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.”
I think it had more to do with the conditions at the time. He was one of the few politicians with a national following from either party who had always vocally opposed the Iraq War. His chief opponent in the Democratic Primary was Hilary Clinton, who had voted for the invasion in 2003 even though she was opposed to the war by 2008. On the Republican side, McCain was still saying in 2008 that his vote to invade was a good decision and that he’d do it again.
It’s hard to remember now, but the Iraq War was a MASSIVE issue in the primaries and early general election in 2008. The country was almost unanimously opposed to it by that point, including Republican voters. W Bush was massively unpopular, and that was dragging down the entire GOP. Then the Great Recession hit and Bush/the GOP took the entire blame since they’d he’d been President for 8 years and they’d held the majority in both houses of Congress for most of the Bush presidency.
By that point, a corpse with a (D) next to their name could have defeated McCain. Obama is absolutely incredibly charismatic and a once-in-a-generation political mind. But 2008 was also a perfect storm of factors against the Republican Party. There was virtually no way a Democrat could lose that election.
Charismatic, yes. I am not really happy with his politics, though. Under his presidency drone war seriously took up. Many a civilist was killed in Afghanistan. Germany was a willing helper. Relays for remote drone operation were operated on German soil. I am absolutely against the whole concept of this cowardly and indifferent way of disappearing people in foreign countries. And see, where this brought us! The Taliban regained traction and now they are ruling Afghanistan. The whole war wasn’t won by drones, it was lost, at least partly, because of Obama’s horrible drone warfare. I always wonder why he is not held responsible for 'Murica’s 2nd Vietnam.
I mean, he is absolutely and rightly heavily criticized for his use of drone warfare. He isn’t directly faulted for the entire Afghan and Iraq Wars, though, because they were W Bush’s baby. He was the driving force behind both, and his administration oversaw them for the first 7 years (5 for Iraq). His administration set the course for them from the start.
Eta: I also think there’s a degree to which the developments of drone warfare under Obama were bound to happen regardless who was in the White House. If McCain or Clinton had won in 2008, drone warfare would have continued on the trajectory it took IRL, perhaps even more aggressively (definitely so under McCain). Yes, Obama deserves the blame for what happened under his watch, but it’s not like the same wouldn’t have happened without him.