Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South Bend, Indiana) was on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning. The Chuckle Todd’s first priority was, predictably, to get the potential presidential candidate to say whether he’s running or not (though according to Ballotpedia, Buttigieg already announced he’s running).
Next, Todd asked about the time Buttigieg lost to Richard Mourdock (R) for Indiana treasurer, and Buttigieg said it was his first campaign and explained that in losing he learned a lot about campaigning.
Todd then asked Buttigieg about the continuing problems in South Bend, and Buttigieg admitted that there is still work to be done, but also touted what has been accomplished since he took office.
Todd’s next tactic was to try to paint Buttigieg as not progressive enough because he’s not calling for ICE to be abolished. Buttigieg was not going to fall into that trap. From the transcript:
So we have worked very hard to be a welcoming city because the current immigration policies are just wrong. People who are really important parts of our community are being torn apart from their families. And this is not making us safer. It is not making us stronger. Now, when it comes to ICE, I don't care what the agency in charge of our immigration and border enforcement is called. I care what it does. And as long as you have an agency, even if you get rid of ICE and called it something else, being ordered to tear families apart from one another or being ordered to make it harder to get on a path to citizenship, you're going to continue to have heartbreaking stories that are not helping anybody.
Todd kept playing the ideological divide card, next by trying to get Buttigieg to admit he’s not a socialist, by asking whether he’s a capitalist. Another trap deftly avoided.
Yeah. I think, look, America is a capitalist society. But it's got to be democratic capitalism. And that part's really important. And it's slipping away from us. In other words, when capitalism comes into tension with democracy, which is more important to you? I believe democracy is more important. And when you have capitalism capturing democracy, when you have the kind of regulatory capture, where powerful corporations are able to arrange the rules for their benefit, that's not real capitalism.
I didn’t think Buttigieg was going to bring Russia into it, but he did.
If you want to see what happens when you have capitalism without democracy, you can see it very clearly in Russia. It turns into crony capitalism. And that turns into oligarchy. So I know the temptation, especially for the commentariat is to kind of align everybody as dots on a spectrum, but that's not how most voters think. I mean, think of the number of voters just mathematically in St. Joe County, Indiana who mostly voted for Obama and Trump and Mike Pence and me. So there's a lot more to this than an ideological analysis, especially with the ideology in our country so scrambled. Having a president who doesn't even have an ideology, just a style, undertaking a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. While the Democratic Party has only been able to explain its ideological commitments by comparing itself to the Republicans for the better part of my lifetime.
To set up a question about abortion, Todd asked about Buttigieg questioning Trump’s religious faith, or lack thereof.
Well, it's something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable. Here, you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in church, where it's about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants. And making sure that you're focusing your effort on the poor. But also personally, how you're supposed to conduct yourself. Not chest thumping look-at-me-ism, but humbling yourself before others. Foot washing is one of the central images in the New Testament. And we see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency. I think there was perhaps a cynical process where he decided to, for example, begin to pretend to be pro-life and govern accordingly. Which was good enough to bring many Evangelicals over to his side. But even on the version of Christianity that you hear from the religious right, which is about sexual ethics, I can't believe that somebody who was caught writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person you want to be leading this nation.
I think Buttigieg was about to say “porn star” instead of “adult film actress.” I suppose it would have been more “woke” to say “adult film actor,” but that would be making too big a deal out of a split-second hesitation.
And then, boom! Abortion. There are, among Buttigieg’s current constituents, “pro-life” Democrats who, according to Todd, “don't necessarily get courted nationally anymore.”
So as someone who's pro-choice but who has many friends and even supporters who view this issue very differently than I do, I think it begins by having some measure of good faith. And understanding that people arrive at their convictions on this often from a deeply felt and sincerely held place.
I personally think there are people who come at this issue from a completely hypocritical place.
Like the guy who told me he regretted as a teenager telling his girlfriend to get an abortion: I believed him when he told me that, but now I wonder if he was just lying because he figured that was the only way to get me on his side.
But since I can’t run for president and don’t want to run for governor or any other office, I can express that opinion. Running for office, the correct thing to say is that everyone arrives at their opinion on abortion in a sincere way. And that’s what Buttigieg said.
To get at the “pro-choice” side, Buttigieg also went about it the right way.
But in my view, this is a question that is almost unknowable. This is a moral question that's not going to be settled by science. And so the best way for it to be settled in practice is by the person who actually faces the choice. And when a woman is facing this decision in her life, I think in terms of somebody besides her who can most be useful in that, the answer to that would be a doctor. Not a male government official imposing his interpretation of his religion.
Damn right. Men can argue about abortion in a philosophical manner all they want. But all their arguments are completely irrelevant to a pregnant woman who didn’t want to get pregnant, or who did want to get pregnant but is told her baby has a major genetic defect.
Of course Todd sees no contradiction in opposing abortion and advocating a completely unrestricted right to any weapons whatsoever. Todd’s last tactic was to bring up the second clause of the Second Amendment, referred to of course only as “the Second Amendment.”
I don't think it has to because we've already decided within the framework of the Second Amendment that we're going to draw a line somewhere, right? “Shall not be infringed" clearly doesn't mean that you're entitled to a nuclear weapon. I mean, somewhere in between a slingshot and a nuclear weapon, we're going to draw a line about what makes sense. In the same way that my right to free speech doesn't include yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater, in the same way that, as one Supreme Court justice said, "My right to swing my fist ends where somebody else's nose begins." There are common sense limits that a thinking society can live by, while making sure that we honor the lifestyle of sporting, which is where so many family bonds are created. And they're just a deep part of our tradition. And the idea that people should be equipped to defend themselves if they need to.
The argument that the Second Amendment defines a state right, not an individual right, is a losing argument, one that I continue to make, because, again, I’m not running for anything. Nor am I a lawyer, though becoming a lawyer does interest me more than becoming a politician.
So I argue that the citizens of a given free state have the right to keep and bear the sorts of weapons their state’s National Guard deems necessary for the security of that state, provided that those people undergo training for those weapons.
This is not that different from the regulations of the U. S. Armed Forces. Suppose, for example, that you’re a lieutenant in the U. S. Army and you want to have a display of antique revolvers in your quarters. Your commanding officer would probably say that you should have the unit armory hold on to those.
Our military bases are not the sort of open carry paradises that idiots lacking discipline and marksmanship skills imagine them to be.
By regarding the Second Amendment as a state right, I think the individual states would be free to regulate guns for hunting and self-defense in ways that make sense to them. Regulations that make sense in New York might not make sense in Texas, for example.
But I don’t think regular people in any state need weapons that can kill lots of people very quickly without having good aim.
I think that’s what Buttigieg was getting at with his comparison between a slingshot and a nuke. Did Chuckle Todd learn anything? Maybe, maybe not.
Later on, Todd brought Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) purportedly because Romney disagrees with the so-called president on several issues. Ooh, put on some popcorn. No, actually, don’t.
Ultimately, Romney disagreeing with Trump on major policy issues might be about as consequential as their disagreeing on whether toilet paper should go over or under.
Romney actually had the gall to say that “millions” are “pouring” into our country, or “flooding.” Hey, Mitt, how would you like it if your dad hadn’t been allowed to come back from Mexico?
Romney knows better than to use words like “invasion” or “infestation.” His brand of racism is much subtler than Trump’s, not that Trump is ever subtle about anything.
But for both Trump and Romney, immigrants from the “Mexican countries” are convenient pawns, both to be loudly demonized in public discourse and quietly used to do work people born here consider to be beneath their dignity.
Another Romney subtlety was that he did not use the word “caravan.” But he did talk about an “extraordinary asylum magnet.” Oh, give me a break, you racist bastard.
For a second there you might have thought Todd would have talked about holding America accountable for creating the conditions that prompt people to leave their native lands in a desperate last-ditch effort to survive. But predictably, he didn’t.
Maybe the native Americans in Utah should have built a wall to keep the Mormon invaders out. Seriously, though, the native Americans should have done something to defend their sovereignty in Utah. Maybe if they had had some quality guns...
Also, the Mittster smarmily scoffed at the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, saying they’re both “non-starters.” At least that’s the idea Romney’s biggest donors want to plant in people’s minds.
The Green New Deal and Medicare for All are definitely starters. They are visions that ought to become realities. But we’ll have to fight disinformation from the likes of Mitt Romney to get there.
