For a former social studies teacher, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz missed the lessons of the 2020 presidential election.
“One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness,” Walz said in a “White Dudes for Harris” livestream in July.
It was a knucklehead move.
Two days after the 2020 election, in which Democrats won the White House but lost ground in Congress, House Democrats held a conference call to discuss what went wrong, Reason magazine reported. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Virginia, was unequivocal: “We need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again,” she said.
Rep. James Clyburn, D-South Carolina, urged members not to run on “Medicare for All or socialized medicine” in the future. Even some progressive Democrats echoed these concerns. “I think Republicans did get some traction trying to scare people on this socialist narrative,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “What’s the point of embracing a phrase like that?”