Summary
Minnesota Governor and former VP candidate Tim Walz is launching a town hall tour in Republican-held districts where representatives have stopped holding public events.
Starting in Iowa and Nebraska, he plans stops in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio. Walz says he wants to amplify voter concerns about the Trump administration and Republican policies.
He denies using the tour to prepare for a national run, instead framing it as a way to keep Democrats engaged post-election.
His team has received hundreds of invitations from local leaders.
Not OP, but it appears Democrats are going to take the “high road” and campaign like it’s the 1950s. Again. In person, “addressing voter concerns,” focusing on policy.
This is how you become president: Lie, loudly, frequently, through your teeth on social media. And shill every influencer you can to amplify it, like a pyramid scheme. That’s how you reach people: through their phones, hacking the engagement system, shamelessly. And Dems are going to keep losing until they figure that out or their party is outlawed.
Yeah I don’t want a president like that, and I know that I’m not alone on the left when I say I wouldn’t vote for someone who behaved like that.
That’s the problem. Voters on one side actually care about things like honesty.
On aggregate? Not really. Not if they don’t know about the lies because of their media diet, and the blemishes are paved over.
Problem is this type of machine takes a long time to build up. Democrats don’t have that kind of influencer network working on autopilot 24/7.
Still… I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a “liberal Trump” leaning into the really distasteful parts of the party, and they become really successful.
Sorry if I don’t see “add more disinformation, but make sure that it benefits my guy” as a viable solution. It will just make everything worse.
The solution is to destroy the engagement feedback system: regulate Facebook, and any engagement based social media, like we should have done a long time ago. Or more specifically, deregulate them, and don’t shield them from liability with the law.
But it’s way too late for that.
Anyway, I’m not saying it’s a good solution. But it’s what will naturally arise, just like Trump rose through the Republican party when no oldschool Republicans wanted that. People you know will jump on the bandwagon, and worship liberal Trump. Get ready.
I think it’s clear that democrats need to hack those engagement systems. I think they can do that without lying or abandoning policy. The means (propaganda and mass communication) may be part of the message, but the message can still be truthful “we want to actually help you and the other guys don’t.”
My “this is the way” comment above was about setting a narrative and the only way to do that is a direct line of communication with these rural red areas. Because they will never hear anything positive about a left candidate through their Fox News, curated Facebook, and other algorithmic feeds. So it’s actually necessary to break the stranglehold GOP messaging has on these areas.