2020: The Two Year Long Election

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[GreyhoundFan]

 

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[front hugs > duggs]

I'm not sure Pete Buttigieg is my ideal candidate or the best to beat Trump, but I'm super impressed with what I've seen of his character and his letter to the Muslim community of South Bend.

I'm also willing to overlook he's  Hufflepuff.

I also believe that if you are kind to animals, you are kind in character (i.e. STUNNED that Trump doesn't have pets /s).

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Democrats can defeat Trump and his ugly ideas, according to Pete Buttigieg"

Spoiler

In this strange and unsettled political moment, one of the most unlikely Democratic presidential candidates of all is Pete Buttigieg. He’s the mayor of a midsize city — South Bend, Ind. — checks in at a ripe 37 years of age, and is also openly gay.

Yet in recent days, Buttigieg has had surprising success breaking through the din as the presidential field’s voice of the millennial generation. Buttigieg has struck an earnest and authentic tone on big policy and moral questions, defending the Green New Deal as correct in the scale of its ambitions, and claiming that the way to win moderate voters isn’t to project squishy centrism but rather to offer progressive solutions to real-world problems.

Buttigieg recently had a big viral moment in the wake of the New Zealand mosque massacre, when he released a brief but powerful letter to his city’s Muslim residents, informing them that the city supports and loves them, and that they have an “equal claim on the blessings of life in this community.”

I interviewed Buttigieg this week, and while there’s a lot to say about his unlikely odds, I kept the focus on policy and values. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity and length, follows.

The Plum Line: What’s the reaction been in your city to the letter you sent to the Muslim community?

Mayor Pete Buttigieg: Very positive. People in any community at a difficult time are looking for an expression of solidarity. The community really wants to wrap its arms around those who are hurting and make sure they feel welcome and supported.

A couple of members of our congregation had relatives in the shooting. People here felt afraid and harmed.

Plum Line: There’s a genre of half-baked punditry which holds that working-class whites supported Trump in part because they perceive immigrants as a threat to them, economically or culturally. Indiana is a major Trump state. What’s your perception of the view of immigrants in Trump country?

Buttigieg: You might have followed this widely publicized case involving a small-business owner from Granger, the next community over, very conservative. This guy was an important part of the community, undocumented, went in for an annual ICE visit and didn’t come back out.

The fiercely protective response came mostly from white members of the community who were conservative and largely voted for Trump, but did not view what he was talking about as going against somebody like Roberto, who they loved.

Yes, you have a lot of people in my part of the country who feel we’re spending too many resources on immigrants, even though that’s inaccurate and immigration subsidizes us. But it doesn’t necessarily apply to people you actually know and meet and see.

Plum Line: We’re seeing a rise in white nationalism and serious anti-immigrant fervor in some parts of the country, and also globally. Are you going to be addressing this in a comprehensive way? It occurs to me that the 2020 Democrats should go bigger on these issues.

Buttigieg: Absolutely. We need to recognize 21st-century threats. Cybersecurity, climate security and security in the face of white nationalism are all clear and present security threats that folks on the other side of the aisle either refuse to acknowledge or decline to do anything about. It’s extremely important for Democrats to very vocally talk about those threats.

Plum Line: How do you view white nationalism as a policy problem?

Buttigieg: In the narrow tactical sense, it’s something we need to stay ahead of and monitor the way you would any kind of violent radical movement from abroad.

There’s a deeper phenomenon going on. As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family. And it can be filled by destructive things, like white identity politics.

This is one thing well-intentioned job training programs often miss: If we’re not attending to that, then making sure somebody’s income is steady or replaced after their place in the economy is disrupted, that’s not really enough.

Plum Line: Can you talk about your broader sense of the role that this type of economic vulnerability plays in creating the conditions for the kind of communitarian collapse that creates an opening for sentiments like white nationalism to flourish?

Buttigieg: I don’t want this to slide into the idea that some of these racist behaviors can be excused because they can be connected to economic issues. But I do think it’s easier to fall into these forms of extremism when you don’t know where your place is.

There’s this very basic human desire for belonging that historically has often been supplied by the workplace. It’s been based on the presumption of a lifelong relationship with a single employer. This isn’t just a blue-collar phenomenon.

We’ve come to be pretty reliant on the way that your workplace explains who you are. That’s breaking down. That doesn’t have to be a soul-crushing thing, provided that there are alternate sources for community, identity, and purpose. In South Bend, we focus a lot on enlisting people in the project of the city itself.

The sense of belonging can be very powerful, and we’re very fragile without it. It’s not accidental that some areas that have seen the most disruption in our social and economic life are those that are most likely to produce a lot of domestic extremists.

Plum Line: Don’t Democrats have to go bigger in rebutting Trump’s arguments about immigration? I was struck by the phrase in your letter that said, whether you’ve been here all your life or for a year, you have an equal entitlement to the blessings of the community. That’s a very robust pro-immigrant statement.

Are the other Democrats meeting the challenge of the moment? How do you intend to meet the challenge of rebutting Trump on these very big topics?

Buttigieg: One thing that’s on my mind is: How does our rhetoric make people feel about themselves? In many ways, Trump appeals to people’s smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward. We need to be careful that our necessary rebukes of the president don’t corner people into the kind of defensiveness that makes them even more vulnerable to those kinds of appeals.

What we really need to do in some ways is talk past Trump and his sins, and generate a different nationalism that does the harder task of political rhetoric, which is to make people feel bighearted and secure.

There are ways we can psychologically lift people up. We need to present a different account of American greatness, that doesn’t situate it in the past, that’s really about how we become bigger and greater when we open our country.

Plum Line: That’s civic nationalism, a traditional rebuttal to racial nationalism throughout our history. You would reverse Trump’s efforts to restrict asylum seeking, and raise the cap he’s imposed on refugees? On deportations, should all Democrats stand for reversing what he’s done — making it open season on everybody?

Buttigieg: The beginning and end of this conversation has to be comprehensive immigration reform: a balance of border security, tune-ups to the lawful immigration framework, a path to citizenship for the undocumented.

We should be able to not only accommodate, but also benefit from, the fact that we’re the place refugees turn to. A reasonable debate over what the manageable number is probably points to something more expansive than what we’re doing right now.

The current cap that the president has put in is the lowest in my lifetime. Given that our country has grown, given that we’re a strong country, and given that at the right level, it’s beneficial to us, it’s natural to say that it’s been brought too low, and that the level would have to go back up.

Plum Line: On asylum, I take it you’d reverse all his efforts to restrict the ways in which people can apply and so forth?

Buttigieg: Policy-wise, we can look at whether there are any measures we need to take to better keep track of people who come through. But the sort of vetting that goes on is not trivial.

The greatest nation in the world should not have much to fear from a family, especially children, fleeing violence. More importantly, children fleeing violence ought to have nothing to fear from the greatest country in the world.

Plum Line: Should the 2020 Democrats all pledge not to go into war without congressional authorization? Should they all forthrightly acknowledge Barack Obama’s role in abusing that specifically, and empowering the imperial presidency more generally?

Buttigieg: I don’t know that there’s much to be gained in relitigating that. It’s certainly the case that Obama did many things that just followed from the approach of presidents before.

I don’t know if you ever want to tie your hands completely. But I think we’ve all learned the cost of Congress abdicating its responsibility.

Plum Line: But should the 2020 Democrats in some form pledge not to abuse this anymore?

Buttigieg: I think that’s appropriate. Probably the single biggest thing in foreign policy and security the next president has to do is clarify what the standard will be for the commitment of U.S. troops. It’s frighteningly vague right now.

Plum Line: Do you have a voting rights agenda?

Buttigieg: My voting rights agenda is not that different from what you’d see in H.R. 1. I would add to it openness to constitutional reforms — potentially measures to reinforce the Voting Rights Act, if we can’t get it right with statute alone, but also revisiting the electoral college.

Plum Line: Electoral college reform — what does that look like?

Buttigieg: It’s gotta go. We need a national popular vote. It would be reassuring from the perspective of believing that we’re a democracy. But I also think it would be highly encouraging of voter participation on the national level.

Plum Line: That sounds like as president, you would try to rally support for a constitutional amendment to do away with the electoral college?

Buttigieg: Absolutely. It wouldn’t be easy to do overnight, but it would also have the function of reminding everybody that structural reforms are an option, and encouraging us to have that level of intellectual ambition.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[Cartmann99]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Pete and his husband look adorable together. *dabs eyes, sniffs, starts listening to sappy 80s music*

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Can business-friendly Terry McAuliffe sell himself to leftward leaning Democrats in 2020?"

Spoiler

Terry McAuliffe buttonholed Amazon honchos last week at a Washington gala like the go-go-go jobs governor he once was.

“Folks, we want it all,” Virginia’s former governor recalled telling the executives at the Ireland Funds soiree. By that, he meant Virginia would gladly take all 50,000 high-paying jobs that Amazon once planned to split between Virginia and New York — until pushback from the left led the company to nix the Queens half of the deal.

When he left office in January 2018, McAuliffe appeared to be well positioned for a White House run as a socially liberal, business-friendly Democrat from an important swing state. But 14 months later, it’s unclear if there is room for McAuliffe, 62, in a party that seems to be pulling leftward.

The expanding Democratic field includes contenders ranging from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who want to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for social programs, to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who wants national paid parental leave, to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who supports a universal basic income.

Complicating McAuliffe’s deliberations — his self-imposed March 31 deadline for a decision is looming — is former vice president Joe Biden.

A friend of 40 years, Biden would occupy the same center-left, establishment lane. If Biden gets in, McAuliffe would more than likely stay out, some friends say.

“The only time you’ll ever see the words ‘deferential’ and ‘Terry McAuliffe’ in the same sentence is [with regard to] Joe Biden,” said one associate, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about McAuliffe’s private deliberations.

But another person close to McAuliffe — who was in South Carolina on Tuesday for private meetings with Democratic legislators and other potential supporters — said the former governor has not ruled out running even if Biden gets in, noting that McAuliffe has executive experience that Biden lacks.

“It’s absolutely a factor,” that person said of a potential Biden candidacy, “but it’s not the deciding factor.”

On St. Patrick’s Day, McAuliffe and his wife, Dorothy, were at the Dubliner, the iconic Irish bar in a hotel near the U.S. Capitol, when he teased the crowd.

“Everybody in this room, if I run for president, should vote for me for one reason,” McAuliffe said, explaining how he helped the owner, Danny Coleman, save the bar from eviction 20 years ago. “We raised the money to buy this hotel and keep the Dubliner. So every time you drink, you drink to Terry McAuliffe. And it is time for an Irishman to be back in the White House.”

It was not clear which Irishman he meant.

If Biden does run and McAuliffe does not, associates say, the former governor could serve as a highly visible surrogate — not just to help his friend but to try to reel his party back from what he sees as a leftward drift endangering its chances to win back the White House.

“He’s going to be impactful whether he gets in himself or whether he supports someone,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster associated with Biden.

Left-wing resistance to McAuliffe has surprised some allies, who note that he went to bat for liberal social causes as he was luring business to his state.

“Governor McAuliffe was the most progressive governor in Virginia history,” said former chief of staff Paul Reagan, noting that he removed the Confederate flag from license plates, restored voting rights to 173,000 ex-felons and expanded abortion rights and gay rights.

McAuliffe made the case to the Republican-controlled legislature that Virginia needed to be friendly to women, LGBT people and racial minorities if it was going to attract investment.

“We became open, welcoming,” the Democrat said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month. “That’s why we got Amazon.”

(Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

These days, McAuliffe argues the converse to liberals in his party: Democrats need to promote business — sometimes with economic incentives — to have the tax base to bankroll social programs.

“You can talk about college for all or all these other things you want. What does it all take? It all takes money,” McAuliffe said in an interview last week. “Without the economic engine, all the great ideas and plans for the future mean nothing. They’re all talk.”

Raj Fernando, a Chicago entrepreneur and major donor to Hillary Clinton, said McAuliffe is the only Democrat he would be willing to back in a primary — precisely because the former governor is socially liberal and business friendly.

“To make the world go round, you need jobs, you need money, you need tax revenue to pay for these things,” he said.

Even McAuliffe’s harshest Republican critics acknowledged he was a tireless promoter for Virginia, leading 35 foreign trade missions and attracting roughly $20 billion in capital investment and 207,000 new jobs.

One company McAuliffe landed is CoStar Group. The D.C. real estate data firm was close to putting a large research and software development facility in North Carolina in 2016 when that state passed legislation known as HB2, dictating that transgender people use the bathroom corresponding with their sex at birth.

“There was no way we were going to locate there when they were moving in that direction,” said CoStar founder Andrew C. Florance. With an incentive package half the size of what North Carolina was dangling, McAuliffe lured the company to Richmond, where today it employs 700.

“We’ll generate roughly $50 million, $60 million in tax payments to Virginia, and they’ll give us back $4 million or $6 million,” Florance said, referring to incentives such as job training. “I don’t know how anybody can call it anything but a success story.”

But some on the Democratic Party’s left call those incentives “corporate welfare.” And they see McAuliffe as precisely the wrong face for the party, whether as a presidential nominee or surrogate.

“Terry McAuliffe represents the Democratic Party that catered to big donors and was about bundling [contributions] and maxing out,” said Rebecca Katz, a New York-based Democratic strategist.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Warren, called McAuliffe “a consummate political insider” who is “cozy with big corporations.”

A number of Democratic presidential hopefuls say they won’t take money from corporate political action committees or super PACS, including Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.).

“To defeat Trump,” Green said, “we need someone who voters see as authentically challenging corporate power and the political establishment.”

It’s enough to make someone such as David Bossie, who once had a movie made about McAuliffe’s sometimes-controversial business career titled “Fast Terry,” sound almost like an admirer.

“Terry McAuliffe would give the field fits if he gets in, because he’s very smart, very hard-working, and he would bring a depth and breadth to the field that is sorely lacking,” said Bossie, president of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that won a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited, and largely undisclosed, political spending by corporations and unions.

He hastened to add: “I’m not being a fan here. I’m being critical of the other candidates.”

“During his governorship, I saw that he wanted Virginia open for business,” said Bossie, who was Donald Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager. “The Democratic Party seems to have lurched even further to the left in their blinding hatred of President Trump, and they’re taking on unserious policy positions, as far as being against capitalism and for socialism, that will not sell well in a general election.”

Amy Walter, national editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said McAuliffe’s long association with Bill and Hillary Clinton — he is a close friend and fundraiser — is a bigger political liability than his business-friendly approach.

“He does have a good story to tell in Virginia,” she said. “The question is whether that’s enough for a primary electorate that is looking for the candidate who can beat Trump, which in many ways is the candidate who is not going to come with a lot of baggage. . . . Show me how you can beat Donald Trump when he runs an ad showing you hugging Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton? Tell me how you’re going to fight the perception that you aren’t simply part of the dreaded establishment and the swamp?”

Jesse Ferguson, deputy national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said Democrats of all stripes won primaries in last year’s midterms.

“The commonality was authenticity,” he said. “And when you look at 2020, you can win this primary from the left or the middle. If Terry McAuliffe tried to remake himself into a fire-breathing populist instead of a middle-class economics guy, no one would believe it.”

“But if he tries to run as a guy focused on middle-class economics, people have every reason to believe it because he’s been doing it since he was doing driveway maintenance at age 14,” Ferguson said, referring to McAuliffe’s earliest entrepreneurial efforts.

Democratic consultant Steve Elmendorf called McAuliffe “totally authentic.”

“I think his personality and the way he carries himself, he’s in a real position to be the counterpoint to Trump,” Elmendorf said. “And I think that’s going to be more important than, ‘Are you for Medicare-for-all or the Green New Deal?’ ”

Former congressman Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) — who unsuccessfully ran for president twice, once with a youthful McAuliffe as his finance chairman — said McAuliffe has a good message for the party.

“There’s definitely a place for him in the race if he decides to do it,” said Gephardt, who served as minority and majority leader over a 28-year career in the House. “He did a great job as governor. Everything I’ve seen and hear is A-plus. And his main emphasis was jobs, which always is a major issue in any campaign.”

Others see a tough climate for him.

“A few years ago, coming off of an incredibly successful governorship where he proved that he could be a leader of the commonwealth, he would be right at the top of just about anybody’s list for president,” said Todd Haymore, McAuliffe’s former secretary of commerce and trade. “But now with the party seemingly moving further and further left . . . Terry McAuliffe could be the odd man out.”

I have mixed feelings. McAuliffe did a good job as governor, but he is so associated with the Clintons, I fear he would be too tainted to win. I guess we'll see how things shake out.

[fraurosena]

 

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23 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 

God I wish he would have won the election for Governor. I’m still so bummed about that. Hate the ignorant morons in this state that voted for the idiot we have now

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[onekidanddone]

Okay I know George and I both have husbands but can I marry him anyway?

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And these people were mad for being called deplorable

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"What Democrats can learn from Buttigieg"

Spoiler

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg has attained the position of the most appealing underdog in the Democratic presidential primary race. He broke through the media chatter, something only a handful of candidates have done. The explanation rests in his determination to avoid copying his fellow Democrats’ shortcomings and to disregard just about everything the media says.

Buttigieg is not a self-absorbed Gen Xer, a Hamlet-like figure who emerges from a funk to tell us — really nothing of interest.

Buttigieg is not a familiar face who’s been in the public eye wearing out his welcome for years.

Buttigieg is not a raving socialist promising to burn down the system.

Buttigieg is not burying voters in a blizzard of policy papers.

Buttigieg is not running as an insider, ready to spin the dials and flip switches to make the creaky system work somewhat better.

Buttigieg is not running as just one thing (e.g., The Young Candidate, The Gay Candidate).

Buttigieg is not averse to talking about religion.

Buttigieg is not particularly interested in talking about President Trump.

Buttigieg is not trying to define himself as “moderate” or “socialist.” He is Mayor Pete. Himself.

Buttigieg also chose to reject the media narratives that the voters are obsessed with celebrity or that name recognition equates with support; that Trump’s election showed knowing something about the world and the job of president is irrelevant; that voters don’t care about character; and that voters are unwilling to list to a rational arguments.

Buttigieg is very intelligent and fluent in multiple languages. He served in the military. He is devoted to his one and only spouse. He is entirely capable of discussing most any public policy issue, including foreign policy. He is earnest and radiates kindness. He doesn’t assume his audience is uniformed or foolish. And most of all, though he is being himself, he manages not to make his race about himself. His quintessential line in response to whether, like Beto O’Rourke, he was “born” to run sums it up. “I was born to make myself useful,” he told Chris Wallace. That makes him the most un-Trumpian candidate out there.

Perhaps his success to date tells us the secret to unifying the country does not rest with fighting Trumpian fire with fire nor in being a celebrity candidate of the left. The secret to unifying the country, to underscoring Trump’s total unfitness to hold office and to breaking through the media noise is to eschew cynicism and artifice. Refusing to sound like a politician running for president or to buy into the media narrative makes him unique in a pack of sameness.

“Authenticity” gets one only so far, of course. Once voters discover he’s really who he says he is, they have to like what they see. Buttigieg has tapped into something Democrats want badly — a decent and smart person. They want to believe character still counts. And that has nothing to do with whether you check the box on a meaningless catchphrase (the Green New Deal) or whether you can pander to one faction of the Democratic Party. At the very moment Democrats would like a quality person to reaffirm their faith in rational government, Buttigieg comes along. No wonder he’s making headway.

 

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On 3/19/2019 at 3:18 PM, fraurosena said:

 

I'm actually not against the electoral college, though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. 

My reasoning for support is that one of it's purposes is to prevent a tyranny of the majority by giving more power to the minority (in this case, smaller states). It's supposed to encourage the many to listen to the needs of the few.

I've been feeling this a lot at work where we make lots of decisions based on majority rule to what I believe is our detriment.