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 defend them because for all their moral failings they did design a system that is more resilient than any other to autocracy. We could have extended participation to all without destroying that system, and Trump would have never happened. Or if he had he would not have had the power to do the things he’s doing now. But every president takes a little bit more, and you don’t say anything if they belong to your party but cry bloody murder when the other one does it. And then when you’re back in power do you ask your lawmakers to stop the power grab? No, why would you, you like what’s being done. And that’s how we get here.
But I digress, you wrote all of that and never refuted the fact that the electoral college does in fact work. Land might not vote but states need equal say regardless of the population they have. If New York and California decide all elections, how soon until the other states start to secede because their votes count for nothing?
States have strong individual cultural and administrative identities and unless you erase that, there’s no way you can abolish the electoral college without also destroying such a thing as the United Staes of America.
Just do the following mental excercise: Texas and Florida are the two fastest growing states at the moment. Let’s say they remain red and manage to get a bigger population than all the blue cities combined (because of all the space they have) and now because of them every election a Republican president wins. Would you be ok with that? If not then you have to be in favor of the electoral college.
So you disagree with the idea of “one person, one vote,” then? Absolutely ridiculous. People living in densely populated areas have just as much ability to think and arrive at a diversity of opinion as rural people do, if anything, moreso because they’re more likely to encounter a range of views. This also doesn’t account for minority enclaves, the various Chinatowns and similar, that can exist in cities, or the more diverse populations in general. The electoral college disproportionately favors white people.
That’s a terrible argument. If that happened, perhaps I would be in favor of the electoral college for purely pragmatic reasons, very reluctantly. If I’m operating on ruthless, unprincipled pragmatism (the only reason I would ever, even hypothetically, consider supporting the electoral college), then obviously, in the present situation where the electoral college is disadvantageous to me, then I should oppose it.
During the Civil War, Lincoln temporarily suspended certain civil liberties due to the existential threat the south posed - and it was probably necessary and the right call. But just because I might support suspending certain liberties in extreme situations, facing a true, existential threat, it doesn’t mean I “have to” be in favor of suspending them on some kind of principle.
Obviously, all else being equal, it’s better for everyone to get an equal say. You can conjure up a situation with a horrible population and a benevolent monarch keeping them in line and argue that in that hypothetical monarchy is superior to democracy, but that in no way proves it in the general case or as a principle. In the same way, when you conjure up a situation where the electoral college is keeping an evil population in line, that in no way proves that the electoral college is better than democracy.
In the context of presidential elections? I guess I do. The US is supposed to be a country of countries, so governors should be decided by popular vote as they are the ones who will have the most direct effect on the lives of people. The president was originally intended mostly to oversee big picture stuff that affected all of the states, and as such all the states needed to have equal say in the president. Which is why the states elect the presidents via the electoral college.
Of course the problem is, once more, that the executive branch and the federal government have expanded their power so much that their policies have more effect than original intended over the daily lives of people and understandably people would like to be able to influence that. So for me there’s really only two solutions: we walk back things to their original intent or we might as well start an entirely new system because ours is not designed to work with all this added power.
The reason I agree with the usually right wing idea of restoring the original power structures is that I have seen enough evidence to believe that strong state sovereignty is the best way to go. It’s a very good foil to authoritarianism because power is concentrated at the lower levels. Right now if Trump and Co. manage to completely take over, they will still have a hard time doing everything they want because States have tools to defend themselves against the federal government. But it’s also a “freer” system as it also allows people to move from state to state and choose the one that most aligns with their views instead of a singular vision being imposed from the top down.