DeSantis' Campaign is Not Queer Friendly (UPDATED)

 

To wrap up “Pride Month,” let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…

pic.twitter.com/FT7LdW4vls

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 30, 2023

They are trying to tell the heteros something, but I feel like the message is for queers everywhere--Ron is not our friend. His ad plays club music and he wants to project so much butchness, but his actual history in Florida is killing our stories by not letting queer people be out loud, and he wants to eliminate trans people everywhere. Imagine just being the kind of douchebag who wants to determine that people who go to the potty whenever one is in public is an occasion to have everybody play pin the gender on the donkey? 

Pete Buttigeig is the exact respondent this bullshit requires: he points out that De Santis is running some people down, but who is he ever uplifting? Who does he want to serve? Who does DeSantis think he is doing all this for? It is obviously for very few people. Or wait:

No one but Desantis. And I don't even think Trump wants to compete with DeSantis in this homophobia. Because Desantis seems to want to be eliminationist, but pretend someone will still vote for him. For non-eliminationist reasons. Like what he's done for Florida, like their insurance and disaster protection and how they are still at or near the bottom for student performance or...

How Small, Is All

 

The fact that this guy thinks that two loving parents is some slam dunk against Pete and Chasten says a lot about just how broken and unloved these “family values conservatives” are. pic.twitter.com/N1Q65Xze6a

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) March 2, 2023

This Tweet encapsulates for me so much of what is damaged and wrong with the conservatives. Tell me an American veteran became a small-town mayor, married a schoolteacher, rose to a White House cabinet-level position, and adopted beautiful twin babies, and it is absolutely a family that shows what the American dream can be. And conservatives come along, and somehow, this is bad because it is two men? 

Why? What specific thing about them being two men fucks this up for them? The haters can say religion, but why? Buttigieg is more Christian than me. What if there was a God who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged?" What if love wasn't a problem at all?  What if queer people took inspiration for their faith through love for the longest time? What if Biblical gender wasn't as clear-cut as people suppose? 

Biden Had a Heckuva Night

Former Democratic rivals Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke are all uniting behind Joe Biden's presidential bid. Meantime, Bernie Sanders appears positioned to seize a significant delegate lead on Super Tuesday. https://t.co/YugdYOdTDg

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2020

It sure looks like South Carolina had more of an effect on this race than I had thought, resulting yesterday in Senator Amy Klobuchar dropping her campaign (when she had sounded very fired up still on Sunday), and then Biden received a triple endorsement: Klobuchar, Buttigieg (whom Biden likened to his son, Beau), and Beto O'Rourke. That's not all:

All day Monday, the campaign pushed out one endorsement after another: 100 leaders in Massachusetts, 30 officials in Virginia, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, major congressional leaders in Texas and California, local leaders in North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. Biden's sudden resurgence — his ability to at least partially clear the field and coalesce support — could prove to be a major turning point in a volatile 2020 primary.

I think SC basically was a "proof of concept" behind the idea of Biden's campaign, and lots of Democrats would like to get on to the business of beating Trump. To me, that's pretty understandable. We just have to see what today brings.

UPDATE: Right now, I'm just rooting that this cat has a very poor showing:

Bloomberg gets on the porch and says he’s spoken with both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

“I thought both of them behaved themselves,” he says. “I felt sorry for them but I’m in it to win it.” pic.twitter.com/suZZyb6gBr

— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) March 2, 2020

"Behaved?" Like they were kids or something? Behaved! But also because he is a Republican.

South Carolina Shaped Things Up

Of all the primaries thus far, it seems to me that South Carolina's has been the most consequential. Former VP Joe Biden won handily, moving him to second in delegate count and first in popular votes, and giving his campaign a much-needed fund-raising boost that demonstrated there still is life in it. In his third time at running for the presidency, this was the first time that Biden had won a state.

That's really something to think about. That's persistence. It also shows that sometimes, the goodwill that a candidate needs to have is built up over a long time. It's about a long record forged on doing the things that were right for the time, and showing the kind of decency and compassion that stirs something in people. It isn't about being the perfect candidate, but being trusted. People in South Carolina who voted for Joe Biden knew who he was. They trust him. 

The decisive win lead Tom Steyer to bow out, but he is still in the political fight. He made a good statement about his goals:

“I, of course, will be supportive (of the nominee). I’ve said since the beginning, every Democrat is a million times better than Trump -- Trump is a disaster,” Steyer told his supporters. “Let me say this, we’re in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham is a disaster, he’s a disaster for the people here. So of course I’ll be working on that. Let me say one last thing, when the Lord closes a door, he opens a window.”

Maybe it isn't in the cards to be president--but it certainly is possible to positively influence a senate race (or so) and in doing that, continue the fight against the Trump regime. Steyer might not have been the likeliest candidate, but his support for the environment and his concern for our society shows a lot of decency, and I can't fault him for trying to create a platform within his campaign--but I think a supporting role just makes more productive sense and appreciate what he has done and can continue to do.

OK, Bloomers

I've been noticing a silly argument on Twitter that I won't link to, because it is silly: whether "Bernie bros" will put people "on a list" if they support or work for former Republican NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Whatever that list might mean, I really don't think people in this country can get shut out of working for campaigns or commenting on politics based on their previous support. My goodness, Jill Stein supporters manage to get attached to Democratic campaigns today, don't they? And the mainstream media doesn't look like it will ever give up it's love affair with Republican-lite/moderate Democrat cross-overs. For the unity!

But let's get real, the country will not be unified over Mike Bloomberg. Sure, he's got a whole lot of money and his ads do nail Trump right in his vanities and failures. But that doesn't equal a plausible Democratic candidate against Trump (it may even have some drawbacks as an outside antagonist, as I hope to demonstrate). 

In the past, I've blogged about my support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Me Too movement. If a Democratic candidate does not have a good record with, or can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the impact of economic inequality, the wealth gap, the failures of the system to protect consumers against fraud and predation in ways that harm economic security and mobility (as well as the way it intersects with racial inequality); if a candidate does not have a good record with, or can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the impact of racial inequality especially as it has related to the tools of the criminal justice system being used as a weapon against black bodies especially; and if a candidate does not have a good record with, and can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the ways men in power deploy misogyny and exercise their privilege against both women and men in sexualized ways, then, this party should not want them. 

Iowa Caucus Follow-up

The first thing to get out of the way is--well, I'll be damned! Maybe Mayor Pete had the right idea to declare his pleasant surprise at the Iowa results (that weren't, exactly, yet) Tuesday night, because he did pretty damn well.* You can chalk that up to a handful of things, of course. Warren, Sanders and Klobuchar did have to do their duties in the Senate. His campaign speaks fluent "heartland."  Also, although he polls well, previous primary campaigns have left me wondering how former VP Joe Biden does in reality versus on paper.  

I know the Shadow/Acronym stuff looks really shady, but for the love of democracy, let's not do conspiracy theories. For one thing, the whole Iowa caucus thing is close and weird and the results are wonky, historically. For another, it looks like folks just wanted to up the digital game and inserted an app where it overpromised and underperformed. In the grand scheme of things, that's a far cry from any kind of "rigging" that I can tell. 

And I just want to talk for a minute about how cool it is that Buttigieg did well here, in the home of the FAMiLY Leader and all that. There's a lot of tolerance out there, and it's growing. (Despite the example of this person, who is getting her information about candidates from some very questionable sources. Of all the things I think one might have known going in about Buttigieg...that he served in the armed forces and is a happily married gay man: those are the two things.) 

Also, the other thing that's going on this year, again, and why people should keep the hell off of conspiracy theories, is that the fuckery is still very much with us:

Yeah. So, when Trump and his little fans want to discuss the caucus as a Democratic clusterfuck, um, no. Maybe a little bit of a cluster, but they helped. (And keep in mind, they want to divide the party by heightening any grievance felt by Sanders backers vs the establishment, so some of that shit needs to be recognized as enemy action on these internets.)  Also, the RNC is coronating a smooth-brained  impeached and acquitted but not exonerated wanna-be tyrant, so they have earned exactly zero democracy points.

Anyway, on to New Hampshire!

* But it looks like Sanders probably did actually take Iowa on the basis of raw votes. So what do I have to say about that? Um, cool? The Plan B for a possible total Biden implosion (which would hilariously make Trump/Giuliani Ukraine exploits to get "dirt" on him totally irrelevant to the Democrats and totally still damaging to Trump) is to smear the "Commie". But Democrats have been called "commies" since McCarthy. (Tail-gunner Joe, not Kevin. Except probably Kevin, too.) So I am all for "taking it back". This is a referendum on Trump's perfidy, but there's no reason to shy away from how to accomplish the 3rd of FDR's Four Freedoms.

Bailey Warren Just Won the Caucus

This speech solidified my support for @ewarren. Hit the right talking points plus earned sustained applause in my house for thanking her very good boy, Bailey. #ElizabethWarren #HopeOverFear https://t.co/N6ImCeVFpT

— Rebecca Murray (@becmur) February 4, 2020

Now, you can say, "How is that? Last I heard, Pete Buttigeig declared victory." And that would be a thing....he did. But just listen to my reasoning here:

Math didn't win in Iowa (Yang). Organization didn't win in Iowa (Sanders). Experience didn't win in Iowa (Biden). The plan didn't win in Iowa (Elizabeth Warren). And common sense sure didn't win in Iowa (Klobuchar). And you can't just congratulate a clusterfuck and decide it stands for a species of win, Mayor Pete.

So, it's looking to me like the whole darn thing went to the dogs. And Bailey is a very good boye.


UPDATE: But, no joke, this process is classist, sexist and ableist, and relies on people without kids or with guaranteed childcare, people who don't have work commitments they can't back out of, etc. It's a dopey process that shouldn't ever come down to "the handful of hardheads that can stay as long as it takes" and "some kind of app and the backup app both of which could be as buggy as a cowflop in July."

Location, Location, Location?

One thing that has bothered me about young Mayor Pete is, well? He is young. It isn't that I'm overly freaked out about the prospect of a US president younger than myself--maybe he has some ideas. Maybe he has the right kind of focus and ambition. But something I would love to see Buttigieg "outgrow" is political clichés like this Tweet, right here, which I screen-capped, because eh? 

Even though it has been up awhile, someone surely might have pointed out to him it's...problematic.

He said "In the face of unprecedented challenges we need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather that the ineffective Washington politics we've come to know and expect."

The American Heartland? Seems mighty geographically specific. Why not someone whose vision was shaped by, say, the Bronx? See, even though the idea of the American Heartland includes Illinois, for most people, it doesn't include Barack Obama's Chicago (it obviously doesn't include Honolulu). It doesn't include LA or New Orleans, it covers Oklahoma with a stretch. It doesn't include where I grew up in Philadelphia. It makes me think of the way conservatives talk about "real America"--the small town and rural, not-especially diverse America that gets contrasted with liberal hellholes in Trump rants.

Is he intentionally talking up Heartland America to obliquely say he's an outsider to dysfunctional Washington DC? Okay, then, he could say that. But even that is a cliché. Trump was an outsider to Washington DC--has he made it more functional? There's a faint whiff of Reaganite disdain for the government: the most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

It isn't so much a question of where someone is from in terms of their lived experiences sometimes, but what they take away from what they have experienced. My America looks like this--

These are the Sears Tower and the Bond Bread plant that were part of the neighborhood I grew up in in NE Philadelphia. The Sears Building was imploded in the 1990s and the Bond Bread became a Boscov's before they closed. They represent for me, a little bit, of how once-thriving businesses disappeared in the course of chasing profitability over stability. My head has a landscape of stores and office buildings and factories that no longer exist in it. And the thing is--that story is just as true in the heartland as it is to me, in Philadelphia. That wasn't a Washington, DC failure, or not exactly. It was a structural problem with how capitalism is pursued. I think. 

Anyway I guess I just feel suspicious when the youthful mayor of a small city starts talking about winning via heartland values. Especially when I don't know how in heck you gentrify a cornfield. (The flight from small town America to the big cities is not unlike the flight of some people in big cities for their suburbs. But for different reason, of course. And while small businesses are supergreat--there are only so many jobs they provide and service jobs have been historically lower-paying.) 

And not for nothing, but the word "heartland" signifies whiteness, in a way "urban" signifies....not white. And when he uses it to say he'll take that vision to Washington DC, it sounds like he thinks he will talk whitely to GOP white people and that will sort things out. He probably doesn't mean that at all! But he isn't using language that won't sound that way to a lot of people. To navigate some of the issues he needs to reach out on, he's going to have to build on the language needed to address them, 

He's good at languages. Politics is also a language. 

Considering the Pills

I have to go old school on this female-bodily autonomy piece, just to get to my point--we know that access to reproductive choice can influence not just quality of life but long-term health. It makes sense for female-bodied people to have access to a wide range of options that mean preventing conceptions and even considering termination of pregnancy (but also, most certainly can include, optimal pre-natal care for wanted children). Family planning is not solely about abortion services, but it can and should include those as an option. So I guess that's why I want to talk about a difference that isn't really one to go to war about--but is a discussion we need to have.

I've been a little cold on Buttigieg regarding his kind of centrist views, and how he's a friend of Faceberg and the whole McKinsey thing. But I will say I'm taking his point regarding "unintended consequences" for expansion of medical abortion--because I really take what he's saying to heart. In red states, they are just looking for ways to screw people up for seeking reproductive choices. Local laws can certainly be put into place that criminalize certain abortions, so this can also happen for seeking out medical intervention and acquiring them, or the laws that shield people who put roadblocks in the way of people who seek birth control can be expanded to include medical abortion.  Courts take time, and yet, fertility has its own schedule.

Did You Know Millionaires can Qualify for Medicaid and Social Security?

New Pete ad in Iowa taking aim at Warren and Bernie over college affordability/debt (but not by name), arguing they’d alienate half the country by insisting it be “free even for the kids of millionaires”. H/t @McCormickJohn
pic.twitter.com/SEAcOdHcAq

— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) November 29, 2019

Look, I'm just a potty-mouth D-list blogger, and I realize that sometimes, government programs benefit the rich and the families of rich people. In fact, rich people benefit from all kinds of programs that people without money can't even access, like different tax breaks and credits for doing cool stuff with their money. And yet, I am skeptical that college affordability needs to be held to a strict means test and tend to think that it's really not that we need to subsidize students, so much as we need to subsidize institutions of learning. Make them really accessible. Make it so anyone can get in, regardless of their ability to pay, but their qualitative merits. Pay teachers. Pay them a fuckton. Pay adjuncts enough to make them upper middle class and not live out of their cars. Pay people who educate people and make education really great. I don't care if Ritzykid McBucksalot gets a full ride from tax money if they really did pay their educational dues and will benefit from a great education. I think we should fund more schools into existence. It might be true that not all kids need college to find jobs, but I think critical thinking and cultural awareness are great things to get grounding in and help with many aspects of just living.

I get the idea that there are "elites" that have benefited a lot from the society that we all share. I think if we all shared the same access to education and the same work ethic regarding educational achievement, it would have an effect of changing the curve. This does not give rich kids greater access--it still gives less-affluent kids greater access, while focusing availability of an education on work.

This is somewhat dependent on public schools also becoming more egalitarian--and I think primary public schools should be funded more equitably and am deeply skeptical of whether private and charter schools even ought to exist. I want more equal opportunities for everyone. I want public schools to be integrated not just on racial, but economic values. I want young people to be confronted when they are at their most impressionable with the diversity of the world in which they will live.

I think talking about education as a commodity is kind of missing the point. It is a cultural asset that makes the human who receives it better capable of achieving more in their selected endeavors. It isn't a transferable good--it is something that only works as a benefit for people who appreciate how to use it. For this reason, why not make it as broadly available as possible, to do the most good?

I'm just saying!

WTF, Mayor Pete? (With Correction)

My story about @PeteButtigieg ends with him referring to the “failures of the Obama era.” That’s an inaccurate quote — the result of transcribing a noisy recording at a loud rally. His exact words were “failures of the old normal”

— Evan Halper (@evanhalper) November 11, 2019

The story referred to originally had said:

“My message is not about going back to where we were,” he said. “The failures of the Obama era help explain how we got Trump. I am running on building a future that is going to have a lot of differences.… One thing I learned in 2016 is to be very skeptical of any message that relies on the word ‘again.’ ”

but I'm going to have to say that the interpretation many if not most Democrats will take from that isn't a particularly good one: blaming Obama for Trump? Let's don't! As constructions of what Democrats need to do go, the "This is how we got Trump" trope is the one that simply shuts down receptivity to anything else that person is going to say. It always seems to boil down to: Democrats being Democrats is how you got Trump.

CORRECTION: The LA TIMEs story has been updated to correct the quote to:

“My message is not about going back to where we were,” he said.

For a lot of people, “‘normal’ has been a real problem for a very long time, and I think the failures of the old normal help explain how we got Trump. I am running on building a future that is going to have a lot of differences.… One thing I learned in 2016 is to be very skeptical of any message that relies on the word ‘again.’ ”

Because I'm largely dealing with "This is how we got Trump" in my post, I'm not altering what I said, but this correction of what Buttigieg said is significant since he's not slamming Obama. I still remain skeptical about how he's going to achieve his version of change, in rather the same way I am about, say, getting Sanders' or Warren's economic visions through.


And no, that isn't it. Trump is a wholly-owned product of a trajectory that Republicans have been on since at least Nixon, as far as I can tell. He is the product of an anti-intellectualism and paranoid style that is very much part and parcel of right-wing media--he says the things people on the right want to hear, because he's saying the things he heard on the media they and he listen to. Obama, to be clear, uh, didn't build that. He was, during his presidency, the target of that mindset in the Republican party that rejected dialogue and promoted Birtherism, death panels, cries of "appeasement" and "communism" and "radical secret Muslim terrorism" and whatnot. Obama was doing what he could.

To be fair to Buttigieg, though, there is a chance that what he meant was something a bit more nuanced:

The central lesson of Obama’s presidency, Buttigieg argues, is that “any decisions that are based on an assumption of good faith by Republicans in the Senate will be defeated.” The hope that you can pass laws through bipartisan compromise is dead. And that means governance is consistently, reliably failing to solve people’s problems, which is in turn radicalizing them against government itself.

“You can only go so long with this divergence that we have between the center of the American people and the center of the American Congress,” Buttigieg says. “Donald Trump was not exactly a corrective, but he was a consequence of the fact that people watched their government drifting further and further away from them in terms of what it would deliver.”

As to the first part of that--quite right. Assumption of good faith by Republicans has become a dead end. Our government is dysfunctional and divided. We are living in a kind of political Groundhog Day, except it's always Infrastructure Week, and nothing changes. To say Trump is "not exactly a corrective" is awfully mild: it might be more exact to say that Trump should be slapped with the political equivalent of an FDA warning label. He is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any problems of state. But anti-government sentiment and the idea of political gridlock both predate the Obama era, and it could be accurately stated that Obama's caution regarding pushing big changes was that Republicans were already the anti-everything party. Any structural changes to get around that were liable to (and are still going to be liable to) be viewed as a takeover, a coup, a civil war, argggghhhhh!

There just isn't a way to get the structural changes without changing the makeup of congress itself by actually getting an effective progressive governing majority in place. It's not a policy thing--it's a political movement thing. I'm not 100% sure that Pete is the guy to lead a movement when he just (I think inadvertently) came off as blaming one of our most respected recent presidents for Trump.

(As Mayor Pete didn't actually literally blame Obama, of course that end line isn't exactly right. But I still think he will have a hard time of it because the reaction to the misheard quote by people already skeptical of his appeal was, to be blunt, along the lines of "That's what we thought he would say." It's unfair, but that impression may stick.)

Thoughts About the 2020 Democratic Primary

With the news that former NY mayor Mike Bloomberg is now seriously considering entering the 2020 Democratic primary, I'm tempted to just link to my 2016 blogpost about him and step out of the way, but it occurred to me I've been woefully remiss in not covering Democratic politics, so I figured I'd deliver some takes--but first of all, who asked Mike Bloomberg?

I don't have anything against the man, I seriously don't, anymore than I had against Howard Schultz or even have against Tom Steyer (who has his heart and his money in the right place--mostly!) but I'm going to be very honest--the Democratic party might just be working out how we can best appeal to the 99%, and having a handful of .01%'ers out here is a hard sell in this environment. I'm not the one who is going to argue that the actual existence of billionaires is a policy failure, but I am going to inform you that the maxim that "to whom much has been given, from him much is expected" is definitely a whole mood right now. While being a billionaire could mean a person is an excellent manager with innovative ideas who will disrupt day-to-day politics and whatnot, we've had Trump for the last fucking three years.

Please, I beg, go fund down-ballot races. We need progressive statehouses to ensure voting rights are protected and encourage good local environmental protections and maybe local minimum wage increases where we can't get a national one and for goodness sakes don't forget about the US Senate! Because a Democratic president can't get shit done if Mitch McConnell still can block everything.  Even if Democrats didn't capture the presidency, a strong Democratic congress could counter much Trump fuckery. Our worst problem on the progressive side isn't a people problem, they exist. It's an access and money problem. Go fund groups that support voting rights and restoring former felon rights to vote and fund independent media!

Now, another thing--Joe Biden went in on Elizabeth Warren for elitism. This was a response to her claim that he was running in the wrong primary regarding his comments on her plan for funding Medicare For All. Elizabeth Warren is not an elitist and Joe Biden is not a Republican, and regarding any improvement on the ACA, I can tell you right now that I have a spending plan for my winning Powerball ticket. I have seen the GOP go rabid shithouse up the wall "All you goddamn Democrats are Commies" twice in my life in person and it was the Contract for America class of 1994 rejecting the Clinton universal health care plan, and the Tea Party goobers against Obamacare. I understand they went the same kind of apeshit over Medicare the first time around. Here's a plan--we need to win the White House and the Senate and hold the House. Until then, why get extra fucked-up over the details? It's fantasy football league.

I'm just saying--at one time Warren called Hillary Clinton an apt student. (I don't think that was actually any shade in that context.) Learn from the difficulties "Hillarycare" faced. And the ACA--Biden was there. There is not any bit of it that will go down easily. But I agree with her that you do have to fight--I just submit you also have to do all you can to be armed and recognize some ground may be yielded strategically.

You want to know what's trending on Twitter right now? A hashtag: #PeteForGovernor. It really just cropped up. I have had my concerns about Buttigieg's age and experience, and his invitation to walk with Julian Castro around South Bend set my teeth on edge. Castro has been under-recognized despite a great understanding of issues and an awesome bio--and for that matter, I don't understand why Cory Booker hasn't really had a "moment" in this campaign, yet. Anyhow, Booker can stay a Senator, and do great stuff because he just does, and yet--you know? There's really something to this idea that Buttigieg should consider winning the Governor seat in Indiana. For one thing, doesn't Indiana deserve a good governor? And that was Pence's former job. And it would show he can do more. Middling town to President is just such a big leap.

I don't know who is advising Kamala Harris on primary strategy, but because I love her and parking herself in Iowa isn't going to do for her what she needs done, I wish something better was happening for her. With the wildfires, she could go hard on climate, utilities, fossil fuels, etc. (She has solid environmental principles.)  She is at her best in her prosecutor mode. I want her to put on the best case she can for herself. In the meantime, I don't know what to make of a Steyer aide (now fired) who stole Harris data).  I guess they were fixing to poach supporters from what they saw as a campaign that wasn't firing on all cylinders? (There was also a solicitation re: endorsements in Iowa by Steyer's campaign which is just weird. Not unheard of--but weird.)  Anyhow, I wish her campaign was getting all the good attention for her competence and wit and so on.

Anyway, where female politicians are seen as angry or elitist, I guess I want to just end with Amy Klobuchar, because she really is funny and smart and down-to-earth and reminds us that "Minnesota nice" has an icy edge to it.

I like these folks a lot--I haven't got a real bad feeling for any of them. I just think we're at a time when if you're Messam or Sestak you should probably take your five dollars in donations and your six supporters and do some other stuff.  (Of course, Gabbard going on Brietbart is just her own entire thing, with a definite "triggering the libs" level of provocation.)  And everyone needs to get real about what they offer, and how they want to serve. Because that's what the people want to see. Real means serving with your feet by leaving the race, and with money, by lifting up someone else if that's what gets rid of Trump and advances progressive goals.

An Argument for Religious Freedom

Recently, Franklin Graham, the late Rev. Billy Graham's Islamophobic and homophobic scion, challenged Pete Buttigieg for referring to himself as a gay Christian because to Graham, it is not possible to be both Christian and gay. 

This is not news to millions of gay people who actually consider themselves Christian--of course, they've heard at one time or another that they are imperfect in their beliefs if they don't also hate themselves. It might be news to Graham that their religion, and freedom to practice it, is no less valid than his own and that it isn't actually up to Graham to decide who gets to call themselves a follower of Christ.

I don't follow religion, myself, and struggle with the textual smarty-pants tendency to point out this passage or that to refute the fine print gatekeepers who want to reserve their own slice of heaven, for the price of striking off others for whatever scape-goatish reason they are so inclined. It's truly not my god and not my book, and as far as one person's interpretation of it goes, it's probably not even my business--but to that extent, it isn't really Graham's business to monitor someone else's religious rectitude, either, as if only one version of the Bible even existed. 

What we do have in common, as Americans, is the First Amendment. It seems that Graham would prefer to have his interpretation of religion override what others hold to be true, and even would ask that the government agree with his interpretation to limit the rights of others to follow their non-harmful life choices, such as marrying a consenting, adult partner.   But religious guidelines can dictate what to eat and what to wear and how to discipline one's children and on and on--the problem is to what extent any religious person's mere opinion should hold weight over another person's pursuit of happiness. 

Or maybe it isn't a problem at all--Graham just wants to cause trouble. Pete Buttigieg is as free to be a gay Christian as Graham is to be a bigoted one because he accepts Christ as central to his faith. I'm a happy little atheist because why not? But that sort of assumption that freedom of religion can mean freedom from having one's rights impinged by another's religious view isn't as common as I suppose it ought to be. I can't help but think about the times I've seen Tony Perkins or Brian Brown or some other "true religion" type being treated as if their view--imposing a specifically scriptural interpretation on LGBT people's right to marry, adopt, or even exist, as if they were perfectly ordinary--and not actually peculiar sectarian extremists trying to impose a sort of Christianism on other folks. Especially when this kind of judgment and imposition of religious bigotry does societal harm. 

Mayor Pete and The Goblet of Fine

The first same-sex husband of a major-party presidential candidate is a historic figure, but he’s also a surprisingly traditional one https://t.co/ol75Q3J7dK

— POLITICO (@politico) March 31, 2019

Pete Buttigieg and I have something in common--we're both Hufflepuffs. (I know this is absurd--obviously I should be Gryffindor owing to my foxy nature, but the sorting hat doesn't cater to personal style, AFAIK, so, Team Badger it is. Up with loyalty and service!)I like Mayor Pete, and his spouse and their dogs. I am not going to hate, exactly, on him for going on Bill Maher's show because I sort of hate watch it--I don't think Maher is a great liberal (he's so Boomerish and a little racist and ableist and misogynist in the jokes he does, and promotes the whole PC canard and generally treats conservative "D0rkw3b" people and their nods towards extremism differently from how he routinely characterizes Muslims for just being). Buttigieg has decided that he wants to go where the eyeballs are, and that makes sense. And he actually acquitted himself pretty well against some pretty dumb things:



Bill Maher to Buttigieg: A Lot of Millennials Are 'Fragile,' Need 'Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces' https://t.co/9kYgFc3ENr pic.twitter.com/raJu63xfv1

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 30, 201


Millennials aren't fragile and FWIW, Maher needs to get over using trans people using the bathroom as a gag or as some kind of example of SJW's going too far. They are just doing a normal function--why is that weird? What I think isn't really discussed enough, is that the fight over trigger warnings and for more inclusive language is a sign of people sticking up for themselves, when at an earlier time, they might have just gone home without asking for the respectful dialogue they needed. I could go so far as to say people who actually complain about other people being "PC" are mostly looking for a safe space where they won't be criticized for actually being shit towards other people and called out on their bullshit.

But there is a kind of live wire Buttigieg has triggered that is hard not to be zapped by--he's commented on Clinton 2016 in a way that touched some nerves. It's wrong to say Hillary Clinton didn't address problems of inequality and how to get people employed. But it is possible that by underestimating the pessimism in, say, the Midwest, and proclaiming America as already great, her campaign did miss a sentiment some people actually felt.

Trump's candidacy promised a shakeup of the status quo. I would be immune to this argument because I'm solidly middle class and saw Obama's presidency as meaning an advancement for civil rights and more progressive (relatively!) foreign policy than neocons gave us. Obama was my "shakeup of status quo" from the Bush years. But for someone whose politics is yet more local than mine, who isn't Extremely Online and Very Political, maybe my perspective isn't theirs. Maybe trying to tell people that things are fine just doesn't sound right to them, especially if they have a diet of Fox News and RW talk radio and experience localized economic depression because of factors the general economy uplift hasn't touched. They have a deep sense that something isn't right, and that politicians are full of shit.

I'm going to tell you I don't think it matters if that opinion is even wrong--it exists. These are people Buttigieg has spoken with--his folks. When he talks about "coastal elites" I rankle, obviously. WTF is that supposed to mean? I'm in Philadelphia, which is practically New Jersey (coastal), but "coastal elite" is sort of out because I'm desperately of the class of them that work and got no fancy education, and yes, people I know, live around, work with, are Trump voters. I can easily imagine them. There's millions of Trump voters on the coasts--the thing is--we're populous! Diverse!

So I guess the question is--is Buttigieg able to figure out how to work with Philadelphia? Because I would be comfortable saying that he might have a good grasp on Indiana politics, but what he's saying isn't exactly heartening for those of us who really have been turned off to the "economic desperation of the heartland" bullshit because we want to know why Trump's obvious racist bullshit doesn't turn them all the way the hell off the way it does us. And came up with the obvious reason why. Which was never about being PC, just aware that bigotry is real, and not to be dismissed. He isn't not talking about it, just not as explicitly as I think some of us would like.

I think he's got a good head on his shoulders, but I wish it were an older head. He speaks well, but I don't know that he addresses all we need a Democratic 2020 candidate to do.