Buttigieg To Pence: If You Have A Problem With Who I Am, Your Quarrel Is With My Creator
USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/04/07/pete-buttigieg-god-being-gay-and-mike-pence/3330897002/
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Mark Rein-Hagen
The main reason I thought Trump was going to win in 2016 was that he was not only the opposite of the calm and reasoned President Obama but was the perfect foil to Hillary and the entire political correct left-wing establishment. The right wing wanted a fight, they wanted to thumb their noses at modern "woke" culture, and they got exactly the anti-paladin champion they wanted.
It was all pretty simple to figure out. Trump was fresh to politics, Clinton had been around forever, and was as establishment and insider as you can be. It was the kind of contrast that political managers dream of and now in this election it is something Trump's people are desperate to find once again:
A Foil For the Fiend.
So, leaving aside policy and position papers aside, let us ask, who would be the best Democratic candidate to run against Trump? Who is best positioned to give him no opening and to reveal his own weaknesses?
The answer, shockingly, seems to me to be a certain Mayor from Indiana with a Marxist father, Peter Buttigieg. And I am not the only one who believes it, clearly, this sort of thinking is behind his "caught on fire" candidacy.
Just imagining him in a debate with Trump is mind-bending, there is nothing for the Donald to hold onto, yet Peter could easily land jab after jag, and by his very calmness reveal lying Trump for who he is. The dynamic is completely unpredictable unlike with Warren or Beto, who would be ridiculed to death.
Let's look at the contrasts:
• Trump would be the oldest president in history, at 74, and is clearly showing signs of mental degradation (he not only is orange but pronounces "origins" as orange)but Buttigieg would be the youngest ever at 39.
• Trump is a fake lying billionaire narcissist from New York, but Buttigieg is a morally conservative midwestern pragmatist, a beloved local politician.
• Trump is a proud unapologetic serial sexually harasser, coward and draft dodger, Buttigieg is happily married and a veteran who took leave of absence as Mayor to serve in Afghanistan with distinction.
• Trump wants to destroy all government and the safety net, Buttigieg wants to protect and rebuild it.
• Trump would be the oldest president in history, at 74, and is clearly showing signs of mental degradation (he not only is orange but pronounces "origins" as orange)but Buttigieg would be the youngest ever at 39.
• Trump is a fake lying billionaire narcissist from New York, but Buttigieg is a morally conservative midwestern pragmatist, a beloved local politician.
• Trump is a proud unapologetic serial sexually harasser, coward and draft dodger, Buttigieg is happily married and a veteran who took leave of absence as Mayor to serve in Afghanistan with distinction.
• Trump wants to destroy all government and the safety net, Buttigieg wants to protect and rebuild it.
In short, Mayor Peter is everything that Trump is not, and exposes the Donald for everything even his supporters are tired of.
Peter will also certainly win the new swing states, the midwest. And win those states we MUST, if we give Trump the chance by choosing the wrong candidate, he will be victorious in the electoral college once again by getting the resultant support of the working class. The owners of the country are counting on him winning, and are prepared to spend whatever it takes to prevent themselves from being taxed and regulated like the rest of us. 75% of Wall Street assume Trump will win, it's arrogant dangerous to bet against people who bet on the future for a living.
The other candidates are not looking so great right now:
—Beto is not a good bet I think, as much as I personally like him and his hacker past, he comes across as a bit too raw and idiosyncratic yet also too "cool" and America already had a cool President recently (Obama of course) and we are very much in the mood for something new. America always wants a correction from the past in its new President and thus is looking for something very different from BOTH Obama and Trump.
—Warren was my original AOC, from way back, and I will always revere her work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and as a Senator protecting consumers and democracy itself. However, she doesn't really seem to have the political skills to stand up to Trump, much less cut him open. He has already made mincemeat of her several times, and she seems entirely unable to score against him. This is a HUGE deal.
—Biden is done. Nuff said. This hit job on him won't be the last time we see someone taken out by a dark-politics sniper this primary.
—Klobuchar is a non-entity so far, and doesn't seem to have any real message.
—Cory Booker not only didn't come out as expected but got himself a beard. I understand fully his own community is not ready for any of their leaders to come out (MLK and Rustin understood that well, which is why Bayard is still not a household name), but if he can't be honest in this way we can't trust him as Prez.
—Kamala Harris has a strong "law-and-order" political history and that makes her entirely unacceptable to the left. We are finally in the mood of letting people out of jail so anyone who was such an integral part of our apartheid-like mass-incarceration drive won't get far.
—Gillibrand knifed Franken, so she is anathema to many donors and operators, including me.
—Tulsi Gabbard is just strange, and having the apparent backing of Russia and certain organizations on the right is beyond weird.
—Castro is so far left on immigration that he would be cut apart in the general. Leftists in Europe have only been able to win recently by finding ways to run on slowing down and even "cracking down" on immigration. We absolutely can't win on a platform of opening the doors. As I have long argued, we can win by saying we will stop illegal immigration at its source, by doing a mini-Marshal Plan for Central American.
—Bernie is a tough one, the left loves him so much, yet, while Mayor Pete's dad was a Marxist... Bernie HIMSELF was a Marxist (and still might be, he doesn't deny it) and this will make him a huge and easy punching bag in the general, and he is notoriously brittle in handling criticism. Buttigieg has the perfect answer to any such accusations, "I loved my father and agree with him on many things, but I am a proud capitalist who worked for McKinsey & Company." If Bernie can deal forthrightly with this issue and keep the socialism/nationalism thing under control, he has the populist chops and working-class appeal to do well in the general... yet still, he is an old white man from NY who already ran for President, just like Trump. So not a breath of fresh air.
The thing is all these candidates represent the cultural war we are already completely trapped in, but Buttigieg alone could cut through many of our patterns of polarization. He is a long way from being "sanctimoniously woke" but has enough social justice achievements to make his part of the club. He is left-liberal but has carved out a moderate place in the field that is in danger of careening out of control towards Swedish style socialism which has done little to tamp down fears of radical policies like the nationalization of business.
He is calm, open, intellectual but he is certainly no Obama. Which is a good thing, as I said above. America doesn't want wild charisma right now. He represents what many of us fought for and rarely believed could happen: proud to be gay but not defined by it, happily married, a veteran, wickedly smart, and integrated into traditional American values and society. His candidacy is as historic as Obama’s, and his presidency would be as well. For the world as well as the country.
One can imagine it would be much, much harder for countries like Brunei or in the part of the world I live in to brutalize and torture members of the LGBTQ community. Our community will certainly be behind Buttiegieg, once everyone realizes how MUCH this will change things in the world as LITTLE as they might change things back home (we've already come so far). For me this is a very big deal, being openly LGBT is incredibly dangerous outside the west... we need to be focusing more on this not our own rights.
That so many see Mayor Pete as a credible and impressive candidate is a reminder that in America, many of us can still unite around a human and humble consensus around common decency. Midwestern values we used to call it. Trump destroyed our affection and faith in one another in a shit-fountain of populist hate. Buttigieg might be just the person to rescue us from the cesspool into which we have fallen.
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