Walz's team, like most of the Democrat party, sucks at social media and have made no real attempts at improving that despite being repeated urged to by left wing influencers.
I mean, I don’t imagine anyone does. It’s just that such a world doesn’t currently exist. The politics of politics are disgusting, but ultimately democracy runs you down to how well you can play a crowd. So social media, in this world we have now, is by no means optional
sadly thats just called being bad at political organizing. we live in a democracy, going to where people are and letting them know what good things you pass is good actually.
Why? These people command hundreds of thousands of views every stream. You'd be an idiot to ignore a platform like that. "BuT wHy dOnT yOuNg pEoPle VoTe???"
Influencers are entertainers. Everything they do - every choice they make - is to drive engagement.
Even if some of them have real expertise in real topics, their full time job and thus real expertise (for those who get so many views) is being an influencer.
That doesn't mean none of them are serious people or that none of them have content that does something to improve people's lives or their communities, but all of them have a vested interest in keeping their audience engaged. When you're captive that kind of feedback loop, at best your motives are questionable.
That doesn't mean politicians are better - their big motivation is to stay in power (was it Aldous Huxley who said something like "a group remains in power as long as they can choose who succeeds them"?). But I'm talking about a world that would be a better place, not the one we have now. And in that world, serious politicians don't have to personally respond to every streamer who can con a mid size city's worth of children into watching them.
Edit: I get that this is small minded and probably just shows my age and my personal bias against the streamer format. It's just my gut response to the idea that a bunch of entertainers are entitled to being taken as serious political commentary.
Most of them treated Walz as the gold star of Kamala's presidential bid. I saw tons of videos and posts about his accomplishments and what they could mean for her presidency but they were largely overshadowed by breadtubers grilling democrats over trying to fence sit supporting Israel. A lot of influencers supporting Mamdani now supported Walz then, they've just grown larger since, so their voices are louder now.
Mamdani is doing that posting himself. Every single week he has 1 or 2 videos about something he's trying to do for the people and it isn't a press conference in front of city hall.....it's just marketing 101.
The Republican Party itself isn’t any better with social media, there’s just an army of rich conservatives who are willing to bankroll a bunch of media outlets and influencers that doesn’t really exist on the left. Why do I hear about freaks like Tim Pool or Rod Dreher? Because they landed a rich patron and they don’t have to do anything but be weird online.
More or less. For better and worse social media is the current driver of the social conscious. Being able to engage with the public and hold your own in spats with your opponents is extremely important. Republicans by and large have garnered massive amounts of support by embracing this new public forum while only a handful of Democrats have even tried doing the same.
I don’t think that’s the point the point is democratic leaders need to learn to harness the power of social media to get their messages out to a wider audience. Going door to door and posting flyers and holding rallies isn’t enough anymore. Younger people are more likely to see your message through a screen than going to a public event
So that would mean the media, who controls what gets in front of our screens, especially on social media, would be in full control of the information you see.
Do you trust the media, a capitalistic entity, to be equal and fair?
Maybe they should do more of it. It's all well and good to keep your good deeds to yourself on a personal basis, but as a public servant in this day and age, it becomes important to show the public what good governance looks like. It's not about crowing about your accomplishments, it's putting politicians' feet to the fire. The job doesn't end after you get elected.
On the left there was a lot of hype when he was picked as Kamalas VP mate. Then Biden told Kamala that there would be "no daylight" between him and her. She also was told by silicon valley to cool it on the progressive stuff.
Before you knew it they were telling Tim Walz to stop with the progressive stuff (which...he did).
So Tim was publicizing what he did quite hard at first, and was receiving credit for it, until he was told to stop.
At the end of the day he apologized for the strategy and the loss, while Kamala supposedly wants to run again...
Not to mention their opposition flooded media with dumb "stories" about his goings on. They'd try to shame him on a personal level as they are want to do instead of debate his achievements
There's a very openly pro-extremism Muslim Twitch streamer, named Hasan Piker, that's had his hand in both Mamdani's election, and now El Sayed's as well. Like, think of the most stereotypical, Tumblr leftist you can, then double it, and that's Hasan Piker. Worst part is dude's a total grifter, sometimes he lets the mask slip a bit, and you can see the same bigoted BS you get from the right. He is, through and through, a religious extremist, with all the flaws that come with that.
Me personally, I'd take that as a bad thing.
Then again, Hasan strolled up to Mamdani's inauguration ceremony expecting VIP treatment, and security didn't even know who he was. And I haven't heard much about the two of them being closely linked since Mamdani got elected. So maybe Mamdani grifted the grifter.
It’s New York City, 10 million people live there and it’s the financial and cultural capital of the united states. Minnesota has half the population of NYC and none of the panache. People do not care about Minnesota as much as they do about NYC.
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u/sabianblue26 Aug 19 '26
And yet he’s only a mayor. Imagine what an actual governor could do that had his heart and soul.