Oh the times, the times.
I don’t think any political star has shone so bright in my sky only to twinkle out so farteningly fast as that of good ol’ Mayor Pete from South Bend. I think perhaps I just wanted him, it, something, so badly that it seemed my prayers were answered. This dude seemed legit. Smart young Rhodes Scholar who chose public service instead of riches, though he is not afraid of rubbing shoulders as his initial leap to Mckinsey reveals. Boy makes good on his hometown promise, comes back to serve, and save his shit hole–I’m sorry, working class– hometown from the rot of decay and itself.
What a hero.
He could have had anything, anything, and then he chose the unglamorous service to his people. If that’s not enough for you, how about the fact that this dude SERVED HIS COUNTRY in AFGHANISTAN. In the rough and tumble of the naval reserves, our boy found the strain and unglamorous duty to country that so many of his future voters, particularly rural voters as he is careful to note, undergo disproportionate to the rest of us. Upon their backs to putter, and while serving as mayor — I mean can you believe that while serving as MAYOR — he shipped off to the badlands and did his part for the empire.
Now the star is ascendant. After two stints as his hometown mayor, during which he came OUT AS GAY, this saint polyglotted his way into our hearts. Now he comes and asks us for the throne.
Based on the experience of knocking down some neighborhoods in order that he might establish the bend to the future, Mayor Pete comes out swinging, BDE on display to say he is the most qualified.
Cue the Douglass plan.
In his effort to be the most modern, radical, no-bullshit, let’s change the system candidate out there, in order that his name remains on all lips, Mayor Pete now leads the race in attempted bribery of the Black American population. His plan, according to The Hill:
Buttigieg proposed reforming credit scoring and increasing access to credit in a Charleston Chronicle op-ed. He also pledged to increase the federal government’s contracting with minority-owned firms to 25 percent. The South Bend, Ind., mayor named his plan the “Douglass Plan for Black America” named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Buttigieg also proposed a modern Voting Rights Act that would ban voter ID laws and require potentially discriminatory voting law changes to be reviewed by the Justice Department.
I am hit with a wall of reservation in speaking further on the issue as I feel like I’m about to start tap dancing through the minefield of race, and I’m not ready for my lynching yet, so I’ll just end instead on my question.
Does this not feel like pandering? He’s naming some pretty tame policies that are, to my mind, obviously morally unobjectionable (let’s not pretend to play the moral games of the Republicans, and use our actual moral compass to answer these questions), and wrapping them up in the arms of black history, quite literally in the name of Frederick Douglass, in order that he may garner black votes. He did this in The Charleston Chronicle in South Carolina, a state noted in the primary calendar for being the first with actual black voters and a litmus test for a candidate’s black popularity. Doesn’t this feel so very cynical? Disregarding the contents of the plan entirely, it is hard to not interpret his actions like he is using the desires of the Black Community in order that he might leverage himself more quickly into the presidency. But reading these thoughts back now, I sound naive, childish. This is the nature of politics today. The liberal creed truly has died. We are no longer individuals with real experiences and wants, desires, sufferings, that should all be well accounted for and respected and given the opportunity to flourish. We are just data points now, sources of information output. If one well knows how to read the information, one can create new realities. This is the consultancy creed, Mayor Pete’s first stomping ground, so we should not be surprised to see him adapt to these times so fluidly. Yet it hurts to watch. Never mind the fact that his campaign staff look like a group of inexperienced children themselves.