When I look at the field of Democrats running for the 2020 presidential nomination, I can usually identify at least a small handful of redeeming characteristics of each candidate.
But when it comes to Mayor Pete Buttigieg, I can’t.
Buttigieg seems to be catching on with voters a little bit in early state polls.
A current County Board representative from IWU’s district, Shayna Watchinski, is one of Buttigieg’s official campaign surrogates.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg is not only an utter disaster, but the mere fact that he’s running is an insult to the office of the Presidency.
Buttigieg essentially has no political record.
The level of gall it takes for the mayor of a college town in Indiana at the ripe age of 38 years old to tell voters he is qualified to be President of the United States is laughable to begin with, especially considering he has no verifiable policy record to run on.
Each of the other top-tier candidates has years-long records as federal officeholders.
Whether those records are good is another question, but at least the other candidates have a record for voters to look at.
All Mayor Buttigieg has is identities — a young, highly educated, openly gay military veteran who speaks multiple languages and has vague, centrist liberal politics.
This may be what the non-ideological white professional class fawns over, but more substance is necessary for the rest of the Democratic Party’s electorate.
Buttigieg’s polticial record, minimal as it is, is atrocious.
He continues to have massive trouble connecting to black voters, and this is certainly not without reason.
As mayor of South Bend, he oversaw and facilitated a horrifying scandal that involved gross racial biases among officers within the South Bend Police Department (SBPD).
White officers had been secretly recorded using racist language to mock Darryl Boykins, South Bend’s first black chief of police.
These records also revealed that high-level donors and even one campaign chair were a go-between for these racist officers and the campaign in an attempt to get Boykins fired once Buttigieg took office.
One source within the SBPD even quoted Buttigieg as saying “Boykins is done” after he won in 2012.
Buttigieg asked Boykins to resign early in his first term for “mishandling the tapes,” and Boykins resigned.
But, after learning more about the details of the case Boykins rescinded his resignation and Buttigieg then demoted him.
Buttigieg still refuses to release the tapes despite no legal barriers preventing him from doing so.
It is no wonder black voters are refusing to get on board with a candidate who saw through a coup at the whim of racist cops and big-money campaign contributors.
“Mayor Pete Buttigieg is not only an utter disaster, but the mere fact that he’s running is an insult to the office of the Presidency.”
This goes without mention of Buttigieg’s terribly weak policy proposals.
Buttigieg is a relentless defender of the for-profit health insurance industry, a foreign policy war-hawk, and an unquestioning mouthpiece for the Israeli apartheid state and overall spineless supplicant to the establishment status-quo.
His draw of mass support from CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg tell voters all they need to know about who would benefit most from his presidency.
This man has absolutely nothing good or new to offer working-class voters who are already reeling from the effects of status-quo politics.
If nothing else, ask yourself if someone who can barely run the eighth largest city in Indiana can be trusted to be in charge of our country.