my buttigieg take: he is a nice person who is doing the literal opposite of what he should probably be doing both to advance what he wants and to make any kind of meaningful impact. i think i...
my buttigieg take: he is a nice person who is doing the literal opposite of what he should probably be doing both to advance what he wants and to make any kind of meaningful impact.
i think i speak for just about everybody when i say his candidacy for president is a dud and that he'd be lucky to not have the iowa caucuses completely tank him when he seemingly inevitably gets 1% there in 2020. he would almost entirely be better served either running on a singular issue to get that into the public conscious like jay inslee is trying to, or by not running for president in the first place because honestly? nobody knows who he is or what the fuck he stands for. hell, i am extremely politically active and before this point, i had no idea what the fuck his policy positions are because his website doesn't say anything other than who he is and how to donate to him. i get that it's early and technically, he hasn't announced, but that doesn't exactly scream successful campaign to me, even if you take into account that he knows his chances for winning the presidency basically don't exist.
what i think buttigieg would be wiser to do is actually run for something in his state. indiana is sorely needing good democratic candidates because there are a couple of house seats and plenty of downballot seats which are competitive there in the right circumstances, and if any candidate could win them it'd presumably be someone with a stature like his. he'd be more likely to make a difference there anyways, seeing as if a democrat wins the presidency they're going to likely be doing so with congress still divided between the two parties meaning that at least the first two years of that presidency is all but certain to be a wash and he doesn't have the name brand of someone like sanders or harris to keep people from defining him as a failure for not being able to pass those policies. this is a lot less true in state houses, and state houses are where a lot more of the policies that genuinely impact people are passed.
sanders was an outlier though, and ran in a field of what was effectively one. his only other serious opponent was clinton, which allowed him to exploit the very large body of people who were...
I would argue that no one knew who Sanders was prior to May 2015 either and he went on to nearly dethrone Clinton, and sits as the presumptive front runner four years later.
sanders was an outlier though, and ran in a field of what was effectively one. his only other serious opponent was clinton, which allowed him to exploit the very large body of people who were clamoring for something more progressive than what clinton had to offer. buttigieg is facing him and at least 10 other serious candidates--a lot of whom are standing on things that overlap with what he advocates for--who all have full fledged policies and platforms ready to go and have the capital, positions, stature, and record to back up their candidacies. he has very little of that in comparison, because his only experience is being mayor of a town of about 100,000--which is no easy feat, of course, especially not at the age he did it, but that's obviously a bit of a far cry from being the leader of a country of 325 million.
Buttligieg is a candidate who resonates with many young Democrats. He is a progressive in the vein of Sanders that isn't 80 years old. He has experienced what we experience.
the fact that he's only 37 actually is a pretty big argument against why he needs to run now: he has literally decades of time to build up more name recognition, a better resume, get some more experience running other offices than the mayorship of south bend, indiana, etc. he'd arguably be just as viable as he is now in 2024 if a democrat loses in 2020--or 2028, failing that.
i mean, i actually think it'd probably be unwise for him to run for governor in 2020, seeing as the closest it's been since 2004 (which is the last year when democrats occupied the indiana...
Not to mention a friggin’ gubernatorial race in 2020 he’s apparently too good for.
i mean, i actually think it'd probably be unwise for him to run for governor in 2020, seeing as the closest it's been since 2004 (which is the last year when democrats occupied the indiana governorship) is when pence won election by 3 points in 2012, which took pence being kind of an awful person to have happen in the first place. better to send some middle-level figure who's older and has less of a ceiling to go fight that battle (plenty of those in indiana politics) than sacrifice buttigieg, who has potentially 30 or more years of politics ahead of him to probably get smoked by 6 or more points.
my buttigieg take: he is a nice person who is doing the literal opposite of what he should probably be doing both to advance what he wants and to make any kind of meaningful impact.
i think i speak for just about everybody when i say his candidacy for president is a dud and that he'd be lucky to not have the iowa caucuses completely tank him when he seemingly inevitably gets 1% there in 2020. he would almost entirely be better served either running on a singular issue to get that into the public conscious like jay inslee is trying to, or by not running for president in the first place because honestly? nobody knows who he is or what the fuck he stands for. hell, i am extremely politically active and before this point, i had no idea what the fuck his policy positions are because his website doesn't say anything other than who he is and how to donate to him. i get that it's early and technically, he hasn't announced, but that doesn't exactly scream successful campaign to me, even if you take into account that he knows his chances for winning the presidency basically don't exist.
what i think buttigieg would be wiser to do is actually run for something in his state. indiana is sorely needing good democratic candidates because there are a couple of house seats and plenty of downballot seats which are competitive there in the right circumstances, and if any candidate could win them it'd presumably be someone with a stature like his. he'd be more likely to make a difference there anyways, seeing as if a democrat wins the presidency they're going to likely be doing so with congress still divided between the two parties meaning that at least the first two years of that presidency is all but certain to be a wash and he doesn't have the name brand of someone like sanders or harris to keep people from defining him as a failure for not being able to pass those policies. this is a lot less true in state houses, and state houses are where a lot more of the policies that genuinely impact people are passed.
sanders was an outlier though, and ran in a field of what was effectively one. his only other serious opponent was clinton, which allowed him to exploit the very large body of people who were clamoring for something more progressive than what clinton had to offer. buttigieg is facing him and at least 10 other serious candidates--a lot of whom are standing on things that overlap with what he advocates for--who all have full fledged policies and platforms ready to go and have the capital, positions, stature, and record to back up their candidacies. he has very little of that in comparison, because his only experience is being mayor of a town of about 100,000--which is no easy feat, of course, especially not at the age he did it, but that's obviously a bit of a far cry from being the leader of a country of 325 million.
the fact that he's only 37 actually is a pretty big argument against why he needs to run now: he has literally decades of time to build up more name recognition, a better resume, get some more experience running other offices than the mayorship of south bend, indiana, etc. he'd arguably be just as viable as he is now in 2024 if a democrat loses in 2020--or 2028, failing that.
i mean, i actually think it'd probably be unwise for him to run for governor in 2020, seeing as the closest it's been since 2004 (which is the last year when democrats occupied the indiana governorship) is when pence won election by 3 points in 2012, which took pence being kind of an awful person to have happen in the first place. better to send some middle-level figure who's older and has less of a ceiling to go fight that battle (plenty of those in indiana politics) than sacrifice buttigieg, who has potentially 30 or more years of politics ahead of him to probably get smoked by 6 or more points.