage on 6/27/24.
It’s on Biden and Garland for not throwing Trump in prison the second his term ended.
Amen. 4 years to build a case? January 6th, spend 6-12 months and file charges. What the fuck were they doing for 4 years?
Running out the clock.
To hell with his January 6th temper tantrum, he should be in the fucking Hague for his handling of Covid.
The Oligarchy will never convict one of their own. For four years, I said it was the dog and pony show. And in the end, nothing will happen to Trump. Here we are.
Lots and lots of balls were dropped. Garland didn’t get Trump in jail when he could have. Biden didn’t stick to only one term. A democratic candidate wasn’t really elected when Biden stepped down (for the record, I think that Harris was more than qualified, but a lot of people were upset that she was just “chosen”). Harris didn’t try to stand out and be her own candidate - she mostly just stuck with the status quo and never disagreed with Biden. Etc etc etc.
Warning bells started going off in my head the moment that the Democrats announced that Harris was going to be the candidate after Biden dropped out, not because I thought she was an unqualified candidate but because there was no time taken to search for other candidates. Maybe it was too close to the election to take the time to go through the rigamarole of all that but I think even a cursory effort to do so would have gone a long way towards making it feel like people’s opinions actually mattered. Biden dropping out was huge (at least to me) because it felt like an acknowledgement of the voters who had consistently felt like they were held hostage for their votes because the alternative was a fascist.
It doesn’t help either that they went on to repeatedly shoot themselves in the feet while chasing moderate Republican votes, getting other prominent Democrats to chastise certain classes of voters and breeding the same voter apathy that hurt them in 2016, and their refusal to acknowledge that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide that we shouldn’t help Israel perpetrate.
On your last point, I don’t think Dems could’ve done anything different. They’re clearly in Israel pockets and they can’t disobey their corporate overlords and run on a more progressive agenda. Only other option was to try hard to get the “centrists”. Incredibly disappointing as they would rather lose and go hard fascist rather than let their donors lose any money (how’s that stock market looking?).
Yeah, the moment I knew we were in trouble was when they publicized that video of Obama lecturing down to some black men about not supporting Harris enough. Whoever thought staging that was a good idea needs to retire from politics forever and go find a field to stand in.
It’s also the campaign money, only goes to Harris, and not anyone else. They are legally required to return all that fundraising to the donors if they use a different candidate
Putting trump in jail would’ve made America look bad. Oh, the irony.
Garland never had any intention to prosecute trump
A cascade of failures. Beyond Joe not man enough GTFO, the DNC once again anointed a letter instead of letting the public decide. yes, Joe should never have run for a second term. Given that he did, he should have dropped out sooner. Given that he didn’t, the DNC should have had an open convention rather than putting their thumbs on the scale in back room deals.
Tim is 100% right that we would not be in this mess if they had won, but when is the DNC going to stop trying to manipulate everything and lie to us about it? They are to blame as much as Repugnacans.
Harris made choices. She could have chosen not to adopt every single one of Bidens policies. What was biden going to do, fire her? If you look back at her presidential run she really struggled to articulate any policies back then too.
This is on anyone who was within arms reach of Trump in the last decade and didn’t take matters into their own hands.
Yeah a bunch of people want to make excuses for 90 million people who just… Didn’t think it was important who won.
Campaign was flawed but if people showed up to vote against fascism we wouldn’t be here. And there’s zero excuse for all 90 million of them to not show up.
Edit- well, Im reading your post in a different light but, yes that too.
If you didn’t notice, Democrats were aligning with fascism.
Funny, I noticed they were the only ones running campaigns with a legitimate change of winning against the fascists.
Talking about winning against fascism and actually doing something or not the same thing, they talk a big game and then end up capitulating to Republicans.
Winning elections is the only way to keep power from the hands of fascists that doesn’t involve extralegal actions.
Which fascist is gonna keep fascism out of power, the blue one or the red one?
Biden made an appropriate decision to back out. He should have done it much sooner. But I’m not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden’s fault. I don’t really feel that’s fair.
Harris’ main draw was that she didn’t want to do anything, which pissed off progressives. She was pro-establishment and pro-status quo. She didn’t need Biden’s help to not get votes… I have no love for Biden, but the truth is the truth.
But I’m not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden’s fault.
Inasmuch as they ran as a continuation of his policy, I’d say there’s some blame to be had.
So you’re saying that two adults chose to run an unpopular and non-working Biden “plan” which was proven to not work, and that’s also Bidens fault because two completely unrelated people decided to also use that plan?
Does your brain not work?
They used his blueprint. He bears some responsibility.
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If biden hadn’t been such a mildewy dishrag of a president, his VP might have won. Now insult me more since it’s all centrists do when people expect better of them.
And again this is about you hating Biden. Which is fine, hate him. But how long are you going to blame everything on him like a petulant child?
Next week when you stub your toe you’re going to blame him?
His Vice President chose to run for office. She chose the platform that she chose to run with. It wasn’t Joe Biden’s platform it wasn’t even loosely tangential to Joe Biden’s platform. But it’s his fault in your eyes because you feel that she stole his platform…
Go back and reread my anecdote about the police. You made it even more relevant.
They probably realised Harris wasn’t going to win due to the amount of prejudice and thought Biden had a better chance against trump (who they’d have guessed would have been axed after his loss and criminality, but it was a cult), but then they let Biden to abdicate because there was truth in the criticism of him and the media ran with it…
At that point who else could they run? It was bad planning, not accounting for Biden’s age/health and the cult of trump.
Also they should have given Bernie his shot. They didn’t want real change and it’s been forced on them anyway, but now to the detriment of all.
I disagree Mr. Walz. Had Biden not sat on his hands after being given the power of god by the supreme court - we wouldn’t be in this mess today.
You don’t even need to go to the SCOTUS decision. Would have been enough for Biden to order his DOJ to immediately arrest and imprison Trump, in the same way that Trump is currently arresting and imprisoning American residents. We’ve done far worse to people suspected of espionage for far less.
Exactly this!
I’m still baffled Joe is a free man, must be a consequence of having lots of money.
There’s no money to be made by either Trump or President Musk, so why bother with arresting him?
Spite I imagined
But I guess he never locked her up so
Shit if Biden had engaged with the 25th amendment in good faith and we’d had President Harris for a year already it would have been totally different.
Yep. There were several possible paths that kept America a democracy and put the orange traitor where he belonged - none of which Biden and company chose. Instead - they turned tail and ran - even in the face of overwhelming evidence of voter fraud and manipulation.
DNCs fault for blocking Bernie
Not you walz but the Democratic party. Send out 19 billion to Israel while our kids were hungry in school.
There’s no leadership void in the Democratic Party, it’s been Bernard Sanders for quite a while. Them denying this is to their (and everyone elses) detriment. Just run Bernie/AOC and let’s get this over with.
Nancy Pelosi is the leadership of the Democrats. And AOC was not allowed to become top house dem. They chose Gerry
AtrickConnely instead.AOC and Bernie will never be allowed to do anything besides sheepdogging progressives into the Democratic party. And at this point it appears they are fully on board with that.
Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries may control the official party apparatus, but when it comes to communicating and connecting with constituents and energizing the base, AOC and Bernie are clearly the only ones acting as opposition leaders.
At some point they have to fall in line and follow orders. Or fade into obscurity. It’s a truly shitty system. One long overdue for a big reset…
Sheepdogging is why Bernie’s out on the road right now.
This headline is trash. He’s saying we wouldn’t be in this mess if they’d won. The headline makes it sound like he’s taking much more blame than his actual quote implies.
I read it as “we didn’t win because we didn’t try hard enough.”
He states pretty clearly that democrats need to offer more than just not being another person.
It’s unfortunate because he was definitely not the problem.
When they sidelined him and started campaigning with the Cheneys, any blame was taken off of him.
They muzzled him despite the fact that calling Republicans “weird” was working.
Absolutely. Harris didn’t do a single thing to show she was any different than a piece of paper with talking points on it. She did nothing to inspire anyone of anything.
On their other hand, when Tim Walz spoke, I was fucking screaming in my parent’s basement critical support to him. lmfao He fucking got me going, I would have rallied behind that dude.
But no, no progress, only centrist democratic bullshit as the entire country gets pulled out from under us
I’m just so sick of the bs centrist dem bullshit where they won’t pull left in anyway because they’re so focused on their big dollar donors
Props to him for taking ownership of it. It means a lot even if it isn’t fully his fault.
He’s much more down to earth than the democratic establishment, or even Harris.
At least, this is the vibes I’m getting.
I don’t blame him, despite not knowing that much about him.
The voters deserve a lot of blame here.
You can lead a horse to water…
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect, and no single candidate is going to align 100% with your stance. Demanding that they do, or else you’ll vote for literally the worst possible option, or sit out, or vote a “protest” vote, all so that someone, somewhere will “learn” something is just fucking childish and stupid. And this will be continue to be true no matter how many times the Tone Police show up to admonish people about blaming voters. Sorry, not sorry: I blame the voters.
I agree, I’m also happy that people like Walz seem to want to give people a better option, making a protest vote even less appealing.
I blame the voters.
It means you never have to listen or change in any way, so of course you do.
LOL, I am a voter. Are you under the impression that I have any direct influence over the Democratic Party? 🤣
LOL, I am a voter. Are you under the impression that I have any direct influence over the Democratic Party?
According to your comment, voters are to blame, not the infallible holy party. So good work electing trump. It’s all your fault.
Harris could have aligned with 99% of what I wanted, but that 1% was OK with genocide, and that should have been a red line for anyone.
So, the alternative was little d, because that’s so much better?
The alternative in every instance is always no Democrats. We already have a right wing party, we don’t need two.
There were two viable options only.
When your two options are both right wing reactionaries, there are not two options.
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect
The best I can do is fall for blatant Russian propaganda and then get mad when someone calls me out on it.
It sure is convenient how all criticism comers from russians so you can ignore it.
You’ll have to try better than that comrade.
Kind of like anyone that finds faults with other leftists is a “centrist”, right?
Don’t you have voters to blame for your party’s decades of complete incompetence?
It’s so obvious the democratic party lied about Biden to get through the nomination phase and used the fact that the money already donated for the campaign was specifically to Biden or Harris and would not have easily been given over to any other new candidate. You do have to wonder, especially after how Trump was greeted by them, just what actually happened here. The fact is that the truth about Bidens condition should have been known, he should have decided not to run, and the Democratic party should’ve had a real primary for real candidates and new ideas. Tim Walz was as bad of a VP pick as Tim Kaine. The white guy as VP to shore up the right wing vote is a total myth. Biden was kind of the first one, then Tim Kaine, then Tim Walz. It just doesn’t work. Neither will Newsoms podcast attempt at finding common ground which he hopes will translate into moderate votes. Democrats really have no clue just how bad things are about to get…
I wouldn’t be surprised if Newsom pulls a Tulsi Gabbard and switches sides. He had Charlie Kirk (of TPUSA) on his podcast where he “completely aligned” with him on trans rights (i.e. eradicating us), then had Steve Bannon on. That’s a bit much even for the Liz Cheney flank of the DNC.
I suspect Newsom doesn’t see any future for his party, and is bailing out instead.
In my experience, the higher up you go in both parties, you tend to sort of arrive at the same places with the same people… and most importantly, the same donors and the same money machine. That’s the great thing about the U.S. dollar really, corruption and selling Govt from Citizens United to today sort of drives the bipartisan nature of it because it all greases the wheels of the two party political machine.
I’ve listened to several episodes of his podcast… I’ll probably continue listening but in the first episode Newsom basically kept saying he only got into college because his scores were low and he played baseball. Then he kept backing down to Charlie Kirk, Bannon, etc, while constantly saying he doesn’t know what to do and kept asking them for ideas. In the first episode, there was a moment where he said Jesus Fucking Christ or something to Charlie Kirk, which called him out on it. It’s like, the very voters he’s trying to go after will hear that and stop at the first episode. He will gain no allies on the right as he abandons the party he is supposed to believe in, along with the core values he is supposed to defend. He thinks having a podcast with right wing guests where he gets sort of transactional on the issues. Like, do you think giving up the trans in sports debate is going to win you anything when their entire side would like to see gay marriage go away entirely? While you claim to still even support that? Do these people even think any of this through?
If Newsoms approach is the best the Democrats have to offer, then it might be game over for a very long time…
Newsom is an amazing combination of a spineless coward and a heartless monster that if he’s the Democratic Candidate, it might be the first year I don’t vote. I will NEVER willingly put a transphobe in the White House.
That’s EXACTLY what I’m expecting, when he stood up to Trump I thought he’d be alright, but the dude has basically been courting the Far Right and going all in on being as transphobic as possible.
He’ll run the sadly profitable “I was on the Left peacefully drinking Kombucha and eating Avocado Toast like the next pink pussyhat wearing hippie, but then they went too far when they tried to tell me the Holocaust actually happened! They’ve gone completely nuts!” grift.
I’ve been wondering if there’s a gas leak at Newsom’s house. The hell happened to him?
the truth about Bidens condition should have been known
It was known, and lots of us were shouting from the rooftops about it, But Democrats and liberals did everything they could to shut us up, accuse us of being Russian bots, accuse us of helping to get Trump elected, when it was liberals that got Trump elected by ignoring the people that saw every single sign
It didn’t help that the New York Times and other media outlets were all in on talking shit about Biden, and that undermined their credibility on the age issue. It was only after Biden’s disastrous showing at his debate with Trump that the average voter had any credible evidence of his decline.
All we needed to do was take off their rose colored glasses. The evidence was plainly in view for everyone to see.
Gavin’s going to run more Diet Republican than any Democrat ever before and that’s going to make even my “Blue, no matter who!” ass not vote for him. I’m already thinking about staying home in '28 because Trump can’t win a third time and Gavin’s a transphobe.
It wasn’t really Tim’s fault. I will never understand why Kamala decided it was more important to try to court Republicans than get Democrats excited. Democrats, and I know this will be a big surprise to Democratic leadership, don’t want to vote for conservatives.
I just want a candidate who calls out the fleecing of the American people to the benefit of the 1%.
To stop breaking everyone down to this or that identity. The Repugnacans are doing a great job of making this look like it’s about identity politics and the Dems keep taking the bait. It’s not. It’s about money and power. They are happy to throw red meat in the pit and walk off all the richer while we squabble.
Meanwhile Democrats are lining up Rham Emanuel and Gavin Newsom to run. Lol
Dear fucking God not Newsom. That dude is a bigger turd than Hillary.
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And Gavin Newsom started a podcast and is cozying up to crazy right wingers.
It’s gonna be newsom, and they’ve already chosen for us.
I hope I’m wrong.
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Instead of frittering away the last few months of his presidential term, Biden should have just resigned and allowed Harris to take over his role. She could have pivoted way to the left without having to undermine Biden’s agenda and that would have really sent a clearer message to the democratic base.
She could have pivoted way to the left
But she wouldn’t have.
If voting patterns of America ever showed something consistently, it is the fact that shifting to the left in any sense never works. You can sometimes entice the public with enough vigor so they don’t focus on your politics, but outside of very rare cases, shifting to the right consistently brings some votes, and shifting to the left consistently brings loses.
And no amount of social media posts was able to change it weirdly enough.
It might have something to do with consistent anti-voting narrative of a lot of the vocal leftists, coupled with their bafflement that they consistently don’t get a desired outcome.If voting patterns of America ever showed something consistently, it is the fact that shifting to the left in any sense never works.
Sounds like a great excuse to only move right.
I don’t blame Harris or Walz. I don’t even blame Biden, the senile old fool that he so clearly is.
I blame the Americans for fucking up the most outrageously obvious binary choice in history.
Has there ever been an election so obvious? Even during Trump vs Clinton one could almost be forgiven for giving Trump the benefit of the doubt as a “political outsider”, but by 2024 we knew exactly who this fucking guy was… The fact that people today are acting surprised and outraged about all the stuff that’s been happening during Trump’s first 1.5 months is only further proof that Americans are perhaps the dumbest amnesiacs to infest the Earth.
Literally all we had to do was vote against Trump’s particular brand of fascism.
But Americans are the type of people who fail a single question true or false quiz because they forgot to write their name at the top of the page, and we deserve to suffer the consequences of our collective stupidity over and over until it is bred out of us, or until our society falls. The American people allowed this to happen–and not just Trump, but everything bad that has happened over the course of American history.
Nah it’s actually their fault. The fact that they lost when it was “the most outrageously obvious binary choice in history” shows how hard they fucked a lay-up.
The good think about the 2024 US election was that the choice was obvious to everyone who paid the littlest attention; the bad thing was that Americans chose the wrong candidate anyway.
I’ll go ahead and blame Biden for you
My favourite part is how he made gains in (virtually?) all segments. It seems the economy was their number one concern too. Imagine thinking the current president was going to make the economy/their financial situation better…
Like at some point you just need to call out the stupid.
Fucking finally. A Democrat we we can respect, because they don’t rely on their role inthe damage.
