Also, one of the consultants who worked on the campaign said in an interview afterward that the shift was because they felt they needed to focus more on how dangerous Trump was, which was exactly the critique Bluesky leftists had when they first started doing it.

It was working. Republicans were howling like stuck pigs. It was a mistake to discard it.

You're forgetting how energized supporters were from the Walz debate strategy. /s

I’m not at all disagreeing. It’s just extremely ironic that they didn’t do it because they secretly wanted Trump to win, but for exactly the reason those who now rip on them most in retrospect got mad at them for doing it in the first place. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I supported it then, and saw no reason for the change. Democrats have trouble connecting with the electorate, and that strategy was clearly doing so on a fundamental level; it was reasonating with voters and Republicans were on the defensive for a change. It was an unforced error to ditch it.

Agreed, and there seemed to have been a disconnect between the consultants and Democratic voters in that regard. And BTW, I say that as someone who continues to believe that, nit-picking notwithstanding, Harris and Walz were excellent candidates and that the campaign was generally well run.

In my view, the election was not unlike 1920, when the populace was worn out from a pandemic, concerned about immigration, and was happy to turn the reins of power over to Republican billionaires, who proceeded to destroy the economy. Inflation also did not help, as incumbents worldwide were hurt.

I don't disagree, and the outcome of any election is driven by multiple factors, but I have to add that too many post mortem analyses have glossed over (or simply ignored) the impact of racism, misogyny, and social status anxiety.

And that ended well for everybody, right?

If your thing was selling apples on the street corner, absolutely.🙄

Walz was still calling them weird the week of the election

It didn't evaporate because nobody said it anymore. It evaporated because nobody cared when they said it anymore. Much like repeating the same joke over and over.

Tim Walz was on late nite in mid-October still calling the Trumpers weird but you didn't even know this because, as I said, it got stale, and people stopped paying attention to it.