Eh, that seems extremely unlikely. He must have someone in charge of this stuff, likely a holdover from his senate run. He’s not managing all this stuff himself.
O’Rourke still does not have a campaign manager, though he said he was in talks with a potential manager about the job. He said he was working with an “extraordinary team right now.”
Ya, so my question is “who is in charge of that extraordinary team”.
Whether they have a title of “campaign manager” is immaterial… I’m curious as to who is running this stuff, because they seem fairly good at it.
Social media.
Currently listening to Mayor Pete (Buddha Judge) on Pod Save America.
He’s got that rare gift of talking about complex and nuanced issues with brevity and plain English and in a way that doesn’t sound proselytizing or angry. Just listening to him is like a kind of balm. I get the feeling that he’s what a lot of people want Beto to be.
That sounds right to me. So let’s just support Pete!
I’m game!
Plum Line: How do you view white nationalism as a policy problem?
Buttigieg: In the narrow tactical sense, it’s something we need to stay ahead of and monitor the way you would any kind of violent radical movement from abroad.
There’s a deeper phenomenon going on. As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family. And it can be filled by destructive things, like white identity politics.
This is one thing well-intentioned job training programs often miss: If we’re not attending to that, then making sure somebody’s income is steady or replaced after their place in the economy is disrupted, that’s not really enough.
Plum Line: Can you talk about your broader sense of the role that this type of economic vulnerability plays in creating the conditions for the kind of communitarian collapse that creates an opening for sentiments like white nationalism to flourish?
Buttigieg: I don’t want this to slide into the idea that some of these racist behaviors can be excused because they can be connected to economic issues. But I do think it’s easier to fall into these forms of extremism when you don’t know where your place is.
There’s this very basic human desire for belonging that historically has often been supplied by the workplace. It’s been based on the presumption of a lifelong relationship with a single employer. This isn’t just a blue-collar phenomenon.
We’ve come to be pretty reliant on the way that your workplace explains who you are. That’s breaking down. That doesn’t have to be a soul-crushing thing, provided that there are alternate sources for community, identity, and purpose. In South Bend, we focus a lot on enlisting people in the project of the city itself.
The sense of belonging can be very powerful, and we’re very fragile without it. It’s not accidental that some areas that have seen the most disruption in our social and economic life are those that are most likely to produce a lot of domestic extremists.
He is one of the most impressive guys I’ve heard, and I’d vote for him, but he has zero chance to win as a gay man with a (GASP!) husband. I hope he can elevate the debate, and maybe serve in some federal position in the post Trump world.
Really smart and capable guy who doesn’t talk down to people.
Staunchly Catholic Ireland can vote for a gay PM, Bangladesh has had a female prime minister. Neither apparently electable in the US.
'Murica!
(Not necessarily disagreeing, just a sad testimony.)
Honestly, i don’t feel like his being gay is really that big a liability.
The folks who would be upset about him being gay are already super motivated voters, and you ain’t gonna win then anyway.
His name and relative lack of national recognition is a bigger issue.
That being said, he’s not super old, so that’s good.
YangMentum!
I have no doubt that Buttigieg is the smartest candidate running. I’m starting to think that the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana would also be the best President.
Mayor Pete (that was Chris Wallace name for him) certainly held his own on Fox News Sunday. It certainly wasn’t the toughest interview Wallace ever did but it wasn’t softball either.
I also went to Andrew Yang’s website after Nate pointed it out, I think Andrew might give Pete a run for the smartest candidate title.
Wow, Mayor Pete is 37?
So he’d be going for youngest as well as first-openly-gay president. Well, gotta aim big.
My list of preferred candidates in no particular order:
- Mayor Pete
- Yang
- Inslee
- Warren
99.9% I’ll be voting for one of those candidates and I only have 11 months to decide!
How I long for ranked voting.
Pete compared climate change as a threat to “even a world war.”
I think that’s still actually an underestimation, but in the context of American politics it’s music to my ears.
I also like his line on gun control: “We decided that somewhere between a slingshot and a nuclear weapon, we’re going to draw a line.” He correctly points out that any restriction on “arms” is going to be, to some extent, arbitrary. Unless the Founders really meant to say “muskets,” in which case, shit, all our problems are solved!
Oh my god yes.
So, just to be a bit of a provocateur, all these different candidates (young and openly homosexual?) surely wouldn’t have been able to run without Trump redefining who was capable of winning the presidency?
Ditto Obama surely?
So, is this the silver lining of Trump?
Also, will he run again?
Absolutely yes.