I like George, and respect his opinion.
However, I’m really wary of the “empty suit” that is Mayor Pete:
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George Takei grew up a society where both his race and his sexual orientation were criminalized and spent much of his childhood in a Federal internment camp. The idea that he’d one be able to legally marry a white person—let alone a white man—would have been laughable when he was born.
So go ahead and disagree with George if you like another candidate better, but don’t assume anyone who doesn’t share your choice must be part of an “old white educated bubble.”
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It’s a classic danger of black-and-white thinking. “My guy is Good, therefore the others are Bad, and anyone supporting those others is also Bad, or at best Stupid.” You see it all the damn time on the right, and as evidenced here, it’s a common enough flaw in people on the left, too.
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The Mayor Pete surge is apparently real. as a fellow gay citizen, i cannot overstate the emotion i have thinking about how – in 2020! – there is a chance that an out man with a legally-married husband (!!) could be our next president. the me of even 5 years ago would not believe that this would be possible so soon. so yeah, i’ve been keeping an eye an ear on Pete and even though he’s much more centrist than i would like, i do like what i see. He is not my first choice by far, but after talking it over with my husband we have decided to caucus for him in Nevada in February. our reasoning is that it’s a surety that Joe, Elizabeth, or Bernie will be Nevada’s nominee, and neither of us have any problem backing one of them in the General Election, but if we can help raise Pete up, it’s worth it.
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Thanks for the correction and the welcome.
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As a marginalized person, it’s really something special to be able to vote for someone who reflects you in some way. Black people got to do that with Obama, and gay people get to do that with Buttigieg. However, as a black person, Buttigieg strikes me as very lacking. He hasn’t brought much of anything to the table for us. One of my best friends is helping out with his campaign in Iowa, and he says that what he appreciates is that Buttigieg really wants to bring the two sides together. That’s great. A compromiser. My concern about that, of course, is that in making compromises there tend to be groups that end up compromised. A white guy whose track record is very short but not very sweet with minorities is not someone I want to trust with compromises.
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Replying to more of a general narrative in this thread than any one specific comment, can anyone please explain to me what the word “electable” actually means in a context where said “electable” person is currently in a distant fourth place in the polls?
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Technically, all it means is “Who has the best chance of winning the presidential election, not just the primary”, and tends to favour bland centrists who won’t alienate the tiny sliver of swing voters that the person who is using the term is imagining.
However, the value of appealing to “electability” is in some doubt, given the less than stellar track record of candidates chosen for their “electability”. It turns out that what the public actually get excited about and turn out to vote for, is not exactly what people expect.
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Electable doesn’t mean anything except in the negative sense that “not electable” means “I don’t think people who think like I do will vote for him or her.”
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That’s George for you - a white straight guy who was privileged to not grow up in an internment camp.
Jesus - Bernie supporters are the worst argument for a good candidate.
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And polls show that voters perceive every leading Dem candidate as electable.
Ain’t no one electable who can’t win their primaries.
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The “electability” polls are the ones that match him against Trump, not against the other Democrats
AND according to that standard Buttigieg is … fifth, behind Harris
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/National.html
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It’s hard to do this online because everything comes across as potentially ironic/sarcastic, but I really want to thank you for sharing this. Honestly I got a little emotional thinking about your getting emotional about this. Same for George Takei. Ultimately I was pretty disappointed in Obama’s time in office, but I have to admit to myself, of course I was disappointed, I hate everything. But god damn it a black person was president of the united states and then there was a better than even chance a woman would be president and now there’s a non-negligible chance a gay person will be. Wow.
I think “electable” is about trying to second guess yourself. It’s saying, “I like Warren the best, but for some reason I think the candidate I think is best will not be the candidate other people think is best so I’m going to support my second choice because I think I know how other people think.” It’s a weird consequence of an upsidedown technocratic worldview where we assume what is intuitive (vote for the candidate you think is best) will always produce the opposite of it’s intended effect through unintended consequences, and, similarly, the counter-intuitive will always be right.
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A Catholic politician in the UK once held a cross overhead and said to the crowd, to rapturous applause “Anyone who would not vote for me solely because of this is a bigot!” then he added – to less applause – “And anyone who would vote for me solely because of this is also a bigot!” Philosophical question: Is voting for Pete Buttigieg because he’s gay better, or worse, than not voting for him because he’s gay?
I’m also reminded of how Amy Klobuchar said words to the effect that a woman with Buttigieg’s experience wouldn’t be in the race for president. But, to be fair, neither would a man with Koobuchar’s anti-charisma, cold affect and chamber-of-commerce centrism.
If you think Pete Buttigeg’s policies are a good reason to vote for him, I can’t argue with that. (I may give you a recommended reading list, but.) But if you’re voting for someone just because they’re gay, that’s really, really hard to parse and see as good.
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Way, way, way better. Race-blindness, sex-blindness, gay-blindness are failed ideas that reinforced discrimination instead of rooting it out. Choosing to support someone because you see their candidacy as an emblem of the successful fight against bigotry is not equivalent to choosing to support someone because you support bigotry. Good choices are not bigotry-agnostic.
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We had to pass through the unelectability of Kennedy (because he was Catholic, so supposedly had dual loyalty to the Pope) to get to the point where it is something that doesn’t factor when considering candidates. Likewise Obama, though I don’t think we’re there yet (in part because the political racism against him persisted through his tenure).
When Joe Lieberman ran for VP, while I wasn’t a fan of his as a Jew I was tickled to see him in the race. This year there are several Jewish (or part-Jewish, or honorary Jewish in the case of Booker) candidates in the race, and we don’t even talk about it. (Well, except now.)
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It’s harder to other people when somebody in their group has been president recently
Of course, if you like othering people, then diversity in the White House would be bad
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I don’t like othering people. But one of the other things Mayor Pete is is an ex-McKinsey MBA-drone whose prior work is all under NDA, and I don’t want that near the White House.
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