PETE BUTTIGIEG
Buttigieg: ‘Most Americans Don’t Want the Conservative Agenda’
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Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) a likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said most Americans did not want the conservative agenda.
Buttigieg said, “You know the Republicans in the Senate changed the numbers of justices on the Supreme Court to eight. Until they took power. Then they changed it back to nine. A lot of what we’re talking about is no less a shattering of norms than what the other side has done. We’re proposing to do it in a way that’s more inclusive. I would say more constitutionally sound, more appropriate. And will by the nature of the checks and balances in our system, have to go through a thoughtful and rigorous process. I think that if they try tinkering with the system, again they are doing it under the table in so many ways. If they tried doing it more nakedly, they will encounter resistance.”
He added, “Most Americans don’t want this. Most Americans don’t want the conservative agenda that we are now seeing, the extreme agenda, we are seeing in Washington. In fact, it is precisely for that reason that they have to interfere with democracy with voter suppression or clinging on an electoral college that overrules the will of the American people. It’s because the American people by and large don’t want what they are selling that they are relying on manipulations of our political structure in order to keep their agenda in play. ”
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Pete Buttigieg Knocks Own Supporters for Being Too White
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Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, an unexpected early frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is criticizing his own supporters for being too white after questions about the “lack of diversity” at his events and among his campaign staff.
Buttigieg, who is the first openly gay presidential candidate, was asked about the lack of racial diversity at a fundraiser in New York. He responded “that he is aware of the lack of diversity at some of his presidential campaign events, including the fundraiser he was headlining,” according to a CNN report.
He asked his audience for their help: “The honest answer to that question is I need your help. I need your help reaching out to anybody that could benefit from a more inclusive and more hopeful politics. And that is something that has no color.”
Critics have cited Buttigieg’s race and gender as negative factors. On Sunday, during Buttigieg’s official campaign launch in South Bend, former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod — who otherwise praised Buttigieg — tweeted:
As of the latest polls, Democratic Party primary voters favor four white men: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former Vice President Joe Biden (who has not yet declared his candidacy), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), and Buttigieg. That result has surprised and upset some on the left — and candidates are eager to assuage their criticisms.
During a recent fundraising call, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, drew attention to the claim that the campaign is 40% “people of color” before he announced the campaign’s first quarter fundraising total of $18.2 million.
The Democratic candidates’ attention to racial diversity and gender issues leaves unanswered the question of whether, and how, they will appeal to white, moderate, working-class voters that the party lost to Donald Trump in 2016.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Why Do Young People
Find Socialism So Attractive?
To anyone over the age of 40, the growing appeal of socialist
policies within the younger generations can be confusing. To us,
this nation's capitalist system has provided the highest standard of living the
world has ever seen, while "socialism" repeatedly leads to
totalitarian governments like China and the USSR and destroys once prosperous
nations like Venezuela. One must wonder if our younger generations
live in the same world as we do. Do they not see the same things we
see?
The answer to these questions is a resounding no. The
younger generations are growing up in a nation and a world vastly different
from the ones in which Americans over the age of 40 were
raised. What they see is therefore filtered through an equally
offset lens.
People over the age of 40 saw their parents and grandparents work
stable jobs for the entirety of their careers — often with a single parent
earning enough to support an entire family. They saw their parents
pay into Social Security, and then those same parents drew on those funds upon
retirement. Their parents had college degrees without
debt. They could access health care without concern that it would
bankrupt them. They trusted the safety and competence of the public
education system. They trusted elected officials to be honest and to
obey the laws of the offices given to them. If their parents failed
economically, there was a familial and religious culture that could combine
with government programs to help them.
American children today have largely seen the
opposite. American workers
are routinely replaced by imported foreign workers and by outsourcing to
foreign lands. Immigrants and illegal aliens massively drive down
labor costs, requiring both parents to work to sustain an ever shrinking
family. Everyone pays into Social Security, but no one under the
age of thirty believes that it will remain in place for him to draw from when
needed. The cost of college is unsustainable. No one
trusts elected officials. Everyone feels that a single injury or
illness will destroy his finances for decades. For many of us, it
feels as if the prevailing sentiment of the now multicultural society is to cheer
for our economic failure.
The America of today is starkly divided into two groups: a group
that already accesses America as a socialist entity and a group that pays for
that system but has no access to it.
For the first group, America is already a largely socialist
government. Members draw their subsistence from government welfare
programs and can receive as much as $1,000
a month for simply not committing crimes. Health
care is largely subsidized or simply free, as the recipients either have no
money or cannot be traced due to their lack of registration with the
government. Food and housing are often subsidized as well, through
federal or state programs. They
are also given preference in access to education and access to
programs to offset the cost of that education. Many of them who
receive those benefits are citizens of other nations residing here illegally,
but they still receive both the preferential access and offset costs denied to
citizens and even veterans.
For the second group, they and their parents have paid into this
system through taxes for their entire lives, yet they have seen few, if any, of
the benefits to that payment. They are on no government
programs. While violent illegal aliens are protected from
prosecution, members of this second group receive harsh punishment for even
minor nonviolent offenses. Any injury results in massive costs, and
they are always fighting to keep jobs with shrinking wages and no security.
To members of this second group, the implementation of government
policies that promise them at least a minimal return on the payments they are
making into that system is a relief. This is how the younger
generation of Americans view a "socialist" model, and this is why
they see potential in it.
To young Americans, a system that promises minimal access to
equality with other classes living in the U.S. is preferable to a capitalist
model that robs them of all funds, all options, and all dignity while providing
benefits only to other groups. Access to a terrible health care
system is still better than one that will bankrupt you if you touch
it. Access to a low-quality but free university system may still be
preferable to one that is inaccessible due to race and will cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars if you are given the ability to attend. The
guarantee of a poorly funded safety net is still better than one that isn't
there at all.
The younger generation of Americans do not fear a totalitarian
state, where they pay into a system in which the benefits can be accessed only
by those with government influence, because younger Americans are already
living in that state. The only difference is that those who are receiving the
benefit of their labor are not some elite class of rulers from among their own
people, but rather those who have the political and cultural power to redirect
that wealth. This is namely a migrant class that has become the
dominant force in American politics as well as other groups that have been able
to establish power to give themselves legal preferences in education,
contracting, and protections.
To pull the younger generation back from the lure of
"socialism," we must demonstrate both that the rule of law still
applies within the U.S. and reassert equality under the law — without delay and
without exception. The government must also provide a minimal level
of care and benefits for those who pay into the system without allowing threats
of violence to pull those resources to citizens of other nations or to be used
disproportionately on those who rely solely on those benefits for generations
without efforts to rise above those benefits.
In short, the government must cease working for others and once
again work for its citizens and stop calling that "socialism."
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