I published part I of my vet a few weeks ago. That one was focused on his history in South Bend. This piece will be focused solely on his campaign.
I’m going to start with his core value proposition. He insists that he’s the only candidate who can unite us because he managed to win in a deep red state like Indiana. In fact, he loves to say that, “I won an election as a ‘Gay Dude’ in ‘Mike Pence’s Indiana”. Here are the actual facts. When he won his first term in South Bend, he received fewer than 11,000 votes. I live in New York City. We have more than 11,000 residents on some city blocks here so this is hardly impressive. He was reelected with 8,400 votes. Impressive.To claim what he claims based in 10,992 votes is comical enough if we don’t have a state wide election that he ran in to look at. He ran for state treasurer the year before he ran for mayor of South Bend. In that election, he lost the state by 25 points. So he got his ass handed to him “in Mike Pence’s Indiana”. By the way, Obama won Indiana in 2008.
So his core value proposition; the reason he gives for why he’s the best candidate in this race is 100% rectally generated bullshit. It’s not a stretch, he’s not looking at the situation through the rosiest of rose colored glasses, and he didn’t embellish. No, he’s just straight up full of shit and his previous election results clearly demonstrate that.
When Pete started his campaign in January of 2019, he was really in “introduction” mode meaning that he wasn’t rolling out any policies or staking any ground in terms of a platform. He was really just putting out some information about who he is. That was fine for a few months but as spring came and went and summer came and went, I was still waiting to hear anything resembling a policy position from him. It seemed to me like he was being deliberately ambiguous. Why? And the things that he did tell us about himself were really vapid and trivial. He’s gay, he learned to read Norwegian so that he could read a book he was interested in, and he served in the military. Okay, but what about your record? That’s usually what I expect to see during the introductory phase. He didn’t really talk about his record in South Bend much. When he started to, he embellished and presented his record in the best possible light. That part didn’t bother me, since that’s what almost every politician in the world does. But that initial period of not talking about his record started tingling my spidey sense and telling me that there was something horribly off about this guy.
Everything that I published in part I of my vetting of Pete, I knew in the spring of 2019 so he was already a hard no for me, but I wanted to see where he was going with all of this. He participated in the June and July debates and managed to roll out not one single substantive policy proposal. He stood on those stages with Bernie and Warren, who were trying to convince voters that the path forward is to make sweeping changes. He was also standing next to Bennett, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Klobuchar, and Biden who were trying to convince voters that the path forward is to make incremental changes and not rock the boat too much. He stood there and didn’t make a stand either way. This was again an odd strategy, and very suspicious. Finally, in September he came out as a centrist. Why so secretive? Why didn’t he do what the other centrists in this race were doing: convincing democratic voters that their way was the best way?
It’s no secret that I’m a progressive because I believe that we need to make all of the sweeping changes that we’ve been sweeping under the rug for the past 40 years. But my position doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect for people like Klobuchar, who is making the case for centrism in earnest. I happen to think she’s wrong, but I admire the straight forward way that she’s making her case. Pete on the other hand, thought that the winning strategy for him was to keep his centrism a secret for as long as possible. Again, why? Do you not believe that centrism is the best path forward? Why did he choose to hide what he was instead of promoting it and convincing people that he’s on the right track? Because oily is always his default position.
His platform (which is still the most ambiguous of all the candidates left in the face) isn’t the only thing he tried to keep secret. He also tried to hide his donors, his work at McKinsey, and what he actually did in Afghanistan. This guy doesn’t seem to realize that he’s applying for a job, and that we actually need to see a detailed resume.
Instead of coming up with ideas to solve the issues that Americans face, he spends most of his time using republican talking points to tell us how everyone else’s ideas suck.
Bernie’s free college tuition plan sucks because Pete doesn’t want to spend taxpayer money sending rich kids to college. Seriously? Does Pete think that Betsy Devos is going to send her kids to Ohio State instead of Harvard because it’s free? That’s not even anything resembling a legitimate argument, and it’s one that republicans have been making for decades. Republicans always tell you that you can’t have nice things because they’re “afraid” of giving your money to the rich. Does this sound familiar? The 400 richest families in American own more wealth than the bottom one hundred and fifty million Americans. So one hundred and fifty million can’t have access to a free education because (I’m ball parking here) 1,200 rich kids (per generation) are all going to be clamoring to take advantage of that?
Pete thinks you’re stupid.
Pete thinks that you don’t know that the two most popular programs in America (Medicare and Social Security) aren’t means tested and that rich people participate in those programs too. Pete thinks that you’re too stupid to figure out that not means testing programs is the best way to ensure that they’re never referred to as “welfare” programs, and that they will never be dismantled because Americans won’t stand for it. Once you means test a program, it becomes much more vulnerable to attack and people become much more susceptible to disinformation campaigns that make you feel like you’re being robbed by somebody else instead of realizing that you’re the beneficiary.
He does the same thing with Medicare For All. He uses the republican (and to be fair, also neoliberal) talking point that Americans love their health insurance companies so much, that taking that away from them would be too big a shock to the system. Let me show you what Pete really thinks about his plan. Go to the 5:26 mark on this video:
That’s Pete telling you that Pete is pushing a republican talking point and plan.
Are you starting to see the pattern here? Everything is framed the way republicans frame things, and then the challenges are challenges that republicans have created.
This is amazing. It’s 18 year old Pete telling you why Bernie is so amazing, while denouncing everything that 38 year old Pete has become. I honestly can’t close this piece more eloquently than with Pete’s own words so please click on that link.
