South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been running as a self-described “moderate Democrat.” As Buttigieg rises in polls, specifically the polling around the Democratic primary in Iowa, his well-articulated non-articulation of actual policy ideas has begun to get more attention. Also getting more attention is how Buttigieg has moved from “left of Obama” to right on top of Biden, as far as his campaign goes. He seems to have found a niche as a younger, potentially more appealing version of Biden. Someone more like former President Barack Obama.
For many of us, this movement to the right is distressing not because it is shocking—Mayor Pete has danced around, without committing to anything, in his overtures to more progressive ideas. It’s distressing because it shows a certain ambition before conviction.
A video showing an even younger Pete Buttigieg running for Indiana state treasurer in 2010 speaking at a “Meet the Candidates Night” hosted by the tea party has surfaced. In the video you can see below, Buttigieg addresses the audience saying, “I have to admit, as a Democrat, many of my friends and supporters looked at me as if I was absolutely nuts when I suggested that I would be coming tonight to speak with a group that’s often identified as the tea party. There are some, especially in my party, who think that the tea party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. But there are many others who believe that the tea party is motivated by real concerns about the direction of our government, and the responsiveness of our government to citizens, and above all the frustration with business as usual. That is what motivated me to run. And so while we may come from often very different perspectives, I believe we might find that we have a lot in common on that front.”
This is a strange bit of reaching across the aisles. It is 2010. Buttigieg is ostensibly a Democratic candidate. Buttigieg went to address this proud tea party bunch just two months after the NAACP passed a resolution slamming the group for its blatant racism. President Obama was already in office, receiving the bigoted and predominantly racist attacks on his birth certificate, his secret Muslim sympathies, and on his existing as the first African American president of the United States.
But this version of “populism,” that Buttigieg preaches has always been racist. It’s inherently racist because it’s a pretend populism that excludes populations of different races from it—even though they frequently share the same economic issues and political frustrations with our country’s lopsided power structure.
It’s fundamentally racist because in discussing the “working class,” most pundits or politicians are really just talking about a group of not wealthy white people, not middle class white people, maybe not graduate school educated white people. It’s fundamentally racist because anytime you point this reality out, white people get bent out of shape like they’re being excluded from some conversation. It’s racist because all anyone is trying to point out is that there are all kinds of other people that seem to check all the exact same boxes of disenchantment, burden, political frustration with not being heard, and “business as usual,” as Pete likes to say.
And Buttigieg’s racially tone deaf campaign has finally begun to get noticed, if only because he is polling better of late. His appeal to the black Democratic voter seems to be next to nil, and right now, Buttigieg doesn’t seem to really have a meaningful answer to that. This may be because he hasn’t had to, because he doesn’t feel particularly comfortable trying to, or because he really doesn’t care to. But, this has led Buttigieg and his campaign into bizarre places, using the names of prominent African American leaders without their knowledge, and misrepresenting the historically misrepresented black community, in rolling out his Douglass Plan for Black America.
So, what are his positions? Buttigieg has outlined his general foreign policy ideas, but what he says he wants to actually do at home seems a little more incremental. His newest policies include Medicare for All Who Want It, which is in essence the original public option that Obama ran on in 2007-2008. He would expand Medicaid into states that denied expansion under the ACA—essentially Buttegieg’s proposal is the same as Biden’s. The criticism here is that we already won an election on this promise and were disappointed when there wasn’t the will to get it through in the first two years.
Buttigieg has supported raising taxes on the super wealthy, but not as much as opponents Warren and Sanders, and his more “modest” healthcare program will cost less than truly universalizing the system. It’s not necessarily true when asking who exactly isn’t having to pay the upfront price tag. But this has allowed him to argue that most peoples’ taxes—a hot button trigger word—won’t rise, while not necessarily having to promise that one’s standard of living costs will go down because of his policies. The latter, how more progressive policies actually drive down the standard of living costs more than increase taxes, is something that seems easier for many in the traditional media landscape to hold onto, something that Warren and Sanders’ plans are having a hard time getting through the thick skulls of teleprompter-dependent TV hosts.
This isn’t a purity test. Those things are baseline “liberal” stances at this point. Many Republicans hold those positions—the ACA itself was based off of a “moderate” Republican plan in the first place. Granting adult human beings the right to marry another consenting adult is not left-leaning—unless you are a fundamentalist. And then there’s this:
The sentiment is good. It’s the continuation of the policies that Obama and others pushed for. But the secondary sentiment is bothersome. “Millionaires and billionaires” make up such a minuscule percentage of the population that in parroting a GOP talking point against free tuition for higher education Mayor Pete is strangely missing some fundamental points about the nature of inequality in our society. But maybe he isn’t?
There is something more distressing about Buttigieg the candidate. Mayor Pete has shown that he is willing to say just about anything, and change his positions very quickly, if he believes it will get him into a position of power. This in itself is not unique to Buttigieg. Most, if not all, politicians have some almost pathological need tied to their ego to appeal to those who may not like them. But remember, Mayor Pete was the one, during the first Democratic primary debate in South Bend, who warned his fellow candidates against trying to appeal to voters by attacking progressive policies with conservative talking points. He rightfully said, at the time, that it was a losing strategy.
On Wednesday night, we will see how Buttigieg fields the criticisms and the demands for answers that he will now face as a rising force in these primaries. It will be interesting to see if his ability to articulate in circles will continue to give confidence to voters. But whether or not that happens, right now, big money is all in on making him a viable candidate.