Tim Walz has some sharp critiques of the Dem 2024 campaign - Politico

[Egwinsi]

“We shouldn’t have been playing this thing so safe,” the Minnesota governor said in an interview with POLITICO before speaking to nearly 1,000 Democrats here at the Helena fairgrounds last weekend.

“By the time they finally let him do anything at all, it’s like 20 days left, and he’s doing four states a day, and there’s only so much you could do,” a former Harris campaign staffer said. “It was too short.”

There were also efforts to curb some of his signature lines, including casting Trump and Republicans as “weird,” which slipped out of Walz’s speeches.

“He was encouraged to stop focusing on the ‘weird’ criticism,” said another former Harris aide. “I think it is fair to ask whether, even if ‘weird’ wasn’t quite right, his instinct about how to approach Trump, to make him seem small, and a huckster, wasn’t closer to correct than the more self-serious tone that may have made us sound too in defense of the status quo.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/08/tim-walz-2024-campaign-critiques-00219718

As a younger voter, I wish we would have seen the riskier campaign path. The paralysis of "playing it safe" is an error in itself, especially now that the Overton Window for politics has drastically shifted. More recently, Gavin Newsom created a podcast to have long-form discussions with people of opposing viewpoints. While this is a great step in the right direction, Democrats are behind the puck on modern media messaging.

One of the sticking points in my mind that made Tim Walz relatable was when he livestreamed on AOC's Twitch channel playing Crazy Taxi. Reaching out to younger voters in this way means a lot more than a scripted roundtable interview. Much the same, unscripted content in general, such as podcasts where Democrats can truly speak without formulated talking points and staffers whispering in their ears, would make an immense difference. Listening to the opinions of people who voted for Trump, the idea of a political figurehead talking candidly and off-script seems to be more attractive than listening to a speech read passionately from a teleprompter. I think we can learn a lot from that