.@Lawrence looks at Pete Buttigieg’s strange comments in New Hampshire today about Democrats and deficits. https://t.co/fTzA999tag pic.twitter.com/B5mYV68O7Z
— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) December 6, 2019
(Can’t get the embed to work properly, but it’s worth five minutes to watch.)
Are you fucking kidding, Pete?!
Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump’s got it back to a trillion.
Forget this guy. https://t.co/jtbaBSQoWu
— D’Ag due (@ag_due) December 5, 2019
Striving to impress the Never-Trumpers isn’t a bad move, for someone with Mayor Pete’s (admittedly slender) political credentials. But his dogwhistle wasn’t particularly well performed here, because it seems to have pissed off a lot of Democratic voters without impressing his target audience…
This is both a Republican talking point and, relatedly, factually untruehttps://t.co/5qLKLYX28Q pic.twitter.com/nfu1d764CY
— laura olin (@lauraolin) December 5, 2019
Barack Obama famously did not care one whit about the deficit. https://t.co/S5lnoHCrm2
— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) December 5, 2019
And were I his Comms Director, I wouldn’t have “defended” my boss to Democrats by citing The Bulwark, which is… an outfit explicitly for Never-Trumper Republicans:
“What is it about ?@PeteButtigieg? that has melted the brains of his rivals and their Twitter stans? His policy agenda would be to the left of any platform ever put forth by a major party nominee.” https://t.co/eRGahizoSl
— Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) December 6, 2019
It's a piece in a conservative publication written by a Republican for Pete's base: DINOs.
— Saucy Stacey (@DrSCubed) December 6, 2019
(Note: Dana Houle, professional political operative, has said that the more non-professionals know about a campaign’s press staff, the less likely that campaign is to succeed.)
Positive spin: Mayor Pete’s a young, fresh face — not like the three old pols at the top of the primary polls right now! Negative response: Mayor Pete’s got very little experience, and not just in politics, which makes him susceptible to conspiracy theories…
there is a popular left conspiracy theory forming that Mayor Pete is CIA pic.twitter.com/KAGSCF8j9M
— zachary (@zatchry) December 7, 2019
Which is ridiculous; even when I was first introduced to McKinsey, some twenty years ago, it was widely known as the management consulting company that (like every other managing consulting company) invariably counseled that the proles be punished and the privileged be coddled — but with “seamless efficiency”, i.e., a particularly denatured detachment from human reality. This core competency meant that most of its field workers were short-termers — young credential-seekers snatched from the most prestigious graduate programs, putting in three to seven years of intensive travel and networking before they cycled elsewhere, sometimes for fear of ending up as one of the characters from that George Clooney movie, or because they’d been informed that they were not *quite* soulless enough for the permanent McKinsey echelons.
Buttigieg went to McKinsey because they offered him excellent global networking opportunities; he left McKinsey once he’d satisfied himself that he could withstand the rigors of his next credential-seeking position, in the Army Reserves.
This is ridiculous. First, nobody who supports him now will care if he was. They’re only going after him on things people who hate him will have problems with. There are serious legitimate issues with his campaign, and they’re ignoring them to play Alex Jones.
— I am Sancho (@1amsanch0) December 7, 2019
It would be a funny plot twist if the Pete is CIA thing was a plot by his campaign team to counter the obvious fact that the mayor of Literally Where has nowhere near enough experience to be president
— Botswana Starfish Totally Not Blackmailing POTUS (@IRHotTakes) December 7, 2019
Yup. It’s almost as if…he’d be a good candidate for the House!
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) December 5, 2019
has anyone ever seen Paul Ryan and Peter Buttigieg in the same room at the same time? pic.twitter.com/Pz7CXsxCSb
— Pete Buttigieg is a Lying MF (@chhelenach) December 6, 2019
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In fairness, the Lieberman Lane (Jeepers, I sure am disappointed in my fellow Democrats…) was the one that no one had tried in this primary
debbie
I am not fond of this pivot.
hells littlest angel
I have to admit I’ve been wondering if Tulsi Gabbard is Putin’s stalking horse for Mayo Pete.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Actually, Pete is seeking Independents who are allowed to participate in Iowa and NH.
Wilmer and his cult demanded Indies be included in Democratic primaries and now they’re going to be trounced in part because of this stupidity.
mapaghimagsik
Annoying how Democrats can’t stop bagging on Democrats. It’s not a winning strategy.
Patricia Kayden
Amir Khalid
It seems premature for a Democratic presidential candidate to start wooing Republican voters before he has won even a single vote in his own party’s primary.
Doug R
In a sane America not divided by race/party, Mayor Pete would be running as a Republican.
Amir Khalid
@Patricia Kayden:
I now admire Linda Ronstadt more than ever.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
People should stop worrying about Pete and instead should start looking out for Bloomberg.
With his towering charisma and magnetic charm he’s going to be unbeatable.
Chetan Murthy
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch:
*giggle
Patricia Kayden
Sigh.
mrmoshpotato
Oh Pete…
Redshift
BS. Those are not the candidates who won “so many House races,” those are the ones who won Republican districts. That has made them darlings of the media, but it’s not a particularly good template for winning Democratic primaries, which by definition have fewer voters from areas like that.
Major Major Major Major
My social media feeds are ground zero for weird Pete-hatred, and I’ve been baffled by the CIA thing for a couple days now. People just get deranged about him. He’s well within the policy mainstream within the party. Half the horrible things he says, it’s easy to find revered party figures like Obama and Pelosi and Clinton saying.
Maybe not in this particular case, but saying the democrats aren’t known for bringing down the deficit barely rises to the level of a rhetorical trick. It’s a very commonly held falsehood about democrats that a lot of democrats believe!
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
I hope you’d agree that as a falsehood, it would be bad for a aspirant to the Democratic Presidential nomination, to be spreading that falsehood yes?
mrmoshpotato
@Major Major Major Major: Rhetorical trick? I don’t get it.
sukabi
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: ???? careful, might die from snark poisoning.
mrmoshpotato
@Chetan Murthy: And also one that’s so demonstrably wrong, because, ya know, numbers on the record books.
Melusine
Lord I am over him and his republican talking points. Warren said Kamala is on her short list for VP. She’ll be caught up in the impeachment proceedings but she may also get some opportunities to shine.??? she makes it. That’s a vote I will be proud and thrilled to cast.
I will hold my nose and vote for another Dem in the general if I have to, but Biden is too old to be challenging people to fights; Pete is a closet republican and so naturally has major issues with race (and possibly a couple of wetsuits in that closet); Klobuchar looks perpetually frazzled and keeps insisting that only heartland voters are real americans; bernie is…bernie; narcissistic billionaires – still trying to re-home the one we have, thanks, he keeps tweeting on the carpet; booker and castro are getting as much traction as a Gremlin in a blizzard…
If any of them lets tulsi anywhere near their administration I’ll write in the Ghost of Betty Davis. Anyone who can’t see through tulsi’s “Let me introduce you to my cult leader” stare is too dangerously stupid and easily undermined to be President.
I wanted so much for 2019 to be over. Now I dread 2020. Oh look, it’s ????????? and ??? and ?. I’m fine now. ?
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: eh. I really don’t get the big deal. I got more worked up by Joe Biden almost calling that guy a fatass.
@mrmoshpotato: trick, flourish, “ass-pull way of transitioning from your question to what I actually wanted to talk about,” they’re often terrible!
BR
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t get the hatred people have for him, but I also don’t get why people like him a lot. He’s meh, someone who can speak well but also seems to think a lot of his own ability to speak as if that’s all there is to the job. I don’t follow his speeches closely, but even I’ve noticed a shift in tone through the last year as he seems to be trying out a lot of different messages to see what sticks. It all sounds good, but I guess I prefer candidates where I have a sense of what they believe or at least how they think. I felt that way about Obama, and currently about Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, Biden, and Booker. It’s not ideological to me…
Kent
He seems to be going for that slice of the electorate that would otherwise lean Republican but just can’t stomach Trump’s profligate spending. There are exactly 13 of those people in the country outside the NYT editorial page.
Major Major Major Major
@BR: yeah, he’s like, fine. People act like he’s satan. If I had to pick a moderate I’d go with the Klob.
@Kent:
Surely Iowa isn’t so small that a plurality of its voters is thirteen people.
BR
@Major Major Major Major:
He honestly reminds me of Bill Clinton (as a politician, not speaking to Bill Clinton’s personal life). Strange comparison maybe, but he really does.
Melusine
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Damn you, choked on my ?! ?
Tenar Arha
This touching comic seems made for the new adopter TomatoQueen, black cat lovers, and cat lovers in general.
Warning: beware there are tears
Major Major Major Major
@BR: his nerd —> military —> fancy consulting path was a possible one for me. If I’d been a few years older and less libertine I may well have had a similar life. Classic type-A starched collar gay. Reminds me of a lot of people.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: You know, Jerry Brown dated her back in the 70’s.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
Linda Ronstadt was already a national treasure. Now she’s a doucheslayer, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BR:
Desperate to win whatever room he’s in? Remember “I think I raised your taxes too much, too”, or telling Romney he would’ve won in ’12 if it weren’t for Sandy?
Dan B
@Doug R: My feeling is Pete is progressive in many aspects but he seems to have pivoted his positions because he believes the average American doesn’t want big change. Many Americans probably believe that Trump’s fault is he’s made too many radical changes. There are a lot of low info voters that don’t understand what goes on in DC but feel what is happening in their families.
I recall Pete saying he wanted Medicare for those who want it because it would fairly quickly eliminate private insurance. But the opt in would not feel like govt coercion.
Butter Emails
As other’s have noted it’s an easily disprovable Republican talking point that someone aspiring to be the Democrat’s Presidential candidate shouldn’t be parroting, reinforcing and providing soundbites for Republican attack adds. Is he going to talk about “after birth abortions” and selling babies for parts next?
Chetan Murthy
@BR: This isn’t 1992. I’d hope we can do better than Bill Clinton. I voted for him both times, btw.
Mary G
I think Pete is biting off more than he can chew, but I really hate Lis Smith, his comms director or campaign manager or whatever she is. She’s either a Republican or Russian plant bent on dividing Democrats, especially black and white people. She’s a bad hire on a Bernie level.
BR
@Chetan Murthy:
Agreed — that’s sort of what I mean. Mayor Pete may have the speaking gift of Bill Clinton, and the triangulation skills, but I’m not sure that’s what we want or need right now.
guachi
His deficit comment was so stupid he deserves to be roasted on a spit for it.
It’s the kind of thing Trump does all the time – lie about the past to make himself look good. It’s what people who have no real accomplishments do. They have to denigrate and lie about others to get ahead.
And he lied about his entire party. What a weasel.
jl
Buttigieg is running a very slick campaign, light on detailed policy, long on slogans and CW (e.g., the garbage about big spending Democratic party), and lots of corporate donors. And the corporate media seem to love him. So, natural a lot on the left side of the party dislike him, and I don’t think just the purity pony left.
I just looked at the Fivethirtyeight polls, and looks to me like Buttigieg is taking a lead in Iowa. I read that he is pouring everything into Iowa in the hopes that a win there will make him a putative front runner. But Warren still the plurality second choice and Iowa is a caucus not an election. Seems like most of the polls show still a race between Biden, Sanders and Warren in Nevada and New Hampshire, and South Caroline is still Biden country.
So, I think still too early to make much of gossip about front runners and worrying if some attack will come back to haunt someone in the general. If Buttigieg says dumb incorrect stuff about Democrats being deficit friendly, who expects all his opponents to let that ride? In the primaries, Democratic candidates are competing and will criticize each other.
I agree with MMM that if you want a centrist on policy, Klobuchar is best, but her political tactics are pretty bad, and I don’t think big donors find her ‘flexible’ enough on her policy proposals, though that is just my guess.
mrmoshpotato
@jl: Sorry not sorry.
?South Caroline, bomp bomp bomp?
Melusine
Brachiator
@BR:
How so? I hadn’t much paid attention to Mayor Pete, but here he is coming across as a lightweight.
This is ignorant, historically incorrect and seems a slight dig at concerns about the spending objectives of Warren and Sanders. Otherwise, Mayor Pete is channeling talking points from the hoary past.
And I just don’t want to limit this to Mayor Pete. The current deficit is fueled not just by spending, but by Trump’s massive tax cut for the wealthy. And any Democrat with a brain knows that the GOP is going to turn around and demand that deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs is the only remedy for their own folly.
Where are the Democrats who will clearly point out that Trump is an ignoramus who knows nothing about the economy? His tax cuts and stubborn insistence on a trade war with nearly every other country is a long term disaster for the country. The $16 billion in government welfare that Trump is throwing at farmers has got nothing to do with any supposed Democratic Party history of big spending.
Democrats need to tearing down Trump and the GOP. I would like to vote for the candidate who says that they will demolish the Republicans the fastest. I am not interested in candidates who think that they have to tear down their opponents, although I recognize that this is the absolute core belief of almost every political strategist.
Also, voters who are “concerned” about the deficit or debt without understanding the larger context are idiots.
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
How amusing. I thought that Biden was quite right to slag the guy right back. The fucking GrOPer accused Biden of being a criminal; if somebody that to me, I’d slag him right back, too. Biden’s no Mike Dukakis, and that’s good.
Jean
Mayor Pete expanded on this in the gaggle: “I believe every Presidency of my lifetime has been an example of deficits growing under Republican government and shrinking under Democratic government, but … my party’s got to get more comfortable talking about this issue”
Mike in NC
Mayo Pete needs to go home to the New Confederacy (AKA the Rust Belt).
BR
@Brachiator:
It sounds like Clintonian triangulation to me…hit the left, hit the right a little less, claim a “middle” path and appease the big donors.
jl
@Chetan Murthy: I thought I read someplace that goofus claimed to be a Warren supporter, which I find hard to believe.
Biden seems to be running a campaign that is high on his Handsome O’l Joe act, which I am not fond of. But, sometimes it works.
Citizen Alan
@Chetan Murthy:
I also voted for Clinton twice. But I also firmly believe that he only became president in 1992 because the top Dem candidates were so gutless that they were intimidated out of running by Poppy’s initially stellar poll numbers in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm .I give Clinton huge props for recognizing Poppy’s weakness on domestic issues and being willing to challenge him on it.
jl
@Jean: OK, that is good, and I’m glad he said it. But I think Buttigieg said wrong things there too. I think Democrats are too comfortable talking about this bogus issue, as if it were legitimate. But YMMV.
Chetan Murthy
@BR:
This is also what I saw in his attempt to argue for means-testing free college. Deft footwork to setup a toppling kick at the entire idea. He’s too damn clever and i don’t feel I can trust him to not just give away the store to the wealthy.
I feel like he lacks any of (a) a constituency, (b) concrete history, or (c) a long-standing interest. I mean, as much as I detest Ol’ Pervy Uncle Joe (and his bankruptcy bill), at least I have some trust that I know what he’d do in office. This chancer? No idea, and that scares the fuck outta me.
Citizen Alan
In the primary, my number one goal is to see an actual Democrat nominated. Which means no to Bernie (a socialist), no to Buttigeieg (a Log Cabin Republican), and no to Gabbard (a Putin-sucking traitor).
hervevillechaizelounge
@Doug R:
In a sane America not divided by race/party, Mayor Pete would be running as a Republican.
I’ve been making a huge effort not to get too invested in or angry with any primary candidate—I have a late primary so my voting options might be limited.
That said, Mayor Pete, if not for his sexuality, would absolutely be a republican. And I despise republicans. I hate their smarm, their intellectual dishonesty and unearned sanctimony—all of which Pete exemplifies.
Every single time Pete disses democrats I have the same reaction: “Shut the f@ck up Mr. LogCabin-lite, ’cause I might have to vote for your unqualified ass!”
Redshift
It’s weird. Two tweets later in the same chain, Smith quotes him saying:
“Expanded on this” = “completely contradicted himself”, apparently. I still disagree, I don’t think it’s a good idea for Democrats to talk about doing well in the deficit, because it’s not actually very important, and it just gives lying Republicans more help bludgeoning us with it.
Brachiator
@BR:
Sounds like bullshit to me. But then again, even with Clinton, “triangulation” was a longer word for “bullshit.”
And again, I ain’t interested in hitting the right and hitting the left. Hit the GOP. Hit Trump.
tobie
Lawrence O’Donnell was annoyed not only because Pete adopted the Republican line that Democrats are “tax-and-spend liberals” but also because he implicitly thumbed his nose at the members of the House and Senate who in 1993 and again in 2013 voted to raise taxes to support existing programs while at the same time slashing the deficit even though they knew they would lose their seats. Pete’s remark reeked not only of bad faith but also of hubris.
I also think the comment hurt him because he’s attacked Democrats quite a bit. This quote from a profile in the Post in Jan 2019 bothered me then and bothers me now:
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
She had a thing going on with George Lucas in the mid-1980s — even recorded an album with the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: I was embarrassed for Biden around the halfway point of the broadside. I actually gasped when he almost said fatass. (I loved ‘sedentary’ though.) After a while it was just a weird gross display of masculinity, hard to see from anybody
BR
@Chetan Murthy:
I’m with you — exactly. I know what we’d be getting with Biden — basically Obama era policy and practices, more or less, within the limits of congress and Biden’s willingness on his select few issues to fight hard. We were just talking about this at home the other day — that we’d rather get Biden than Mayor Pete if we have to have a centrist.
Chetan Murthy
@BR:
It pains me to have to agree with this. Really does. But esp. after the way he [eta: Mayo Pete] came out arguing that those who boycotted Chik-fil-A were “virtue-signaling”, grrrrrrrr ….. And just like in the gaggle linked up-thread, he tried to have it both ways AGAIN.
The fucker’s too slipper by half, and that slipperiness reminds me of every management consultant I ever watched in action. All fast words and no bottom to them.
Melusine
@Amir Khalid:
Obligatory
Sister Golden Bear
@Major Major Major Major: Best Little Boy in the World, right? Though your “starched collar gay” nails it.
trnc
@Major Major Major Major: I’m looking for a candidate who knows things that are knowable and widely enough known that a large number of people on social media can fact check within about 10 seconds. It would be one thing to argue that maybe prez X doesn’t deserve all the credit/blame because of some factor or other, but it’s another thing to be dead wrong on the basic facts.
Major Major Major Major
@Sister Golden Bear: yep, exactly. I think it’s so funny when people slam him for not being gay/queer/whatever enough. He’s a walking stereotype!
jl
@Major Major Major Major: There are always people going to make absurd and bigoted slams on people for a variety of reasons. Obama was not really black or too black, depending on what somebody thought would damage him the most. Some ultra pure purity ponies called Sanders a hidden neoliberal sell out because he endorsed Hilary Clinton and campaigned for her. And Warren has been called a neoliberal/CIA secret agent man, as well as Buttigieg.
Buttigieg can’t be a Republican today because he is not a reactionary nut case, and because he is honest about his sexual preference, not because of the simple fact of his sexual preference. Setting aside fact that while I dislike Buttigieg’s facile centrism, if he were a mindless reactionary, he could easily be a gay GOPer if he were hypocritical about it.
jl
@trnc: Many moneyed, power, and influential people in this country say things that are dead wrong in economic and historical facts on a regular basis, and cannot be persuaded to do otherwise. A person who starts to travel in those circles, as I think Buttigieg has, starts to believe that stuff. There is a good chance Buttigieg does believe what those people say because they are his biggest money supporters. But I am prejudiced against the kind of centrism that he (and Biden) have adopted so far in this election cycle.
Yutsano
@Major Major Major Major: Eh. He’s just not sparking with me. I doubt he’ll get much past Iowa and maybe not even that. But we’ll see. Of course it still applies that I’ll vote for him if he does win etc. But no way will he without vastly improving his standing with minorities.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
If it helps…
Major Major Major Major
@Yutsano: totally fair assessment! I’m reacting more to my proliferation of acquaintances who are basically calling him a murderer. Calling him a republican is just dumb. Liberal centrism hasn’t been a part of the GOP since Pete has been alive. Warren has been a registered republican more recently.
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
Wha? That’s as silly as calling Warren a neoliberal. Or Bernie a Communist. I presume this is b/c he worked for McKinsey. Now, I think he’s gotta come clean about what he did for ’em. But I expect fully it was ridiculously boring and weak-tea, and we’ll all laugh at the idea he actually got paid for it. In short, we’re not going to find out he advised Mr. Bone Saw on how to kill Shiites, or some such rubbish.
Sab
@Anne Laurie: Biden has to talk me off the ledge from his bankruptcy bill ( good luck with that, guy) but I am very comfortable with accepting his gaffes as stutter/stammer compensation. To me that is now something I can defend ferociously. (sic, since I can’t spell). Or ignore. We all have problems and failings.
Mayor Pete, who is the financial genius who worked for McKinsey, who doesn’t know which party runs up the deficit and which party fixes it, that I have problems with. I have a Mayor Pete explorers club t shirt. Having explored, I have gone elsewhere
Chetan Murthy
@Sab:
Excellent point, excellent point. Someone so briliant as to work for McKinsey, ought to be held to a higher standard than “well, I hung around with richies, and they tricked me into believing that Dems are profligate deficit-spenders.” And similarly with the other attacks from the right that he makes on what are, at this point, pretty main-body-of-the-party positions.
Sab
@Chetan Murthy: Yep. Just saying.
prostratedragon
Another fine Kennedy Center class.
Zinsky
Democrats are not going to make meaningful change in this country or be able to wash the innocent blood and stench of greed and death off our body politic by striving to be “Republican Lite”. As Elizabeth Warren has said, “Think Big”!
You can bet your ass that Republicans are thinking big! Eliminating Social Security, Medicare, food stamps (SNAP), TANF – all vestiges of the “Nanny State”; muzzling the mainstream media; wars against Iran, North Korea and more; elimination of any taxes on capital gains and other passive income, the list goes on…
Anyone who thinks we beat back these barbarians with mushy, centrist, surrender-like tactics is a damn fool!
F*ck Mayor Pete!
Barbara
@Chetan Murthy: Right. It was consulting drudgery, would be my guess, but giving the NDA excuse is silly. He can characterize what he did without violating his NDA. “I worked generally in the auto industry studying supply chain efficiency.” Or whatever.
zhena gogolia
I’m not interested in hit pieces on any of our potential Democratic nominees. (Note that I said “Democratic.”)
zhena gogolia
@mapaghimagsik:
Amen.
I know people who have left the blog because of this constant Pete-bashing (not so much on the front page as among the commenters).
Butch
OK, I’m not going to go through all 76 comments to see if someone else raised the issue but that’s not his whole quote. He starts off talking about how deficits go up under Republicans and down under Democrats; he’s saying Democrats need to do a better job of getting that information out, not that Democrats should become deficit hawks.
Baud
@Butch: Someone mentioned it.
I don’t think the snippet of the quote that everyone is getting mad at is good for Pete because it’s false on its own terms. But it’s no more false than people on the left who say Dems don’t care about the working class or the white working class in particular.
Betty Cracker
@Butch: You’re correct. Buttigieg’s point was more nuanced than it’s being portrayed: that Democrats should identify revenue to cover the cost of every proposed expenditure. Lots of Democrats don’t agree with that because they believe it puts the party at a structural disadvantage to clean up every profligate Republican administration’s fiscal messes. But many Democrats DO agree with that principle.
dnfree
Okay, this makes me furious. I’m an old boomer and I’ve cared about the deficit as long as I’ve known there was one. I was raised Republican and as an adult I’ve until recent years called myself an independent—more liberal on social issues, more what used to be called conservative fiscally. And by conservative, I mean paying for the government we’ve got, not cutting taxes now and maybe cutting expenses later. (Later never comes.). The ACA included attempts to both cut spending and add some taxes and fees to pay for its costs. If Mayor Pete (who was in his twenties and maybe not paying attention yet?) doesn’t know that Democrats have been the more fiscally responsibie party for most of my adulthood, someone should enlighten him.
zhena gogolia
@dnfree:
See Butch #77.
Jean
@Butch: Thank you
Aurona
I think The Mayor fits precisely as a Log Cabin Republican. He has no allegiance to women and minorities, but he’s gay and he’s white. He also fits precisely in the technocratic white male profile (see Mark Zuckerberg). A technocratic Log Cabin Republican is someone I would never vote for. It would be an dishonor to my past black gay roommate, and me, to vote for a guy who has so little regard for us.
Nora
@Tenar Arha:
Good grief, why’d you make me cry this early on a Sunday morning? Near broke my heart and now I’m going to hug my own black kitty, Bon Bon. Thanks.
Kay
The NYTimes political coverage is so bad
It wouldn’t matter except they have a reputation as good so the rest follow them.
Baud
@Kay:
Which candidate did he help win?
Kay
@Baud:
They won the Florida governor’s race in ’18.
I just love how she sets it up as “heads Trump wins, tails Republicans win”. Republicans in Congress are lockstep bootlickers to President Trump, which does not mean they are lockstep bootlickers, it means Trump is a wildly powerful and charismatic leader. It’s political coverage that could be written by an operative.
Conversly, Baud, at the state level, Trump helps GOP governors win and then they wisely distance themselves from Trump in order to remain popular.
She’s just calling balls and strikes and any objective analysis has to conclude there is no way Republicans lose.
Kay
@Baud:
Sticking with Trump? Smart and good for Republicans. Distancing from Trump? Also smart and good for Republicans. It could be written by his campaign team if they were as clever as NYTimes political reporters and not instead nasty, low quality hacks.
Omnes Omnibus
Yeah, this dude sure seems like a Republican. He’s obviously running in the centrist lane, he clearly has a problem attracting AA support, he is definitely not everyone’s first choice (he isn’t mine), but, ffs, let’s not start with this bullshit that he is a closet Republican. It was bs when it was said about Bill Clinton, it was bs when it was said about Barack Obama, it was bs when it was said about Hillary Clinton, and it is bs now.
And, AL, Buttigieg served in the Navy, not the Army. Get your fucking facts right.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: FL Gov DeSantis is a great example of how that strategy can work. He humped Trump’s leg like a meth-addled Schnauzer during the GOP primary and bumped off the establishment pick, whom the party had been grooming for governor since he rolled out of the cradle.
DeSantis distanced himself somewhat from Trump during the general and has distanced himself even further since being elected, demonstrating how that strategy can work with a divided electorate, especially when accompanied by a smear campaign against the opponent.
cleek
of course, “not known for” doesn’t mean “isn’t”. it means “not known for“.
Pete really does, somehow, melts people’s brains.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I was hoping you would weigh in. The NYC analysis of Florida doesn’t do much for me.
I think DeWine in Ohio is doing the “compassionate conservative” bit. It’s a good fit for him because he has no beliefs of any kind so finds it easy to come off as vaguely sympathetic and non-objectionable. He’ll stay middling popular. It’s the Portman approach, except Portland now has problems with a very specific Ohio slice of voters who are vital to him- Ukranian-Americans. Now THAT would be an interesting political article about a Trump bootlicker and the problems it may cause.
Except on abortion, where he’s a Right wing nut.
rp
@Butch: that’s not true. He clarified the quote later in the gaggle. If he meant all along to say that dems lower the deficits and shouldn’t be shy of taking credit for that, he should have stated his point more clearly. For a guy whose strength is supposedly communications, he’s surprisingly bad at it.
Kay
My objection to Mayor Pete is the same one I’ve had for months- he portrays standard Democratic policy of the last 30 years as something he “boldly” invented. It’s just not true, which is why he keeps getting into trouble for it.
Over and over. He pointed to his apprenticeship plan as proof to show he understands rust belt lunch bucketers more than those pointy headed intellectuals like Warren but apprenticeships are incredibly trendy in policy and EVERYONE promotes them – including Donald Trump. Trumps are cheap rip off garbage, but still- he uses the word. So Pete makes this bold claim and 15 minutes later the Twitter researcher corps have determined that the other Democrats have more generous plans for apprencticeships and an alternative to college.
If he can’t distinguish himself from the rest of the center lane that’s not “the Democrats” problem- it’s his problem and he can’t misrepresent what the rest of them doing to make it work. Find some other way to set yourself apart.
Elizabelle
@Tenar Arha: I loved that cartoon. Poignant. Thank you.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: I think Gillum got screwed. DeSantis isn’t quite as bad as I expected, but that bar can’t get much lower in the Age of Trump. I hope Gillum keeps going; he seems (to me) to be the real deal. I’m not a native Floridian, but I find this place a hell of a lot weirder than Pennsylvania, where I came from.
Kay
Ok, and just as a warning to Democrats- you can’t call everything an “apprenticeship”. That’s what Trump is doing. According to Donald Trump’s low quality employees and family members (Ivanka) a for-profit truck driving school is an apprenticeship, although students pay for it and they don’t actually get paid while training and they “earn” a CDL which is driver’s licence category.
Quality matters. Words matter. If 100,000 young people enter these programs thinking there is some value to them and get ripped off they will end up discrediting the whole category, and that would be a shame. Getting a job at an Ohio factory and making 10 dollars an hour as a machine operator is not an “apprenticeship” and either is paying 29k a year for “training” in a food service job that pays 9 dollars an hour.
Don’t rob and trick people. That can be our North Star on “apprenticeships”.
Miss Bianca
@Tenar Arha: Yes, there are tears.
TomatoQueen
@Tenar Arha: If you have some personal beef with me, I wish you’d come right out and say so. Otherwise, that was a complete slap in the face that nobody deserves, and why I should have to be subject to it I don’t know. But fuck you. And yes I know. I looked at the whole cartoon ladi fucking dah. Cram it.
WaterGirl
@jl: Iowa is critical because – in each individual caucus – if your candidate doesn’t reach 15%, they get nothing, and the supporters join the group for another candidate or they essentially have no say.
I’m sure that all the candidates are not just looking at who wants them as their first choice, but also as second choice, so who knows what game they are all playing.
What’s disappointing to me about Pete is that his authenticity was a big part of his appeal. He’s too smart to have shifted positions on so many things, so I am pretty sure these strategic shifts rather than shifts in positions. That is not unforgivable – I mean, do we really think Obama wasn’t for gay marriage long before Biden “slipped” and that got things moving?
The big trouble with this for Pete is that it goes against his brand as “authentic” and “speaking truth to power” and “telling people what he believes, even if it’s not what they want to hear”.
Interesting times.
WaterGirl
@Tenar Arha: No tears for me, just “ugh”. To me, it had a creepy feel and I stopped partway in.
O. Felix Culpa
@TomatoQueen: Wow. I thought that was a sweet and kindly-meant gesture. Something else going on that’s disturbing you? I know I’ve misread things when I was out of sorts
ETA: Looking at WaterGirl’s response at #101, I see that not everyone found the comic appealing. But I still don’t see it as a hateful swipe. Maybe ask Tenar what was meant by it first?
WaterGirl
@cleek:
He really does. That’s a great way to put it. I don’t actually know if he sets people off more than other candidates do, or whether it’s something else entirely. Pete is smart enough that he sees nuance, and talks about issues is a way that acknowledges nuance. I think there might be two things at play. One, that it’s easy to cherry pick a nuanced answer for the part that, when it stands on its own, sounds like he is saying something other than what he was saying. And two, it seems like there are people who are dedicated to pulling him down, for any number of reasons. Somehow all the Pete hate feels like something that is being drummed up strategically, and it catches on because most of us are to busy to go find the whole quote so we can judge for ourselves.
Plus, living in the time of Trump, trying to survive, it’s not difficult to set off the outrage response, and then the lie is off to the races. Way too many really smart people are falling for disinformation campaigns against democratic candidates. We’re still trying to play the game the old way, and the other side is playing dirty.
The next question is, who is the other side? Republicans? Russia? China? Other democratic candidates? It’s all gotten so complex, I really cannot pick it all apart enough to truly understand all the forces that are driving the situation we are living in.
Jinchi
We should remember that Biden was picked by Obama specifically because he was more conservative and could “reach across the aisle” to make deals with Mitch McConnell. I don’t think we can assume that his term would basically be an extension of Obama’s.
Kathleen
@Amir Khalid: I highly recommend her autobiography “Simple Dreams”. It’s eloquent and poetic.
Betty Cracker
@Cameron: I have mixed feelings about Gillum. It was totally unfair that he got smeared by innuendo during an investigation that he wasn’t the target of, but it did turn out that he made some really dumb decisions about associates and activities that look hinky as hell. He knows what Republicans are like in this state, so he should have known better.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: I worked for McKinsey for three months and it was the worst ten years of my life. That’s part of the dis-appeal of Mayor Pete for me. I deeply, deeply, don’t trust the kind of people who could thrive as consultants in that corporate environment.
@O. Felix Culpa: Yeah, I’m a little puzzled by the strength of that pushback myself. I thought the comic was kind of sweet and very sad. Made me want to rush out and adopt a wee black kitty. Even tho’ adopting a cat would be all kinds of stupid, given my current environment.
Kathleen
BTW, what in the fiduciary fires of hell is a “Benjy Sarlin” and what gives him the right to speak on anything?
Kathleen
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: WTF. First I’ve heard that.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca: Part of Pete’s initial appeal to me was that he spoke in grammatical and intelligent sentences, which was refreshing. He also seemed authentic. But over time, I didn’t sense that those beautifully crafted sentences actually said much of substance, which of course is a necessary skill in consultant world – and in politics to a degree as well. I don’t think he’s evil personified and of course I’ll vote for him if he’s our candidate, but I hope we do better.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I have no idea how long Pete stayed at McKinsey. I think it’s possible for a smart, ambitious person to do something for awhile that will give them further opportunities that would be more to their liking.
The worst boss I ever had played as big a part in making me a good manager as the best boss I ever had did. One showed me what I wanted to be like; the other showed me exactly what I never wanted to be and do.
So I’m not gonna hold a 1-3 year stint against anyone. Plus, you have to stay a certain amount of time at early jobs because to do otherwise casts doubt on you.
It makes me quite sad that all the candidates I liked early on turned out to have flaws, or have exited the race entirely. As much as Pete and other candidates have disappointed me, it is no exaggeration to say that any of the real Democrats would be 1000x better than Trump. Tulsi & Bernie excluded, because I don’t consider them to be real Democrats.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Completely agree. That’s how I felt about Hillary’s email server thing. In and of itself, it was a nothing burger, but right or wrong, the whole “appearance of impropriety” thing matters as much as reality.
We can’t protect against the shit they will distort, and even make up out of whole cloth, but at least don’t do stuff that can legitimately give them ammunition to use against you.
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: Pete appears to be tacking right or “centrist.” As a candidate, he’s free to choose that strategy and I, as a liberal primary voter, am free to seek other candidates who better reflect my policy preferences. I don’t hate him, but I’m not confident about his experience or his policies. I do hate this primary season though. It’s way too long and the structure/process may lead to a suboptimal outcome for us.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: I dunno, my experience was that once you’ve had to draw pretty graphs for consultants showing how firing a bunch of people will fatten some corporation’s bottom line – and you’d better damn well be prepared to work through lunch, hell, work through the night so they can get those pretty graphs ON TIME – it becomes hard to justify how anyone with a heart or conscience could stay in that type of job, even for the admittedly fat paycheck and awesome benefits. YMMV.
ETA: And of course, my POV is informed by being the person who absolutely could not hack that type of environment.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to hack that, either. I have a certain amount of drive, but I wouldn’t say I am ambitious.
I got *fired from a temporary job once – I had just moved to a new city and while looking for a real job, I got a job at one of those candy stores that are in the middle of the mall.
I was apparently too honest with the customers. They’d say “oh, I shouldn’t get anything, I’m on a diet, but what the hell” and I’d say, “well you could always just get one or two pieces and have a treat without completely blowing your diet.”
Or some mom would come up and say she wanted to get some of that candied fruit for her daughter who was trying to lose weight, and I’d say, “would you like to try one?” and then they would be horrified by how sugary they were, which was, of course, the point of my offering them a taste.
Apparently, I was not quite what they were looking for.
*I’m not sure i was fired exactly. I think they just told me that I wasn’t quite what they were looking for so I should hurry up and find a real job, which they knew I was doing anyway.
dnfree
@WaterGirl: I very much agree. I could see why Hillary set up the private server, but it was a bad idea. Not illegal—just bad optics. Same with the questionable operations of the Clinton charity, which apparently even Chelsea pointed out. And the whole Hunter Biden thing. People who have been in politics their entire adult lives should be able to see the dangers.
But on the other hand, why are the Trump administration communications security lapses not drawing more attention and outrage? It seems endemic.
WaterGirl
@dnfree: I think the Dems need to play more hardball, without compromising our principles.
Capri
@Kent: Like Pete I live in Indiana. There are a ton of those people here.
O. Felix Culpa
IOKIYAR. SATSQ.
Jess
Apologies if this already got posted, but I just wanted to share this scathing critique of Mayor Pete by one of his current constituents.
Matt
Disagree: they’re conservatives and therefore by definition liars. They’ll pull the lever for Trump in November, 100% guaranteed.
Pandering to them isn’t a political decision for Mayo Pete, it’s just who he is.
dnfree
@Kent: I know people who are Never-Trump Republicans and didn’t vote for him in 2016. (Unfortunately they voted third-party because they didn’t like Hillary either, but in our state it didn’t matter. I don’t know what they would have done in a competitive state.)
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
Anyone who can’t take legitimate criticism of a candidate like Pete probably can’t really contribute to a blog like this. No one is gay-bashing Pete, we’re saying he isn’t the best candidate and giving reasons.
On the other hand, Bernie is a Russian stooge.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: @zhena gogolia:
zhena didn’t say gay-bashing, she said Pete-bashing. Maybe you’re misunderestimating :-) how bad that got. Cleek really had it right upthread when he said this:
I was truly grateful once the website project got started in earnest in May because far too often I had been finding the blog to be unbearable, and not having even time to keep up with BJ for awhile became a good thing.
It wasn’t the criticism, it was the irrational hatred, the taking of things out of context, and the seeming willingness of a few very smart people to let themselves be used by the disinformation campaigns.
Chris Johnson
Pete is looking to be literally the worst on offer, from my perspective. We print the world’s reserve currency and national economics are not family economics: interest rates are impossibly low, and anybody making lots of noise about how we have to cut deficits and pay for every government program up front, is deeply dishonest or so drunk on 1980s economic rhetoric that they can’t be trusted even if they’re sincere. Which, with Pete, is an interesting question: does he mean all this, or is it a ploy? The fundamental grounds of his criticism are broken.
If he is sincere, then he’s worse than Biden because he’s some kind of ideologue, and he’s worse than Gabbard because people would be suspicious of Gabbard. The way he is lining up to try and get the nomination while becoming the antithesis of what the Democratic Party means (apart from a veneer of social liberalism) makes me think he’s Putin’s primary stalking horse and Gabbard is more of a distraction.
Chris Johnson
@Jess: Neat hammer and sickle in the backdrop of that video. Stuff like that just exhausts me: ironic reference, tip off to fellow Boris Trollskis, what? Nostalgia trip? Or maybe, the Russians are every bit as much buried in 1980s ‘deficits baaaad’ economics, and THINK Buttigieg is the most dangerously wise and righteous politician out there, making them genuinely against him?
That’d be really weird, but not impossible. Just because they are hostile and mean us ill doesn’t make them not deluded. Maybe they can only view Republican strongmen or Clintonian neoliberals as a real threat, and only use Gabbards and Bernies as stalking horses to tear down those ‘real serious leaders’, not even understanding that their concept of a powerful American leader is deeply flawed. if so, these people would’ve considered Jeb Bush a gravely serious enemy.
tam1MI
@J R in WV: No one is gay-bashing Pete
Except the person who made the horrifically homophobic comment about “two wetsuits” AND HAS YET TO BE CALLED OUT ON IT.