It takes one to know one.
Democrats need to reposition. They need an anti-elitist populist spokesman.
Pete Buttigieg. Yes, Pete Buttigieg.
Democrats are the party of educated managers and office workers. "Trust the science" is something Democrats say. "Listen to the people" is something Republicans say. Republican populism has taken aim at experts. It is time for Democrats to do the same.
Distrust of experts is bipartisan. There is ample justification for it. Wall Street "wizards" destroyed the economy with their mortgage fraud, then stayed wealthy by being bailed out by taxpayers. The supposed know-it-alls at the Fed have given us one asset bubble after another. Foreign policy experts at the State Department and military kept us fighting an un-winnable war in Afghanistan for 20 years, and it ended ugly. Even supporters of the CDC are frustrated with mixed signals and changes in COVID advice.
Democrats defend experts and expertise. The real world is messy. Things fall apart. Democrats, especially with COVID, send a message of "we know best," which sets them up for failure. This stance isn't working for Democrats. It is time to press reset. That can best be done with generational change and a party leader that calls for institutional change.
Pete Buttigieg attended Harvard, then Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He was a consultant at McKinsey. Now he is Secretary of Transportation. Buttigieg has the perfect resume for Mr. Meritocracy. He has excelled and has been fast-tracked. Buttigieg is the new version of Robert McNamara's "Whiz Kids," those best and brightest who carried out a failed war with Vietnam.
Isn't that as bad as it gets? Doesn't that put Buttigieg in the deepest of political holes?
No. It qualifies him as a change agent.
Buttigieg can do something brave. He can take aim at people like himself and his own mentors. He can tell the simple truth that the former generation of leaders made mistakes, that managers and experts have been wrong. He can say they have been insular and self-protective. He needs to say he wants to shake up and change out the very people he knows best. It takes a thief to catch a thief. It takes one to know one.
Buttigieg can say it's time for people to think outside the box. Some of his message can be regional. He can decry the error and insult imbedded in the notion of "flyover country." He can say he loves "midwestern values" and that he believes in "Minnesota nice." Buttigieg can include sharp criticism of academic elites at Harvard, Oxford, and McKinsey, the Ivies, the coasts. He's seen it. Praise universities in swing state Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. No need to put on duck-hunting clothes and borrow a shotgun. He is who he is, and he is a "traitor to his class." No one can dump on Harvard as persuasively as a person who excelled there.
Won't that cost votes on the coasts? In Massachusetts? In New York? No. Nobody resents snobbery as much as people closely exposed to the snobs.
Buttigieg must be willing to name names, face criticism, and show that he is resolute in the face of that criticism. That is the test of a change-agent politician. Does he stand firm in calling out error? Can Buttigieg say "You're fired?" That is what change agents do.
Americans are ready for change.
8 comments:
Brilliant, however Kamala Harris will be the candidate, just so you know.
You point out many things that Buttigieg could do to be a viable presidential candidate. The problem is he hasn't done any of it up to now, not to mention that he's pretty effectively blocked from stepping out in his current position.
Pres. Biden chose VP Harris, foremost among other reasons, to be his successor. About this time next year I predict we'll begin the transition.
Democrats of the sort captured here by Mr. Sage don't "defend experts and expertise" as such, in my opinion, so much as they defer uncritically to socially and politically complaisant technocrats. These Democrats don't follow science so much as they believe in overweening scientism, which includes much dubious social science. The modern bureaucratic state is one of broadly-written centralized control not subject to the inconvenient input of unwashed voters. This is the ultimate vision of efficiency and distributive fairness for well-meaning, educated collectivists. The problem (for me and others who give individual rights primacy over group imperatives) is that its predictable excesses are every bit as dangerous as the equal opposite, namely government by uninformed populist instinct.
Where does Pete Buttigieg fit in here? Ironically, as a potential Joan of Arc for elective sexuality versus religion, he's arguably a neo-populist. His political qualification aside from being gay consist of the functional equivalent of a couple of middling terms as mayor of Medford, Oregon. His Secretaryship is a sop, a payoff, which could as easily have been any of five other second=-tier Cabinet spots. He's been a placeholder. But can Buttigieg appeal to flyover country, as suggested? Perhaps, if he sticks to a humble, mutual celebration of Christianity first and foremost instead of noisily presuming to call out Christianity itself as he has (and as a Rotary-In-Robes Episcopalian, no less) simply because of the Scriptural spot-zone he demands for his own personal life.
Stacey Abrams would also fit the bill, but any of them would make the Trumplican Party's head explode.
So Mr. Millward is predicting that Biden will step down and give it to Harris? She certainly could not win on her own at this point. Whether she could after that point is highly debatable.
Buttigieg comes across robotic. Watch him with the sound turned off. Little to no charisma.
Harris is worse than Buttigieg. Negative charisma. Giggles under pressure. Only there to fill a Democratic Party diversity quota.
Abrams is way too far to the left.
The Democrats need what used to be called a "dark horse" when I was much younger. Someone new and exciting. Maybe someone like Beto, but with a higher IQ.
There was some noise recently about Hillary running in 2024. That's an indication of desperation.
Gina Raimondo might be good. But the Democratic base will probably not come out for her.
Mr. Dudgeon –
“Democrats…defer uncritically to socially and politically complaisant technocrats.”
Oh, really? I haven’t heard or seen a single Democrat advocating for a technocracy, but I certainly do hear plenty of white-wingers deferring uncritically to a belligerent, greedy, power-mad pathological liar.
“overweening scientism, “educated collectivism,” “a potential Joan of Arc for elective sexuality,” “a humble, mutual celebration of Christianity.”
Are you trying to tell us you disapprove?
Once again the right wingnuts here try to define people they don't agree with.
It's like religious wackos defining Satan.
And it's straight from the Fox-Hitler playbook to lie about people you disagree with.
Trump has committed sexual assault and has a crush on his daughter. Those are facts.
Mc--
"The right wingnuts [toss in "wackos", and "Satan" and "Hitler"] try to define people they don't agree with."
Unintentional irony alert?! Sorry, Mc., but you and many a good progressive like you fall headlong into "Physician, heal thyself" territory with such overheated silliness.
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