Rethinking Mayor Pete Buttigieg 24 hours after my fawning post

Damn, I just learned how to say his name and yesterday wrote a fawning post about him, Pete Buttigieg, comparing him to his fellow shiny object, Beto O'Rourke. I even compared his emergence and ascent to Barack Obama's candidacy, smugly remembering how I predicted, from Day One that Obama would be President. And I thought here could be Obama 2.0. Then I remembered how I lost faith in Obama, after two years of happily volunteering, the day he was inaugurated and wrote extensively about him in this blog about what a disappointment he was and why. I, and millions of idolizers, failed to see beyond his message of Hope, to see that he was not a progressive, that his lack of experience did make a difference. Ok, I adore Obama, the person, just not the politician.

And along comes Pete! The embodiment of everything trump is not. We are so desperate for someone who can read, articulate an idea in full sentences, has a calming presence, is steady. Pete's all that...and I fell for it. Again. Here's why I've gone sour. I read an in-depth analysis, in fact you could call it a hit piece, on Current Affairs, All About Pete. It could be considered a little over-the-top as I'm sure Pete does have some depth but this is the part that got my attention...after you read it, I'll tell you why:

"But there was soon something even more disquieting. Talking about politics on campus, Buttigieg says:  

In April 2001, a student group called the Progressive Student Labor Movement took over the offices of the university’s president, demanding a living wage for Harvard janitors and food workers. That spring, a daily diversion on the way to class was to see which national figure—Cornel West or Ted Kennedy one day, John Kerry or Robert Reich another—had turned up in the Yard to encourage the protesters. 

Striding past the protesters and the politicians addressing them, on my way to a “Pizza and Politics” session with a journalist like Matt Bai or a governor like Howard Dean, I did not guess that the students poised to have the greatest near-term impact were not the social justice warriors at the protests […] but a few mostly apolitical geeks who were quietly at work in Kirkland House [Zuckerberg et al.]

I find this short passage very weird. See the way Buttigieg thinks here. He dismisses student labor activists with the right-wing pejorative “social justice warriors.” But more importantly, to this day it hasn’t even entered his mind that he could have joined the PSLM in the fight for a living wage. Activists are an alien species, one he “strides past” to go to “Pizza & Politics” sessions with governors and New York Times journalists. He didn’t consider, and still hasn’t considered, the moral quandary that should come with being a student at an elite school that doesn’t pay its janitors a living wage."

You see, my son, Benjamin McKean was one of the leaders of the PSLM, Progressive Student Labor Movement, that was sitting-in the President's office to demand a living wage for Harvard workers. It was an extraordinary protest that went on for three weeks and would have been incredibly hard to walk by that, if true, Pete did. It kind of made me sick and mad and made me see him in an entirely different light. Here's how the protest went down:

From A Brief History of the Living Wage Debate at Harvard
April - May 2001

Nearly fifty students occupy Massachusetts Hall, which houses the office of the President and other university administrators, in protest of Harvard's poverty wages and the administration's refusal to consider the living wage issue any further. During the three-week sit-in, the campaign organizes daily pickets and rallies drawing up to 2000 people, collects 400 faculty signatures in support of a living wage, gains the endorsement of four U.S. Senators, and draws sustained attention from the national media. Every night nearly a hundred people sleep in dozens of tents pitched in Harvard Yard outside of Mass Hall. Hundreds of campus workers mobilize to demand justice from Harvard and support the sitters-in. Over a hundred Harvard alumni/ae stage a mock sit-in at the Harvard Club of New York in solidarity with the protestors in Cambridge. 

May 2001

After three weeks, 25 students leave Mass Hall with an agreement from the university to create a committee (known as the Katz Committee) with faculty, administrators, students, and workers, charged with studying Harvard's labor policies and recommending changes by December 2001; to announce a moratorium on outsourcing until the committee's deliberations are complete; and to renegotiate a contract with the janitors' union in early 2002.

Undergraduates who participated in the sit-in are put on disciplinary probation. Students at the law school are given official reprimands.

Dining hall workers settle a contract with Harvard, raising the pay of all but a dozen workers to above the Cambridge living wage level.

If he's the candidate, I'll vote for him. But now I eye him with skepticism. GO BERNIE!

We're going to be talking about him anyway during this primary, so here's a helpful pronunciation guide: Buddha-judge, Boot-a-judge, Boo-tuh-judge, boot-edge-edge
You're welcome.























Here's a guide if you're still interested; Buddha-judge, Boot-a-judge, Boo-tuh-judge, boot-edge-edge

The Trump Hillary Faceoff: What Did We Do To Deserve This?

C'mon. This really isn't a surprise, is it? Oh, it is? Really? So, how do you think we got here, stuck with the incomprehensible choice of two of the most unpopular people in the country? It sucks, right? Do we deserve this? Maybe.

How on earth did we get a Trump? Here's how. Forget his orange face and teeny, pudgy fingers, his ill-fitting suits (What's up with that? He can certainly afford better), his cotton candy hair. That's window dressing. Have you ever heard of 'perfect timing'? Somehow Trump emerged and tapped in to the somnolent, apathetic, undercard of the American populace. They've been simmering - seething in fact - with discontent as their world was crumbling. They're pissed, just like we are(!), at government bloat and dysfunction, corruption and laziness, the inability of Congress to get anything done aside from keeping their cushy jobs. And maybe because there was a black man in the White House who was really the one responsible for every conceivable shitty thing that was going on in their lives. Trump came along and woke them with his gutter mentality and spoke their language. Suddenly, they had a voice and became political activists, going to rallies, trolling on the internet, listening with a deaf ear to Trump's hate speech. Alarmingly, we watch them, dissidents of the establishment, morph from passive to aggressive with their ugly newfound voice.

And people have fallen asleep at the wheel. Well-meaning people think that cleverly complaining about politics and reposting opinion articles (I do that) on Facebook is being an activist. No it's not.Yeah, everyone's busy. So busy, in fact, they forgot to vote. Tell the truth, you know you don't vote in down-ticket or mid-term elections. It makes you want to cry. By being too busy to vote for your school board candidates, your council people, your Supervisor, your State Senator, your judges, you relinquish your voice and your power to effect who is elected to represent you. Every one of those people make up the foundation of our governing system. We build from the bottom up and whoever wends their way through that system to emerge at the top becomes our top tier candidates. They started somewhere and someone had to vote for them to get to the next level. Except for Donald J. Trump who busted into our lives through reality tv and the tabloids. An aberration because he's not a politician who went through the electoral process. He is just a total aberration.

But, it's Presidential season and because, for years, we didn't exercise our vote up and down the ticket, this is what we got. Often the weakest candidates win in mid-term elections simply because of low voter turnout and those are the people who become incumbents who then are hard to get rid of and who often rise to the top (The Peter Principle) to become weak Presidential candidates. So, we do get what we deserve. That is unless, miracle of miracles, one honest, authentic, progressive (no flip flopper here!) politician manages to rise like a phoenix and upset this entire election miasma to save us all. No, the rest of this is not a paean to Bernie. You can safely read on.

The Trumpians are really pissed at the government because they feel they haven't been heard. You know who they should be mad as hell at? They should be mad as hell at their ineffective Tea Party! They have been led them down a fantastical path where the promise to live in a deranged Utopia of hate and guns and hegemony was dangled before their myopic eyes and what have they got to show for it? Somehow all the anti-abortion legislation and the NRA making sure no one got their hands on their precious guns - well, aside from little Johnnie who shot his father - all that hasn't done shit for their bottom line. Incomes are down 6.5% since the start of the recession. The fear that drove them to embrace the Tea Party and their fundamentalist, neo-libertarian promises hasn't worked out too well. Right-wingers have not seen much accomplished even in their Fascistic universe. Yes, we (the good guys!) are beyond frustrated by those obstructionist right-wing politicians because they have been at the forefront of an astonishing do-nothing Congress. But they haven't done anything for their supporters either. Tea Partiers probably don't realize why they're pissed but the people they've elected have done zippo for them and they are sick of it - sick of government and sick of their pathetic representatives...although they would never say that. And now the asylum inmates think they have finally found their Messiah. Donald J. Trump. Well, at least now, they're involved in the political process.

The Democratic Party should use their millions to support a PR campaign to educate people about what voting means leading them through the process from the bottom to the top, how it affects electoral outcomes and how precious each vote is. And let's throw in a national day off to vote. Please vote every election...

STOP ASKING If Bernie People Will Vote For Hillary If She's The Nominee

The anguished comments and wringing of hands by people who cannot imagine that if Hillary is the nominee - which she won't be - we, Bernie people, won't vote for her because we are selfish assholes who would rather watch this country go to hell in a handbasket than vote for her. They are sure Armageddon is just around the corner come November.

Frankly, this is the most insensitive, ridiculous question to ask of people who are giving their hearts and souls and money and time to a candidate they fully support and believe in and will work for til the last stolen vote is counted. It's downright insulting. Hark, the self-righteous 'tone' (new buzzword) of the Hillary camp in demanding a 'yes' as the only acceptable answer.

I don't blame Susan Sarandon for giving an oblique and questionable answer to Chris Hayes when he stared her down to ask her if she would vote for Hillary in the general if she were the nominee. And Chris Hayes was incredulous when Susan Sarandon's answer wasn't a direct 'yes'. Why should anyone capitulate at this point? The campaigns are still going full blast with Bernie on Hillary's desperate, scampering heels. This thing is far from over.

You know what this question is like? It's like you knowing your friend's significant other has cancer and is about to die and you ask, "So, have you thought about who you're going to date after the funeral?" Fuck those people. I'm voting for Bernie. Period.

And, in conclusion, there is no foregone conclusion. Voting is personal and no, I don't want a President Trump.

Mr. Obama, Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir?

My blood is boiling. And yours should be, too. This New York Times article just reported that Obama, at a $33,400 ticket fundraiser in Texas for the DNC, told donors that it was time to back Hillary.  President Obama may just have lost the election for Hillary by putting Bernie on the back burner and dissing the whole democratic process. Bernie's legions will not take kindly to this.

"But while he stressed that he was not endorsing either candidate, and that both would make good presidents, Mr. Obama went on to lavish praise on Mrs. Clinton, describing her as smart, tough and experienced, and said that she would continue the work of his administration." 

Guess what? I don't want the next President to continue the work of his administration. I'm not going to list why - I've written plenty about 'why' - but we need fresh thinking and someone with the courage to take on the 'Establishment'. Enough with the status quo.

But the worst part of this is Obama's behind-closed-doors, sneaky 'endorsement' of Hillary. Remember when Mitt Romney was caught on video talking about the 47%? Well, this leak could be Obama's Waterloo. Once again, he's snubbed his nose at progressives. He did it when they put him the White House - make no mistake, progressives early and enthusiastic support was a good part of what propelled him - and now, again, he's kicking them in the balls by not even acknowledging all the progressive supporters' hard work and money and renewed excitement for the political process. Could Mr. Obama be any more disrespectful for the democratic process? He so much as said 'they don't matter'. Imagine if someone told Obama to back out and 'come together' for Hillary at this point in his '08 campaign.

"Mr. Obama has been careful in public to avoid disparaging Mr. Sanders, given his deeper history and relationship with Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama also does not want to alienate the liberal voters who have flocked to Mr. Sanders."

Well, Mr. Obama, it's too late. You have pissed off and alienated millions of people. Those "liberal voters" you pretend to care so much about will not forget this no matter what kind of scare tactics you or the media proclaim. Many people are mightily motivated now to upset the whole apple cart and not vote for the coronated nominee because it would only be more of the same. Hillary might be singing the same tune as Bernie right now but she's a terrible singer and, as sure as night is day, I don't think one person believes she will keep her word.

The idea that Hillary as the front-runner and nominal nominee would give her an advantage because of the longer timeline...well, I have no idea what Obama and the DNC is smoking. The longer Hillary is out front, the longer she would be a target for Trump's assaults. He's already started and, as I've said before, he will chew her up and spit her out. He will harp on the FBI investigation, her emails, Benghazi til the cows come home. Any facts about the investigation will not matter a wit to Donald Trump and he will harp on it til his followers believe it as 'fact'. And, that is just the beginning. Bill Clinton will come in for a major drubbing and no stone or cigar will be left unturned.

"Those in attendance described an urgency in Mr. Obama’s tone as he suggested that Democrats needed to come together to prevent an opening for the Republicans, whose leading candidate is Donald J. Trump, to exploit."

What 'opening' is Mr. Obama talking about?

This is a shocking turn of tactics for Obama. To reiterate, he has just royally pissed off millions of potential Democratic voters who 'frankly, don't give a damn' anymore about politics as usual. Let's say Bernie loses and is not the nominee, it would take a few weeks of mourning for his supporters to accept it. If Obama had heaped praise and love on Bernie and Bernie's supporters now, instead of marginalizing them, if he made them feel welcome then they might not see fit to turn their backs on the Party come November. But it would take massive mediation and therapy to get Bernie's people in the Dems corner at this point. Let the chips fall where they may...and fall they will.