…that is how Rev. Jesse Jackson responded when reporters asked him what he thought of Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s performance as mayor in the aftermath of the shooting of Eric Logan by a South Bend police officer. Buttigieg delivered a speech this morning at Rev. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual convention in Chicago but, prior to the speech, Buttigieg gave a press conference where he was joined by Jackson and a little later on by Congressmen James Clyburn.
Buttigieg missed Clyburn’s “World Famous Fish Fry”, a major South Carolina campaign event this past June to tend to matters surrounding the shooting in South Bend, so this may be the first public appearance that Clyburn has made with Buttigieg. Interestingly, Clyburn seemed to suggest that his grandson is thinking about working for the Buttigieg campaign.
“I am pleased to be here today, not just to join Jesse and Rainbow PUSH, but also to stand in solidarity with all of the democratic candidates for President of the United States. And I was just having a conversation with my daughter, Jennifer, yesterday, and whose son Walter is contemplating getting involved in this campaign [gesturing towards Buttigieg] and wanted to know what that would do to me. Well it would make me very happy.” [at about the 9 min. point in this video]
The speech he gave was pretty good (typical Buttigieg) and you can see the whole thing here. Much of the speech deals with issue-framing and policy proposals which you can check out for yourself.
I’d like to focus on a portion of the speech that maybe speaks more immediately to one of the main objectives of the speech — to provide the audience with a sense that Buttigieg does not underestimate the severity and extent of the problems that systemic racism causes in all facets of American life, and to pivot the narrative of the current situation in South Bend from just being about a small city mayor dealing with a local problem to being about a presidential candidate dealing with a national problem.
And I believe in our plan, and I believe in my city, and I believe we will come together to struggle and repair and come out stronger in the broken places. This will be a painful process and not only for black residents who feel left behind and lied to far too many times, but also for a law enforcement community that’s going to have to face some hard truths. Recently I warned newly sworn in police officers that their work takes place in the shadow of systemic racism and the union felt it was disparaging. I intended no disparagement. My point was every police officer, and for that matter every citizen and most certainly every mayor, lives within this shadow, which means everyone has to be part of the solution.
Now when a white politician or elected official is confronted with racial concerns, pundits often go right to the political terms, so we see articles about a white politician’s “black problem”. I am asked how I’m going to earn the black vote in the polls ten times more often than I am asked how my policies would actually benefit black Americans – It’s as if I’m being asked more about how to win than how to deserve to win, but that [how to deserve to win] is our focus because this is deeper than politics. This is not just a political problem, it is not just a police problem, and it is not just my problem or my city’s problem, and it is certainly not just a “black problem”. This is an American problem and it requires nationwide American solutions.
... I’m running for president as mayor of an American city, admittedly not a traditional move, but I’m doing it because we need national politics to rediscover its local basis, to recognize that the toughest local issues both cause and reflect our most urgent national issues.
Overall, the speech seems to have been well received.
The New York Times reports:
After Mr. Buttigieg’s remarks, many members of the audience rose for a standing ovation.
Henri Sallis, 59, said she was impressed by the plans Mr.Buttigieg had laid out, particularly his ideas on boosting minority-owned businesses. He proposed that the federal government award 25 percent of itscontracts to firms owned by women and people of color, a move that he saidcould “inject more than $100 billion into communities of color.”
”I thought he seemed genuine,” said Pattilyn Beals, 34, who works in nonprofit management. “He did some research. I appreciated that. It wasn’t a standard stump speech.”
Buttigieg has a way to go in order to build black support for his campaign, but he has shown he is willing to listen to black voters and engage black voters. In turn, some black voters seem to be demonstrating that they are at least willing to listen to what Buttigieg has to say even if they are still cautious of giving him their support.
Depending on how the disagreement develops between Harris and Biden on school busing in the ‘70s, Buttigieg may well end up being the only candidate devoting substantial amounts of time specifically to issues of racial disparity. Indeed, he is arguably now the best positioned to focus on this as a campaign issue for at least two reasons:
1) Regardless of how you think he may be dealing with the situation in South Bend, he has the most direct hands on experience of having to address this problem (most of the other candidates have the luxury of treating it as an abstract concept or an intractable problem; Buttigieg does not — he needs to at least show a path forward)
2) With his low current support among black voters, he neither has anything to lose by focusing on the issue nor does he have much of a viable way forward unless he makes a strong and compelling case for how to remedy the problem. More so than any other candidate, he HAS to deal with this issue.