Pete Buttigieg 2020 campaign megathread

[Libertas Vel Mors]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1195375842358108168

Fitting, since Buttigieg is himself a stock photo of a politician.

That's dumb, who cares where a stock photo is from? Was he supposed to have taken it himself and know them personally? Not a fan of his, but this is pretty artificial.

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Buttigieg says he would be open to sending US troops to Mexico

And that does it for me.  I've been having reservations about Pete for the last month or so, but  I can't vote for a candidate in this primary who's willing to resort to use of military force for any conflict.  Even if Pete wouldn't seriously consider sending troops to Mexico, I can only interpret this as a preview of how he would approach more pressing foreign policy issues.

The dance is almost as bad, obviously.

You wouldn't vote for FDR, Truman, or LBJ?

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Also, the "buttigieg tea party" thing is incredibly manufactured and fake.

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Cool. I put him in the D-list with Ojeda and Delaney. Castro is C-list bordering on D-list.

Funny to read now.

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AOC slapped GOPete around.

Lol what kind of bubble do you live in where Pete is even close to a Republican

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AOC slapped GOPete around.

Lol what kind of bubble do you live in where Pete is even close to a Republican

He's a corporate neo-liberal with progressive window dressing.

Even if we all agreed that was actually true, that's still not what a Republican is.

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Even if we all agreed that was actually true, that's still not what a Republican is.

 When they're both roadblocking progressive reforms, I don't care much about their differences. All GOPete would be is a less crappy Republican. We need to do better than that and him.

Dude, Pete would pass your progressive reforms lol, just not as many as say Sanders would try to do.

That's Pete. You know what we want to do? We want to repeal your "progressive reforms" that you've already passed. See: Obamacare (which we shouldn't just give up on btw, we still need to repeal and replace).

Please get the difference between left wing and center-right into your head. Thanks (and yes, Pete is left wing. He isn't even center left lol, he's just not far left like Bernie. I'd never vote for Pete).

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Even if we all agreed that was actually true, that's still not what a Republican is.

 When they're both roadblocking progressive reforms, I don't care much about their differences. All GOPete would be is a less crappy Republican. We need to do better than that and him.

Dude, Pete would pass your progressive reforms lol, just not as many as say Sanders would try to do.

That's Pete. You know what we want to do? We want to repeal your "progressive reforms" that you've already passed. See: Obamacare (which we shouldn't just give up on btw, we still need to repeal and replace).

Please get the difference between left wing and center-right into your head. Thanks (and yes, Pete is left wing. He isn't even center left lol, he's just not far left like Bernie. I'd never vote for Pete).

Obamacare was literally what your far-right institutions like Heritage Foundation proposed in the 90's, full-stop.

Try again.

We proposed banning HRAs, not doing anything about trial lawyers, stopping people from buying insurance across state lines, banning catastrophic care plans, and stopping contracts that limit the amount companies must pay? Hmm.

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https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1201923657209196544

Just as I started coming around to him, he pulls this ****.

Yeah, I think I'm back off the Buttigieg train.

That just increased my opinion of Mayor Pete

Imagine being so batty you get upset he doesn't support providing subsidies for free healthcare to illegal immigrants. Not even blocking them from using it - just not giving them free subsidies to do so. Lmao.

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Buttipete calls 60+ million Trump voters deplorable racists:

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1201947327596048389

That seems to me a pretty diplomatic way to put it for Mayor Pete. I probably wouldn't have been as diplomatic.

Indeed.  The less diplomatic (but even more accurate) way that I'd put it is that "[W]hile there are definitely some genuinely good people who simply got caught up in an evil movement in 2016 and thus voted for Trump.  Them aside, at the end of the day, I think we all pretty much knew by election day that Trump is a xenophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic white supremacist who sexually assaulted multiple women.  The difference is that some of us think this makes him unfit for office, period.  Then you have the people who know this, but don't really give a sh!t as long as Trump tosses thirty pieces of silver their way by passing tax cuts for the wealthy and nominating right-wing judges.  And even if some folks really didn't know before, they certainly do by now.  Simple as that."

Can you explain that claim to me? I'm Jewish, and it's literally never made sense to me. Do you really believe Trump is an anti-semite?

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Buttipete calls 60+ million Trump voters deplorable racists:

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1201947327596048389

That seems to me a pretty diplomatic way to put it for Mayor Pete. I probably wouldn't have been as diplomatic.

Indeed.  The less diplomatic (but even more accurate) way that I'd put it is that "[W]hile there are definitely some genuinely good people who simply got caught up in an evil movement in 2016 and thus voted for Trump.  Them aside, at the end of the day, I think we all pretty much knew by election day that Trump is a xenophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic white supremacist who sexually assaulted multiple women.  The difference is that some of us think this makes him unfit for office, period.  Then you have the people who know this, but don't really give a sh!t as long as Trump tosses thirty pieces of silver their way by passing tax cuts for the wealthy and nominating right-wing judges.  And even if some folks really didn't know before, they certainly do by now.  Simple as that."

Can you explain that claim to me? I'm Jewish, and it's literally never made sense to me. Do you really believe Trump is an anti-semite?

Calling Adam Schiff "shifty", his sons using the term "sheckles", telling American Jews that Bibi Netanyahu is "their" Prime Minister, saying Jews who vote Democrat are "disloyal", etc.

Yawn. Shifty rhymes with Schiff. He isn't his sons. None of those things are really anti-semitic, even if the last two are clueless and pretty weird.

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Buttipete calls 60+ million Trump voters deplorable racists:

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1201947327596048389

That seems to me a pretty diplomatic way to put it for Mayor Pete. I probably wouldn't have been as diplomatic.

Indeed.  The less diplomatic (but even more accurate) way that I'd put it is that "[W]hile there are definitely some genuinely good people who simply got caught up in an evil movement in 2016 and thus voted for Trump.  Them aside, at the end of the day, I think we all pretty much knew by election day that Trump is a xenophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic white supremacist who sexually assaulted multiple women.  The difference is that some of us think this makes him unfit for office, period.  Then you have the people who know this, but don't really give a sh!t as long as Trump tosses thirty pieces of silver their way by passing tax cuts for the wealthy and nominating right-wing judges.  And even if some folks really didn't know before, they certainly do by now.  Simple as that."

Can you explain that claim to me? I'm Jewish, and it's literally never made sense to me. Do you really believe Trump is an anti-semite?

I'm a Jewish-American as well and yes, I think Trump is a deeply anti-Semitic individual, but doesn't always get called out on it because he's a very specific type of anti-Semite.  He wholeheartedly subscribes to most of the typical anti-Semitic tropes (ex: It's pretty clear that he considers us foreign interlopers who infested the country long ago and have been greedily leeching away its money ever since), but Trump's sociopathic moral worldview is so screwed up that far from seeing these anti-Semitic tropes as negatives, he sees them as positive qualities to be commended.  

In other words, his moral compass is so radically off-course that to the extent he has a positive view of us, it's because he wholeheartedly believes a multitude of anti-Semitic tropes that a normal person would see as bigoted attacks against the Jewish people.  This article does a great job explaining this and includes some specific quotes/examples if you're really interested https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/21/trump-keeps-pushing-anti-semitic-stereotypes-he-thinks-hes-praising-jews/.  I mean, this phenomenon isn't even unique to Trump.

Then you have his comments about the Charlottesville Nazi rally.  Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" in reference to what was at best a de facto Nazi rally where an innocent person was murdered.  There were not good people on both sides and to suggest there were is at best indicative of an appalling indifference to unambiguous, explicit, and ultimately violent anti-Semitism, but more likely is a sign that one holds anti-Semitic views themselves.  One side was a bunch of neo-
Nazis, white supremacists thugs like David Duke who were chanting "the Jews will not replace us" and ultimately ended up murdering an innocent person while deliberately driving thorough.  The other side were counter-protestors taking a stand against a de facto (again, "de facto" at best) Nazi rally that was being held in their city.  

There was no moral equivalency.  There was no good-faith #BothSides argument here, period.  The fact that Trump stubbornly insisted upon claiming otherwise says a lot about which side he's on in the Jewish-American community's fight against anti-Semitism.

What do you mean there? I'd certainly consider that an anti-semitic viewpoint, but I've never seen any reason to believe he holds it before.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

The NYT editorial board has published an editorial calling for Buttigieg to open up about his work at McKinsey, and that his refusing to because he hasn't yet been released from his NDA is "not a tenable situation": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/buttigieg-mckinsey.html

What a terrible opinion from The Failing New York Times.

The only people who are actually worked up that he had a job with McKinsey are concern-trolling Bernie Bros.

Real Americans either don't know what McKinsey is or, if they do, think of it as a highly prestigious consulting firm that isn't nefarious at all.

It's just another six-degrees-of-separation game.
Company X did a bad thing once.
McKinsey did consulting work for Company X, just like it did consulting work for millions of other companies.
Buttigieg worked at McKinsey.

Therefore, Company X is inherently evil, McKinsey is inherently evil by association, Buttigieg is personally responsible for the bad thing Company X did and is therefore evil as well.

The fact that he's legally required to not talk about what he did just lets the Bros make up all sorts of wild speculation that Buttigieg was personally responsible for the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and the Cambodian Genocide.  Just like what they did with Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches, where she was legally required to not disclose them.

Here's what likely actually happened:  Target was trying to improve distribution efficiency but didn't know how, so they hired McKinsey to help them out.  McKinsey put together a team of data wizzes including Buttigieg to run some SQL queries and put together Excel spreadsheets breaking down sales metrics by product relative to certain efficiency metrics by store and quarter, did some optimization analysis, made some graphs in R, and wrote a 200-page PDF with recommended improvements.

This is what consulting firms actually do.  It's not nefarious at all, in fact it's pretty boring.

This. McKinley is a good company that performs valuable services, increases economic efficency, reduces waste, and ensures the best service available to customers. Buttigieg didn't just do nothing wrong- he did something right.

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The NYT editorial board has published an editorial calling for Buttigieg to open up about his work at McKinsey, and that his refusing to because he hasn't yet been released from his NDA is "not a tenable situation": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/buttigieg-mckinsey.html

What a terrible opinion from The Failing New York Times.

The only people who are actually worked up that he had a job with McKinsey are concern-trolling Bernie Bros.

Real Americans either don't know what McKinsey is or, if they do, think of it as a highly prestigious consulting firm that isn't nefarious at all.

It's just another six-degrees-of-separation game.
Company X did a bad thing once.
McKinsey did consulting work for Company X, just like it did consulting work for millions of other companies.
Buttigieg worked at McKinsey.

Therefore, Company X is inherently evil, McKinsey is inherently evil by association, Buttigieg is personally responsible for the bad thing Company X did and is therefore evil as well.

The fact that he's legally required to not talk about what he did just lets the Bros make up all sorts of wild speculation that Buttigieg was personally responsible for the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and the Cambodian Genocide.  Just like what they did with Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches, where she was legally required to not disclose them.

Here's what likely actually happened:  Target was trying to improve distribution efficiency but didn't know how, so they hired McKinsey to help them out.  McKinsey put together a team of data wizzes including Buttigieg to run some SQL queries and put together Excel spreadsheets breaking down sales metrics by product relative to certain efficiency metrics by store and quarter, did some optimization analysis, made some graphs in R, and wrote a 200-page PDF with recommended improvements.

This is what consulting firms actually do.  It's not nefarious at all, in fact it's pretty boring.

Wait bolded the relevant section for my own edification:

"Target was trying to improve distribution efficiency"

Are we talking about Target???

https://www.target.com/

I worked in their FCs and DCs, along with multiple relatives and friends, and it is and was a crappy place to work, even by the standards of warehouse work.

The only friend or relative that survived more than 3-6 Months, was an Ex-Marine that had a cush job driving lift, and wasn't a picker a packer, let alone shipping nor receiving....

Trucking wasn't so bad because it was all subbed out, but the truckers were all Non-Union from some Sub-Contract firm and getting jacked up by their own bosses, even though they didn't have to pay the cost of their own wheels for ( Hour "Short Haul" Truckin'

Eff.... Target and the bosses that come with them....

We had coworkers drooling at the mouth for the warehouse jobs to open up in new Amazon facilities in Gresham and Salem, rather than work in that slave driving company where employee performance is measured as "Prods" (Unit of Production), with your wristbands and scanners where all codes need to be punched in, while "Cherry Pickers" run the front of the belt in Inbound Receiving when the whistle blows and the dock doors open....

If Mayor Pete has anything to do with a Union-Busting Company that doesn't pay fair wages and salaries, that has the regular "5 Minute" Safety stretch at the start of a (10) hour shift, where so many OSHA injuries have occurred, I want nothing to do for his campaign....

Cut it out. Obviously the wages are fair if so many people are willing to work for them - that's supply and demand. It may not have been a tradeoff you liked, but after all, you don't have to work there. As it happens, Pete's work was objectively good, helped ensure goods made it to shelves and that customers were served. He's got nothing to apologize for.

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https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1203347138069094400

Neera Tanden defends Lis Smith (R-NY) for *ahem* working with Republicans to retain Republican control of the NY Senate. She got flack for it (deservedly so), and then she decided to blame the "hard left" and sexism.

If you dig deeper, it goes much deeper than working with Republicans. It includes, but is not limited to:

* Being part of the "but her emails" crowd

* Friendships with Richard Grenell and Ed Gillespie

* Giving a platform to Republican defenses of Buttigieg

Again, truly Orwellian stuff going on here from Neera. Union-busting is progress. Vetting is sexism. Attacks on her hero and mentor are "insane attacs", while two months of Bernie's campaigning, even after winding it down, hurting her is a "fair assessment". It's admittedly part of the reason why I support Bernie: so these people can be sent packing.

But ultimately, his embrace of Lis Smith leads to a common pattern (and ultimately the reason why I view Buttigieg so negatively): he has horrible judgment on who he surrounds himself with. He bungled the Boykins case because his inner circle was in bed with the police lobby, and even after the case had direct connections to the FOP. He may not have gone out of his way to protect corrupt cops in South Bend, but his inner circle certainly did, and he never disavowed these corrupt cops until the national limelight shone on him. At best, his allies are complicit, and at worst, he knew and is complicit himself.

MY GOD!!!

She was friends with a Republican.

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE TOLD PEOPLE: REPUBLIGAN-LOVERS ARE TRAITORS!!!!

Oh, and she allowed Republicans to defend her candidate instead of telling them to stop? My god, what else is the death penalty for?

Sarcasm aside, wtf is up with y'all and Lis Smith/Pete.

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The guy has a bigger ego than Trump. There are literally several races in Indiania he could run for an actually be qualified for and have a decent shot of winning. Why doesn't he run against Walorski or Governor, Galloway is taking the leap in Missouri. To be a Mayor of a college town and then think you can just be President demonstrates a huge level of narcissism.

He worked at McKinley, went to Harvard, and served in the army. Political experience is overrated in this regard, in terms of actually have done anything with his life Bernie (the hippie loser essay writer from Vermont who abandoned his kid and spent years moping around/has never held a real job) is the one in need, not Pete.

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Dinner with Pete -

Who cares?

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Pete Buttigieg’s Campaign Says This Wikipedia User Is Not Pete. So Who Is It?

Ashley Feinberg is a little over the top but she's also hilarious and I have a soft spot for her from when I used to read deadspin (RIP). Read this article. It's all circumstantial evidence but the implication is very funny!

Aww, this makes me like him. Not in a political way, but in a relatable way. Who of us wouldn't want to do the same if we'd won an election?

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Pete was only 14, but seems to have forgotten that it's not 1996 any more and that people aren't voting for a 1996 style Democrat.

The Biden/Buttigeg/Klobuchar share of the electorate would seem to disagree.