How are there still people like this?

Rep. Eric Swalwell: "I pledge to lead our country with a team of rivals, a blended cabinet of Republicans and Democrats, not because it will be easy -- and we may have to send out a search party to find more Republicans who can put country over party." https://t.co/PFoTN6OcbT pic.twitter.com/Qz6Or8920U

— The Hill (@thehill) April 15, 2019

Who thinks this is a good idea? Or that it's even possible?
Eric Swalwell is apparently a United States Congressman (he has the title "Rep." in front of his name) and he still has no idea how things work in DC?


Swalwell is making gun control the key theme of his campaign and good for him. That is an issue that needs to be addressed and dealt with.

In his remarks, Swalwell laid out specific agenda items, including a ban and buyback program for assault weapons and universal background checks for all gun purchases.

Great. But do you think you're going to acheive any of that by working with Republicans?
First you're going to need to find a Repuiblican that hasn't posed with an assault rifle as part of his or her campaign material.







Why would you think that you could find Republicans willing to serve in your cabinet for any purpose other then to sabotage you at every turn?

This guy has been in Congress since 2012! (I looked it up) And he STILL thinks that there is some way forward involving bipartisanship? Does he think bipartisanship is still a thing that exists? Is he too young to remember Newt Gingrich taking bipartisanship out behind the Capitol building, strangling it, dismembering it, then defiling the corpse while smiling for the C-Span cameras?

Dude, you've been in Congress for 6 years. In all that time have you never met Mitch McConnel?
Do you not remember the Obama Administration? Do you not remember McConnell stating that his main goal was to prevent Obama from being re-elected? And then he and John Boehner threw monkey wrenches into the gears at every opportunity. Remember the ACA? Obama took a Republican plan, conceived by the Heritage Foundation, implemented by Mitt Romney, and offered it up as a bipartisan solution to our nation's healthcare woes. Dis it get a single Republican vote? No, it did not. Have the Republicans made every effort to sabotage and disable it? Yes, they have. Did they vote over and over again to repeal it? You bet.  Why do you think they did that? Do you think they had any legitimate objections to the program? Did they actually believe there were "death panels?"  Of course not. Just like they didn't actually believe that they were standing on some sort of principle by refusing to even consider anyone that Barack Obama might appoint to the Supreme Court.

I would be more baffled by where this instinct towards reaching across the aisle and finding common ground comes from, except for a podcast I've started listening to. It's hosted by Dave Anthony and Josh Olson and it's called "The West Wing Thing."

The theme of the podcast is that, while the West Wing was an excellent television show, it has had a pernicious effect on Democratic politics by convincing a generation of liberal politicians, campaign workers, pundits and party operatives that the Jeb Bartlett presidency is something to emulate. That if you just get enough really smart Ivy League grads together, they can work out any problems while being wise enough to not attempt to go "too far." Timid incrementalism recast as "practical Idealism," a term which means nothing.




On the most recent episode, (Episode 4) they played a clip of Leo (Jon Spencer) explaining to a Congressmember why their gun control bill had been watered down to the point of ineffectiveness. Leo says, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Come on, you know how this works. We got to make progress inch by inch!"

Now, in the real world, progress can not be made "inch by inch." I mean, it can. It just shouldn't. There's not a lot of point to saying that we'll eventually have universal healthcare like other civilized countries after we're all dead. Maybe your grandkids will see it in their lifetimes. You need to go big. That's something that Barack Obama never seemed to understand. If you want to get the ACA passed with a public option and mandatory Medicaaid expansion, you don't offer that up as your opening bid. You begin with saying that you want a system modeled on the UK's National Health. Then you have room to negotiate down. And maybe you get that public option that would have made the ACA worht a hell of a lot more than it is. And maybe you get Medicaid expansion that GOP governors can't refuse just because it has a Democrat's name on it. You have to come in with big ideas. "Practical Idealism" is not going to accomplish anything. Especially with this crop of Republicans.

Au Revoir, Notre Dame

As if the world couldn't get any worse.




It looks like we are losing one of the iconic works of European architecture.




And of course the Oaf in Chief had some "thoughts" on the subject.

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019

Because, sure, the Fire Department of Paris needs your advice. Because it never would have occurred to them that they need to "act quickly."
Also, you know who knows more about fighting fires than you, President Dolt? The professional fire fighters of the Paris Fire Department. (Also, probably anyone who's seen an episode of Adam-12.)

As a matter of fact:

France's civil security agency says "all means" except for water-dropping aircraft were deployed to tackle the blaze, per the Associated Press. The defense agency said those were unsuitable for fires like the one at Notre Dame because dumping water on the building could cause the whole structure to collapse.

Now, to be fair, I wouldn't have known that either. BUT, I would have known that I don't know how to fight fires and that the professional fighters of fire in Paris didn't need me chucking my 2 cents in.

Anyway, this is hitting me harder than it should. Apparently, no lives have been lost. But to see a symbol of this great city, a structure which has withstood wars, revolutions, and everything nature could throw at it for nine centuries, just going up in flames. It hurts. It's just so sad.

J'aime Paris.

J'aime les français.

Et le monde vient de devenir un peu plus merdique aujourd'hui.

Meghan McCain opens mouth, says things

You know what's interesting about "The View?"
And before you say "not a god damn thing," I'm definitely not saying that watching the View would be at all interesting. You couldn't pay me to watch the View. (counterpoint: Yeah, you probably could.)
What's interesting about the existence of the View is that it's such a perfect microcosm of American politics as seen by the media types. It showcases the entire spectrum of political opinion, ranging from center-right to slightly-left of center! And it thinks it's doing important work.

And another interesting thing is that, on the lib/Dem side, you have these women who have earned everything they have the hard way. Women like Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O'Donnell who fought their way up through the hardscrabble world of comedy clubs succeeding on talent and drive. On the conservative side you have the women of whom you have only heard because of the men in their lives. Like Abby Huntsman, whose main qualification is being the daughter of  former governor and presidential campaign footnote Jon Huntsman. Or Meghan Mc Cain, of whom you have only heard because her father was famous (and whose father was only famous because of his father's influential position. Check out the Dollop episode on the Maverick.) or Elizabeth Hasselbeck who got sort of famous by marrying a third-tier NFL quarterback.


Anyway, that brings us to Meghan McCain's most recent word-twaddle.

Meghan McCain Is Kind of 'Grateful' Trump Is President: Otherwise, 'I Don’t Think I Would Be Successful' on The View

Ooookay, I see we've expanded the definition of the word "successful to include. . . whatever it is Meghan McCain does?

“If Trump wasn’t president, I don’t think I would be successful here,” the View co-host said in a new book on the show, Ladies Who Punch, which was published last week.
“For that reason, I guess I’m grateful that Trump is president,” McCain continued. “It’s just made my job a little easier because I know why it happened.”

Yeah, we all know why it happened, Meg. You're not special. Hillary Clinton wrote an entire book on how it happened. (Spoiler alert, it was everyone's fault but hers.)

Still, McCain, 34, told author Ramin Setoodeh (her friend and former editor) that she didn’t think the president — an unusually polarizing politician — was the reason The View had drawn strong ratings.
“That I don’t concede to. Everyone is like, ‘Oh, you’re popular because Trump.’ I think everyone is more interested in politics,” she said. “Young women are different now than when I was younger. Everyone is involved, civically engaged, and informed. I think that’s also why the show is doing so well.”

Ouch! That may be the saddest thing I've ever heard. If people are becoming more politically aware and engaged and are turning to the View for, what, political insight? that is as scathing an indictment of the American body politic as I've ever read.

“I think the reason I worked and other Republicans didn’t is because I’m the first real Republican that they hired,” McCain said.

Oh dear God.
How in the world are you the first "real Republican" on the View? You know they had (maybe still have?) Anna Navarro on the View, right? You may remember her from the time she spent working for the presidential campaign of. . . oh, gosh, who was it again. . . oh yeah, JOHN MCCAIN!

And she knows how that sounds: “Yes, I think I’m more of a Republican than Elisabeth is.” 

Yeah, I wouldn't brag about that. Also, whatever happened to your whole "I'm a moderate" schtick? Because if you are anything resembling a moderate, you are not "more of a Republican" than anybody.

Speaking with Setoodeh, she could hardly name other conservative co-hosts before her: “Nicolle Wallace changed parties. Candace Cameron was a social conservative. I don’t remember the other people who were on here.”

Oh my God. "I'm the only real Republican who has ever been on this show and by the way, I have no idea who else has been on this show" is pretty emblematic of the kind of thought-provoking journalism we have come to expect from America's number one fail-daughter.

And, as to Candace Cameron-Brulee, being a "social conservative" is pretty much the number one prerequisite for being a "real Republican." Do you know anything about your own party?

“He [Trump] knows it and I know it and all of you know it — he will never be a great man,” Meghan said on the show last month. “My father was his kryptonite in life, he’s his kryptonite in death.”

Okay, so you don't know what kryptonite is either, I guess.
Your father had no effect on Donald tRump. He trashed your father on television and it cost him exactly nothing. The electoral base of your father's own party sided 100% with il Douche over your father - some after tut-tutting and tsk-tsking him a bit. In death, your father is having no effect on anyone. And I'm not trying to disrespect your father. And you're right about President McCheese never being a great man. I'mm just saying that Hair Furor's utter lack of greatness has nothing to do with your father. At all.

Describing her own politics, Meghan has described herself as “a conservative first and foremost.”
“I’m a small government, America-first conservative,” she said on The View in February. “What is being presented to me on the alternative side is too radical for me.”

Oh, sure. I get that. The thought of, say, single-payer healthcare is frighteningly "radical. That's probably why it is only done in Canada.
And the UK.
And France.
And Taiwan.
And the Netherlands.
And Scandinavia.
And South Korea.
And Australia.

Yeah, it's far too crazy an idea for us to ever try here!
And taxing the rich? That's something that only a radical like Fidel Castro would do.
Or Dwight Eisenhower.
Or Woodrow Wilson.
Or John F. Kennedy.
Or Richard Nixon.

Yeah, I can definitely see how the "alternative side" is wayyyy too radical for you. I mean, what's next, a minimum wage that people can live on?

Meghan told Setoodeh she was somewhat reluctant to take The View job, given its history of getting rid of hosts who aren’t working out. But her father “convinced me to do it.” 

Transcript of John McCain convincing Meghan to take the View job:

Jeezus, Meghan! You've got to get a job! You have to do something with your life! You can't just sleep on my couch all day!

“I hope it’s in my obituary that I was the first Republican since Elisabeth Hasselbeck to survive more than one season on The View,” she said. “It’s one of my proudest moments.”
That includes her noted verbal altercations with fellow panelist Joy Behar.
“I love sparring with her,” Meghan said in Ladies Who Punch. “We’re like boxers; we punch gloves and then we’re out.”

"We punch gloves."
"We punch gloves and then we're out."
So, I guess add boxing to the list of things you know nothing about.

Yeah, this seems like a meritocracy, all right. Clearly you've earned your job being a television talking person.

What are conservatives scared of today?

Fear is conservatives' drug of choice.

Conservatives always need to be afraid of something. They neeeeed that fear. It's the only thing that makes them feel alive. Whether they're scared of the Communists or the feminists or the environmentalists or the secular humanists, they have to be terrified of something.

 

Look out, an immigrant!

So what is the number one fear of conservatives at this moment?

If you guessed MS-13, we have some lovely parting gifts for you. See, MS-136 is actually pretty scary. I mean, they would be if you ever encountered them. Most of us will never encounter MS-13, much less run afoul of them, but they're scary in the same way that tigers are scary. There';s no need for any Americans to sit up at night worrying about tigers, but if you ever did see one, do not , and I can not emphasize this enough, do NOT fuck with it.

Anyway, the answer we were looking for was "transgendered people."  

.

Why are conservatives so pants-wettingly afraid of trans folk'? It's hard to say. I mean, they seem pretty harmless.

Pretty easy on the eyes




Pretty cool, really.



And yet. . .

Mike Huckabee identifies 'biggest threat' to moral fiber of US
ANAHEIM, California — Redefining gender and sexual identity is the “greatest threat” to the moral fiber of America, said former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee

Oh, do explain, Governor!

“The biggest threat to biblical principles today is the failure to apply a biblical standard of maleness and femaleness,” Huckabee told The Christian Post during a sit-down interview last week in Anaheim, California. “We are creating this illusion that there is no gender, there is no identity."

Ah. I see. Because that is one thing that the Bible is completely unambiguous about. There must at all times and in all places be a bright line of demarcation between the male and the female.
Why, just look at this categorical statement to that effect from St Paul's letter to the Galatians:

28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Oooh. Sorry, Mike. Looks like maybe St Paul would disagree with you on that "biblical principle."  But what does Paul know about it, he's only IN the Bible!

The 2008 and 2016 Republican presidential candidate explained that California’s introduction of “no-fault divorce” in 1970 created the mindset that marriage “wasn’t really that important” and that one “could go in and out of it without a second thought.” 

Which of course has everything to do with gender-non-conforming people.

“That’s when we first started losing that sense of sacredness of what marriage meant,” he argued. 

Sure, 1970. I mean, by 1970, Elizabeth Taylor had been married five times and divorced four.
And Mickey Rooney was already on wife number seven.Jerry Lee Lewis was twice-divorced and married to his THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD cousin. But yeah, up until then, marriage was seen as a sacred unbreakable vow.

“So I'm not really that surprised that same sex-marriage has become in vogue because the Christian Church were the ones who essentially abdicated a strict responsibility about what biblical marriage should look like.”

Um. . . the state of California and the Christian Church are two very different entities. California adopting no-fault divorce had no effect on the various Christian denominations' stance on marriage and divorce. I mean, you can't possibly think that churches around the country saw California's new law and threw in the towel on the culture wars. "Well, if California says you can get divorced without showing fault, then I guess we'll just have to change our entire moral worldview!"

“Once you've destroyed that, why can't you have any and everything?” he continued. “The gender dysphoria we're seeing today is largely due to the fact that the Church has failed to present very clearly the words of Jesus and Genesis 5:2: ‘Male and female He created them.’”

Why can't you have. . . what the hell are you talking about? NO-fault divorce became a thing in 1970. Did that throw open some floodgates to every alternative lifestyle or. . . I don't even know what point you think you're making. Hell, it took over 30 years for same-sex couples to be able to marry.

Also, if you're going to say that because the first two people were one male and one female, which would have been pretty necessary for reproduction, that that means that there can now only be males and females and you're stuck with whatever you get? Oh, and also, the Bible does say that God created them male and female. But it also says that God did not "create" Adam, but formed him from clay and then had to go back later and take a rib out out of him because he had completely forgotten to create woman, so maybe Genesis isn't the most sound basis for gender policy?

Huckabee pointed out that society today celebrates single parenting and posits the idea that fathers “really aren’t necessary” when it comes to raising children.
“There are some people who are in single parenthood, not because they want to be, but because they were forced to be. And we ought to give [them] all the support,” he clarified. “But we should never pretend that it is as good as a loving mother and father in a home where a child sees both genders play out their norms because that's the modeling of behavior that would be ideal for a child to grow up in.”

Yeah, like in the Huckabee household, where a male father and female mother managed to raise one child who tortures and kills digs and another who is a professional liar in the service of a pussy-grabbing cretin who takes children away from their parents.



Okay, we all know Huckabee is a moron. Let's let someone else have a try. What's so scary about trans people?

• MEDIA

MARCH 28, 2019

A Guest on Laura Ingraham’s Show Just Said Trans People Will Create a New Species That Is Part Machine

“They are truly taking our children from us. This is child abuse.”

 

Um, what?

Seriously?

That can't really be what they said. Could it?

*sight* Now I guess I have to look.

“I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogether, not simply rewriting it,” Nathanson said, “they’re basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species.”

A new. . . species? Do you. . . do you know what a species is? I mean, whether someone is male, female, neither, both, or whatever option you can think of, they would still be the same species. A person wouldn't become a cat. Believe me, I've tried. 

A mare, a stallion and a gelding are all members of the same species. If you took the parts you had removed from the gelding and surgically attached them to the mare, that new type of horse would still be a horse. A new species? Who the hell is this Nathanson imbecile?

Her guest, Dr. Paul Nathanson of McGill University 

Dr. Paul Nathanson, a gender relations professor and author of books including Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture

Oh for God's sake. Looks like I'm going to have to re-evaluate my opinion of McGill University.

Unlesssss. . . It's not Jimmy McGill University is it?

Still inexcusable!

Nathanson then explained that he questioned his gender identity when he was a child but grew up to be a cisgender gay man. “I don’t look down on people who are confused about who they are,” he said. “I just think that the solution that many are choosing, to either mutilate their bodies in one way or another in order to effect a cosmetic change—because you can’t change your chromosomes, you can only change outward appearance—I think that solution is a misguided one.”

It wasn't the right solution for me and my specific life experience, therefore it is the wrong solution for everyone! I teach at McCill!

Ingraham then derided parents who allowed their children to undergo hormone therapy, referencing a “horrifying” situation in Washington state in which a child was allegedly taken from her mother because the mother had not consented for the child to receive hormone treatment.
“They are truly taking our children from us,” Ingraham said. “This is child abuse.”

I'm just going to go ahead and assume this "alleged" incident didn't actually happen. Although, even if it did, one child being removed from one home hardly constitutes "our children being taken from us." Although, to be fair, it does sound a lot scarier this way.
And I googled this story and I can't find it anywhere, not even in the fear-mongering stories about trans kids in outlets like the Federalist and The New American dot com.

During the episode, Ingraham and Nathanson discussed the “attack on masculinity” and some of the apparent hoaxes behind it.

Oh! That's surprising. I'm pleasantly surprised that they would admit that the "attack on masculinity" is a hoax. Or should I maybe read the next sentence?

The hoax that somehow sexes are all the same or capable of being bed into one continuum, that masculinity itself is toxic, terrible and poisonous, all of those things, and in fact has to be discouraged in many ways,” Ingraham said before introducing Nathanson.

Okay, yeah. That makes more sense.

Nathanson told Ingraham that trans and non-binary movements have sprung up because “feminists challenge the notion of gender” and this has evolved into the development of feminist ideology.

Uh, feminists have challenged the notion of traditional gender roles. I don't think any feminists have ever challenged the idea of the existence of gender. If there were no gender, how would there be feminists?

“If masculinity is bad and men are inherently going to be patriarchal unless somehow we can train them, and beat this out of them—to be protectors and to be courageous, all these things that we impugn upon men—well if you get rid of all that, then the traditional family itself collapses and that's one last bastion of Western Biblically-centered morality that enveloping our, and has helped us prosper, frankly, for millennia and advance in millennia,” Ingraham said, as transcribed by Media Matters.

Mmm, that's good gibberish!

She does have a good point, though. Western Christian principles have led to so many great advancements in civilization. Why, just ask Galileo! Or Alan Turing!

“So the goal is really quite radical,” he added. “We're not talking about people who want to simply do a bit of reform here and there, add a new category. They want, they must, in fact, destroy whatever is in order to replace it with what they think should be. We're talking about revolution, not reform.”
Ingraham asks: "And the new species will be looking like what? Will be part human part animal?

Part animal? Where the hell do you come up with "part animal?" You think that the "radicals" who are suggesting that maybe not everyone fits into a nice neat male/female binary want to a: destroy the existing genders, and b: transform America into the Island of Dr. Moreau?

That's furries. You're thinking of furries.

Nathanson said, "I think human and part machine," to which Ingraham replies "part machine, hmm."

"Hmm. . . Yes, doctor. You've given me much to ponder," replied Laura Ingraham, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "I had assumed we'd be looking at a Dr. Moreau scenario, but perhaps a Terminator situation is more likely."


Okay, we've just got a couple minutes left. Anyone else want to chime in? Anyone want to put zero effort into their half-assed objection to recognizing gender-non-conforming people?

Trump could become ‘first female president’ under new legislation, GOP lawmaker says

Jeezus, Gaetz, I thought you'd at least try a little!

Rep. Matt Gaetz R-Fla., said Tuesday he will not support The Equality Act in part because its provisions that seek to prohibit discrimination of transgender individuals could hypothetically lead to President Trump declaring himself the first female president.
“[I]f President Trump were to say, ‘I’m am now the first female president,’ who would celebrate that?” said Gaetz in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the legislation. 

Honestly, so what if he did? Who would that hurt? It's not like there's prize money for being the first female president that should rightly be going to Elizabeth Warren. If you're going to try to be scary, you have to pretend that there's the possibility of something bad happening.

The bill being pushed by Democratic lawmakers would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the protections under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Gaetz said he would not support the legislation because of the possibility of people abusing the new protections in the bill.

How? How could people possibly abuse that provision?

I guess you're maybe thinking that cis people are going to pretend to be trans so that they can, what exactly, just act with impunity? You know, just like how in the sixties, after the original Civil Rights bill was passed, all these white guys pretended to be black so they could flout society's rules and get away with it? Is that what you think might happen?

“I strongly support the rights of transgender individuals,” Gaetz said. 

**Ron Howard voice** "He did not support the rights of transgendered individuals."

 “But I am concerned about the potential bad actors who would exploit the provisions for their own gain.”

**Ron Howard voice** "He was not concerned about that potentiality."

So, what have we learned today? Well, one thing really. If you want to terrify your FOX-watching relatives or co-workers, just show them a trans person!

BOO!

Works every time!

We don't need Mr. Nice Guy

Opinion

Why You Love Mayor Pete

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

• April 1, 2019

Okay. like most Americans, I do not love "Mayor Pete." Like most of us, I know very little about Pete Buttigieg. He seems like a good enough fella, but I certainly don't know enough about him to either love or hate him. I can't honestly say that I like or dislike him. Once again, Mr. Brooks, you have your finger on the very pulse of the American electorate!

Pete Buttigieg has some kind of magic right now. His campaign bio, “Shortest Way Home,” was the 25th-best-selling book on Amazon when I checked on Monday. That put him just a few dozen places behind Michelle Obama

Twenty-Fifth. That puts him just slightly more than TWO dozen places behind Michelle Obama. Not a few. A dozen is twelve. Twenty five is two dozen plus one place. It's probably not an important point, but for God's sake, man, you're a professional writer!

In a recent Iowa poll he surged to third place

Oh my God, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been following campaigns, and you think that a poll taken a year before the Iowa caucus means anything? You know that in October 2011 Herman God Damn Cain was leading the polls in Iowa? Five months before that, Michele Bachmann was neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney with Cain a respectable third. Do you have fond memories of the Cain Administration? Are you at all nostalgic for the Bachmann presidency? "mayor Pete" is the flavor of the month. He's the guy that Iowa voters have just now heard of, so he's the name that pops into their heads when they are asked for the millionth fucking time who they're planning on voting for. It means nothing. You have to know this.

His campaign just announced that it’s raised an impressive $7 million since January.

Oh. That is impressive. I mean, Kamala Harris has raised $12 million. Bernie Sanders has raised $18 million, but obviously, Buttigieg's whopping 7 proves that he is the candidate America loves!

And I can’t tell you how many Democrats in places as diverse as Nebraska, Indiana, New York and Washington have come up to me over the last few weeks raving about the guy. 

Presumably these are the same rugged blue-collar guys tearfully hugging Cheeto Mussolini, thanking him for saving their coal mines or steel mills. You know, those guys who don't exist and are totally made up.
I mean, imagine you're some Democratic guy or gal in Nebraska or Indiana, just minding your own business, going about your day when suddenly you spy a familiar face. "Why, Maude, I do believe that's New York Times columnist David Brooks over there, I just gotta go over to him and tell him how excited I am about this mayor what's-his-name than I only heard of for the first time yesterday!" Because there's nothing that Midwestern Democrats enjoy more than wealthy conservative New Yorkers who like to pretend they understand the "common folk."

This is the biggest star-is-born moment since Lady Gaga started singing “Shallow.”

Oh. . . don't. Don't try to be "hep" and "with it."
Honestly, it's just. . . sad.

Anyway, now that you've clearly established that we DO, in fact,looooove Mayor Pete, perhaps you'd care to explain to us WHY we love him so.

Why are people so in love with the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who almost nobody had heard of until he did a CNN town hall on March 10?
It’s important to remember that when Democrats vote next year, they’ll not only be choosing a policy alternative to Donald Trump, they’ll also be making a statement about what kind of country they want America to be.

Yeah. Like every Presidential election.

The Trump era has been all about dissolving moral norms and waging vicious attacks. This has been an era of culture war, class warfare and identity politics. It’s been an era in which call-out culture, reality TV melodrama and tribal grandstanding have overshadowed policymaking and the challenges of actually governing.
The Buttigieg surge suggests that there are a lot of Democrats who want to say goodbye to all that. They don’t want to fight fire and divisiveness with more fire and divisiveness. They don’t want to fight white identity politics with another kind of identity politics.

They want to lose.

They are sick of the moral melodrama altogether. They just want a person who is more about governing than virtue-signaling, more about friendliness and basic decency than media circus and rhetorical war.

Hmm, that sounds familiar. . . almost as if maybe that kind of candidate may have been seen before. . .
 

Yeah, playing nice sounds like a sure-fire formula for success!

Buttigieg’s secret is that he transcends many of the tensions that run through our society in a way that makes people on all sides feel comfortable.

So does chicken soup. Being inoffensive to people on "all sides" requires being dull, unremarkable and unmemorable, inspiring no one. You can't excite your base while not offending your opponents.

First, he is young and represents the rising generation, but he is also an older person’s idea of what a young person should be. 

Yeah, that's not a compliment.
"Buttigieg has a tidy appearance, defers to his elders and isn't crazy about the blacks!"
Also, I'm pretty sure most older people's idea of what a young man should be does not include the phrase "married to another man."

He’d be the first millennial president, but Buttigieg doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes that have been affixed to America’s young people.

Well, neither do most of America's young people, but that doesn't stop New York Times columnists from affixing those stereotypes to them.

Young people are supposed to be woke social justice warriors who are disgusted by their elders. Buttigieg is the model young man who made his way impressing his elders — Harvard, Rhodes scholar, McKinsey, the Navy.

Ah, yes. We can all identify with the Rhodes scholar from Harvard who worked for a management strategy consulting firm.
But seriously, you say "woke social justice warrior" as if that were a foolish and ridiculous thing to be, but that term would perfectly describe historical figures like Martin Luther King, Jr, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Gandhi. I don't get why the idea of fighting for social justice is supposed to worthy of ridicule such that the term "SJW" is supposed to be widely assumed to be an insult. I'm no milenial, but I have a hell of a lot more respect for someone who fights for social justice than a Harvard boy who chose to fight in Afghanistan.

Young hipsters are supposed to flock to coastal places like Brooklyn and Portland; after college, Buttigieg returned to Indiana.

Yes. All people under 40 live in Portland or Brooklyn. There are no hipster coffee shops or nightclubs or art spaces in Indianapolis. I live in Atlanta and I have never seen anyone under 30.

Young people are supposed to be anti-institutional, but Buttigieg is very institutional — his life has been defined by his service to organizations, not his rebellion against them.

Ooooh. Service to organizations! That'll get the voters excited!Hey, you know who else dedicated their adult lives to service to organizations?

Second, he is gay and personifies the progress made by the L.G.B.T.Q. movement, but he doesn't do so in a way that feels threatening or transgressive to social conservatives.

Are you serious?

His very existence feels threatening and transgressive to "social conservatives!"
Do you think that there are some Pat Robertson-watching, Rush Limbaugh-listening Red State-reading Bible thumpers out there who are looking at Mayor Pete and thinking "well, he's not real, ya know, flamboyant about it. He doesn't dress like a Village Person, I guess he's okay?" You think that "social conservatives" who vote on abortion, anti-gay rights, guns, and abortion again, are going to vote for a  pro-choice gay Democrat because he's not, you know TOO gay?

My religion-based homophobia will not allow me to vote for a "Jack," but a "Will?" Why not?

He has conservative family values; it’s just that his spouse is a husband, not a wife. 

Yeah, that's. . . do you even know what people mean when they say "conservative family values?" They mean "not gay." Do you think they look at the thrice-married serial adulterer in the White House and thought "hey, that's not family values! That's not what the Bible says at all!" No, they said "all three of his wives have vaginas, right? And all the women he had affairs with? And all the women he sexually assaulted? And all the underage girls whose dressing rooms he barged into? They're all biologically female, right? Yeah? Okay, he's good."
Saying he has conservative family values except that his spouse is a man is like saying he's a vegetarian, except instead of vegetables he eats cheeseburgers. It means you have no concept of the meaning of the term.

He speaks comfortably about his faith and says that when he goes to church he prefers a conservative liturgy to anything experimental.

Yeah, you know who's a good churchgoing family man? Barack Obama. You know who absolutely is fucking not? Donald Trump. Which one did the "social conservatives" vote for again? And which one did they say might be the actual literal antichrist? I forget.




Oh, right.

 Social conservatives will always - always - vote for the candidate with the (R) after his name. If St Peter ran as a Democrat with the Virgin Mary as his running mate, they would vote for the Republican. These are not people who can be reasoned with. No Democrat is ever going to attract the religious right vote. And shouldn't. They're terrible and they want terrible policies. Also, it's a fool's errand. Anything  a democratic candidate does to try to appeal to "social conservatives" will not only net zero "social conservative" votes, it will alienate the Democratic base.

Third, he is a localist and a Washington outsider, but he carries no populist resentment and can easily speak the language of the coastal elite.

Oh, yeah. People hate populist resentment. I mean, it's not like populist resentment was a winning strategy for the current president or anyth. . .oh, right!

You know, or you would know if you ever got out of your NY/DC bubble, people are angry. People are pissed off about the current state of affairs. Especially the milenials who followed the sage advice of the establishment and took on thousands of dollars in debt to pay for college only to find that there are no jobs for them.
People are angry that home ownership has become a luxury for the elite that working stiffs can no longer reasonably aspire to. And that retirement is fast becoming another thing that their parents took for granted but could be a pipe dream for them.
And people are angry that they can't afford medicine. And that even the relatively weak tea of Obamacare has been sabotaged at every step by Republicans who now want to gut Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the millionaires.
People are furious when they see a company like Sears closing down stores, laying off employees, then getting the okay from the courts to pay out obscene bonuses to the executives who destroyed the company, then turn around and cancel retired employees' life insurance.

If the Dem nominee doesn't bring some goddamm populist resentment, we're gonna get 4 more years of the Turd Reich.

Buttigieg has spent his political career in Indiana, where pols are expected to go to county fairs and eat the catfish fillet and cheesecake on a stick. He wasn’t alive when the Studebaker plant shut down in South Bend, but he has the trauma of Midwestern deindustrialization in his bones. He lives in a house near his mother where the mortgage comes to about $450 a month. On the other hand, he was friends with Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, earned a first at Oxford and thrived as a corporate consultant.

Yeah, everybody hates Mark Zuckerberg. And everyone hates corporate consultants. You really have no idea how normal people think, do you? If you didn't spend your time at Georgetown cocktail parties with corporate consultants,, tech billionaires and the people who rely on "contributions" from corporate consultants and tech billionaires you'd understand that normal people don't see "I was friends with Mark Zuckerberg" as a selling pont.

Finally, he’s a progressive on policy issues, but he doesn’t sound like an angry revolutionary.


he's not, though. He doesn't support single-payer healthcare, He's proposing something called "All-payer rate setting" which leaves Americans' healthcare in the hands of private for-profit insurance companies. He's for universal background checks but not as assault weapons ban.

"We had an assault weapons ban in this country in the '90s. I would like to see more research on the effect it had. . . Somewhere between a slingshot and a nuclear weapon, we’ve decided that the American people would draw a line. Whether, for example, an AR-15 is on this side or that side of the line, I’m skeptical that it belongs in our neighborhoods in peacetime, but let’s at least have a healthy national debate about what’s best for keeping our families, our homes, and our schools safe."

So that means nothing. We don't need to have a "healthy national debate" about assault weapons. We know what those weapons do. WE don't need "more research" on the effectiveness of the ban. We need to ban assault weapons.

And his prescription for dealing with the climate emergency is weak as hell:

 He supports every U.S. house becoming “net zero” consumer of energy, and is in favor of the government subsidizing solar panels. 

Finally, he’s a progressive on policy issues, but he doesn’t sound like an angry revolutionary. Buttigieg’s policy positions are not all that different from the more identifiable leftist candidates. But he eschews grand ideological conflict.

Yeah, well guess what. We are currently, as we speak, at this moment in history, IN a grand ideological conflict. This is like the 1930s with hard right reractionary governments taking power in places like Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, Hungary. And with the US President openly admiring of them. The US is currently trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela and install a far-right usurper. In our own country, racism and hate crimes have risen alarmingly in the last two years, we have a president who encourages violence against his enemies, and the extreme religious right is packing the courts with monsters who will be deciding policy for a generation. This is no time to try and make friends across the aisle. These people need to be defeated and sent to the dustbin of history where they belong. And playing nice is not going to do it.