“An openly gay military vet making his own soaring case for aspirational liberalism, Buttigieg could captivate a packed gym like Barack Obama and soon became a fave of White House alums like David Axelrod.” #TeamPete@PeteButtigieg Is Living His Best Life https://t.co/ykV8JGdUWE
— ?? Team Secretary Pete ?? (@LynneJMcCartney) March 31, 2022
A little Sunday treat, for the fans, from NYMag:
These days, Pete Buttigieg is concerned about the future of democracy. “I don’t think it’s an accident that the last time fascism was fashionable in certain corners of this country’s political class, one of the things they said for Mussolini is he made the trains run on time — it was a transportation example,” he tells me in his spacious office overlooking the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.
“Which by the way, importantly, was not actually true,” he is quick to add, his eyes suddenly widening. He brings up China and the narrative of “their order versus our chaos,” which the Chinese bolster with enormous infrastructure investments. “Part of what motivates me in this work is that the workaday things that we’re focused on, it’s right back to some really profound issues we’re dealing with in terms of what kind of country we’re going to be,” Buttigieg says. “It’s about whether democracy can deliver.”
Buttigieg, in his light-blue necktie and crisp white shirt, hasn’t had many acquaintances, let alone journalists, in his D.C. office since becoming Joe Biden’s secretary of Transportation in 2021. COVID locked people behind Zoom screens, and Buttigieg, perhaps the administration’s most adept political animal, had been left to evangelize for transportation and infrastructure virtually.
That has begun to change for the newly minted 40-year-old and father of twins, who is not only hobnobbing more in Washington but recently visited South by Southwest and packs a busy schedule of out-of-town events. His office, in the chic D.C. Navy Yard neighborhood, has few personal touches. A Notre Dame coaster, sitting next to a newsletter provided by a longshoreman union, is a small reminder of where he came from…
What he has missed about the campaign trail, he says, is “being in the room, watching faces rise and fall as I learn what really resonates.” But he is sure to diplomatically add, “It’s rewarding to be campaigning not for yourself but for an idea.”
That idea is infrastructure, a bipartisan staple of Washington that, in its nuts-and-bolts nerdiness, seems ideally suited to a politician who has always embodied the straight-A student hungry to answer the next question. Transportation policy genuinely excites Buttigieg, who gained a small degree of fame among wonks for his successful pedestrianization of South Bend. He has rolled out an ambitious plan to drastically slash traffic fatalities nationwide. He is outspoken about the environmental and sociological degradation that certain highway systems have brought to communities of color. Technocrats have great sway with him: Polly Trottenberg, his deputy, was the long-serving New York City DOT commissioner and has been given broad latitude to pitch and implement policy…
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced new fuel economy standards for vehicles that will begin with the model year 2024. ‘And the benefits are going to be real for drivers across America,’ Buttigieg said https://t.co/XwtjxHQBkN pic.twitter.com/Q5ZCqyBbcB
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2022
Wha? We want people to live wherever they like, and thrive there. It’s why we’re making it safer & easier to take transit, walk, ride a bike (or scooter, sure), drive a car or truck. That includes over $3.8 billion in AR alone for roads & bridges, despite the Senator’s ‘no’ vote.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) April 1, 2022
One gets the impression that Tom Cotton resents having to base his campaign in Little Rock instead of Claremont or Cambridge…
Tom Cotton stuck in traffic, fuming, as Pete Buttigieg flies by smiling on a pegasus and like wind chimes play in the background
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) April 1, 2022
Matt
Tell ya what, Sen. Cotton: we’ll make a compromise: you and your knuckle-dragging white-nationalist peckerwood base can go live IN THE SEA and the rest of us will have a nice time in cities.
germy
West of the Rockies
Pete radiates decency and intelligence.
Cotton radiates dead-eyed resentment.
Pete is funny. Cotton is laughable.
different-church-lady
Well, you know, Trump captured Osama bin Laden, so what is truth anyway?
Spanky
@West of the Rockies:
He would be laughable if he were some beady-eyed, run-of-the-mill goober. But since he’s a motherfucking US Senator with his beady eyes on the White House, not so much.
germy
germy
zhena gogolia
Nice to see Pete. I really like him.
Jay C
Well, I guess
MayorSecretary Pete has finally “arrived” (? On time?) in Washington: he seems to have become a right-wing boogeyman for Republicans: Cotton’s gibberings are only the latest nonsense I’ve read citing“Pete Buttigieg” as some sort of RW talking-point devil-figure whose each and every statement is meant to be an embodiment of Everything That’s Wrong In The Universe. So he must be doing something right…
PS: I read something once about how Mussolini was supposed to have “gotten the trains to run on time”. It was actually quite simple: among other disciplines, he had the Italian State Railways adjust the clocks on the trains and in the stations by about five minutes either way.The trains would still run late: you just couldn’t tell as much from the “officIal” time…
Mike in NC
Among the things Tom Cotton (perfect redneck name, isn’t it?) has said: (1) slavery wasn’t so bad, and (2) he would have called out active duty troops to forcefully disperse peaceful protesters in DC and other places. Something Trump regretted not doing. Cotton must be watched as a future potential fascist dictator.
Baud
The Pete documentary is in my Prime watchlist.
Leto
I would 1000% rather get around on a Pegasus than, say, flying car. I like flying horse future better than Jetsons.
Baud
I thought Pete rode one of the My Little Ponies to work.
debbie
@germy: 
I loved walking home from work. Great way to decompress, especially compared to sitting on an overcrowded subway or in a car stuck in rush hour traffic.
debbie
@different-church-lady:
With his bare hands!
delk
The correct response from an older big city gay man:
“I rode your father. What the fuck you going to do about it , Ichabod ?”
Jay C
@debbie:
And despite Sen. Cotton’s imbecilic blather, at least where I live (NYC), anyone who can live “in a high-rise”, and walk to work is highly unlikely to be among the “poor”…..
Leto
@Baud: You mean a My Little Brony? I’m sure he does :P
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Colbert now has a 7-year-old boy read TFG statements. It’s hilarious.
Baud
Poor people do not live in downtown high rises.
Did Tom Cotton not watch The Jeffersons when he was growing up?
ETA: JayC is first with the observation.
Spanky
@zhena gogolia: Hilarity? Or child abuse?
satby
Yeah, now you all like him.
When I was talking to his chief of staff trying to get him for a live q&a here in the early days of the last presidential campaign (before Biden had formally declared) the hate for the guy (“too white, not gay enough, stealth Republican”) put the kibosh on that idea. I’m still embarrassed when I think of it; when I talked to her again it was “yeah, I read that blog… no, we’re not available for that”.
Baud
@satby:
I’m not sure the people who didn’t like Pete are in this thread.
But yeah, that was a missed opportunity. Too bad WaterGirl wasn’t in charge then. She handled the Schiff thing very well.
japa21
@satby: There was definitely a contingent here who bashed him regularly. There were far more who, if not supporters of his, found him very intriguing.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, I love those too!
Dan B
@satby: I remember the racist claims. Sad
Tom Cotton will probably dog whistle those. Hypocrisy?
Baud
@japa21:
@Dan B:
Presidential primaries bring out the worst in people.
Professor Bigfoot
@japa21: I went through an evolution:
First, to me, he was “Mayo Pete,” yet another unqualified white guy thinking he’s fit for the Oval Office.
Then “Mayor Pete,” mayor of a small midwestern city thinking he’s fit for the Oval Office.
But watching him for the last few years, he’s become “Slayer Pete,” ‘cause he can go onto Fox News and *kill ‘em.* (metaphorically speaking)
West of the Rockies
This is no groundbreaking observation, but curious how the GOP consistently now goes for rude, braggy toxic masculinity candidates (even among female candidates): Trump, Hawley, Cotton, Gaetz, DeSantis, Jordan, MTG, Bohbert, etc. Same with their favored news personalities (Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Candace Owens, De’Souza, etc.).
They all long for an angry daddy with a leather strap, don’t they?
Martin
@Baud: This makes me grimace a bit.
There’s a bigger thing being said here. Downtown high-rises are the projects. Public housing. Yeah, we tend to think of Trump Tower, rather than Queensbridge or Two Bridges. Two Bridges is 26 stories, in Manhattan, just in a worse zip code than Trump Tower.
I think one of the pervading fears from the right is that a liberal future is one where income inequality is addressed by widespread public housing, where the population is increasingly urbanized to address climate change, and where their kids will be forced to live in the projects next to black people, because they won’t be able to afford living out in the weeds with horses and nature because rural life will increasingly be encumbered with urban costs like carbon taxes, and building codes, and their lives will inherently become more and more Amish-like as they fail to be able to afford the quality of life conveniences that come with ever greater connectivity and technology because running a fiber optic cable to the ranch is fucking expensive.
Thus is their fixation with urban crimes which they feel powerless against because they can’t roll down Market St. SF with an AR-15. And why rural crime which in many ways is worse is acceptable simply because its so spread out to not be worthy of national news coverage.
But there are a lot of poor people in high rises in large cities like NY and Chicago. There’s a legitimate failure of public housing policy there which we’ve moved on from but are still cleaning up, and there’s no new public housing policy to really take its place. The GOP are trying to make sure no public housing policy can be implemented by turning the entire caucus against it. But we really, really need a public housing policy given skyrocketing prices and serious homelessness policies in many places.
Martin
@satby: There were plenty of people instinctively opposed to anyone from McKinsey. Which, you know, I kind of get.
Look, the issue in 2020 was getting Trump out of office. Period. Full stop. It had nothing to do with who was the best ideological democrat to be in the WH, but who could get the votes. Hell, most of us would have taken Dubya in the primaries if it would have been a guarantee of getting Trump out. Many of us expressed that view, along with the idea of bringing the other primary candidates into the administration to actually make their ideas happen.
Rudi
@West of the Rockies:
braggy toxic masculinity -> Tucker Carlson? Bow ties exude masculinity . He likes pegging by LI.
Dan B
@Martin: We live in one of the lowest income zip codes in Seattle and a 1500 square foot house a block from us got granite countertops and new floors. It sold for $1.1 million. There’s a huge homelessness issue that city government seems unable to address. A Lowe’s next to a light rail and transit hub is zoned for ten story development but Amazon wants it for a fulfillment center. This would bring traffic nightmares. The workers cannot afford to live within ten miles and the vans would fill the streets.
Martin
@West of the Rockies: Reading Pete’s comments in contrast to why Russia is willing to commit war crimes makes an interesting distinction. Pete talks about ‘fascism’ while Russia talks about ‘Nazis’. A lot of people on the left also go for ‘Nazi’ in part because it’s a more concrete descriptor, but also because, in both cases, the US and Russia defeated the Nazis. Labeling the right or Ukrainians as ‘Nazis’ automatically makes them an enemy of America and Russia (which is counterproductive when US fascists generally also would defeat the Nazis simply because its the wrong kind of fascism).
Labeling them as ‘fascists’ means you kind of have to stop and think about that term. If the Russians did that, they might get confused and wonder if Putin is a fascist, so they stick with Nazi since it’s axiomatically impossible for any Russian to be a Nazi. Same goes for the US – if someone looked into what a fascist was, it’d start to resemble a lot of Republicans.
zhena gogolia
@Spanky: he sounds as if he’s having fun bragging about his hole in one
zhena gogolia
@satby: I’ve never said anything bad about Pete, so not “all.” It was never all.
smith
@Martin: Yeah, when Goobers say “high rises” it’s code for public housing, but the fact is that in large urban centers almost everybody lives in tall buildings regardless of their income (and in Chicago at least the notorious high rise projects have been torn down). It’s pretty much a characteristic of big cities.
I think the threat that red America sees from urbanization is not so much that they think they will be forced to live in cities, but that their children will abandon them to live in cities. That’s driven by educational and economic opportunities more than any planned effort to improve the environment. Now that agriculture and resource extraction have become highly mechanized, there are not enough jobs in rural areas to keep people there. Short of going back to the farming, mining, and logging methods of the 19th century, there really is no cure for that.
I
Jay C
@smith:
Well, most of today’s Republicans seem quite OK with reviving the social, political, and economic structures of the 19th Century: a fondness for bringing back labor-intensive, low-wage industries should fit right in…
sab
Tom Cotton wants me stuck in traffic two hours a day listening to angry talk radio. Been there, done that, not my best time of life.
Cacti
It was actually much worse. Confederate KKKotton says that slavery was necessary.
Cacti
That’s exactly what they’re afraid of. But like you said, that ship has already sailed. Rural brain drain has been going on for decades. I count myself among those who happily escaped and never looked back.
sab
@satby: I have liked Pete since I first heard him on local radio in Cleveland when he was first running for President. I still have a “Pete Buttigieg Explorers Club” t-shirt, which I thought was a really interesting idea for attracting people who were not yet committed.
Sure Lurkalot
Denver in the 80’s had next to zero housing downtown but more than one block referred to as “skid row”. When I worked there then, it was starting to change but it was mostly get out of there at 5, it’s not particularly safe. The genesis over four decades has been dramatic and fine in many ways but there is precious little real estate affordable for the middle class on down. So some of those who walk to work also can afford to have 3 or 4 luxury cars in expensive owned spaces. Those who can’t afford to live in downtowns or generally in walking distance to work and fun bear extra expense which they can’t afford as well.
Affordable housing and transportation are intimately tied. I think Pete gets it and I hope the dots get connected with the money now available.
satby
@Baud: dude. sigh.
Caphilldcne
@satby: I’m a white, military gay man who finds Pete a bit too much. I certainly hope he and his family do great. I also don’t particularly like his corporate resume’, his naked ambition and I certainly did not think he would then or now make a good president.
Ben Cisco
@Leto: I was promised flying flying cars
Brachiator
@Martin:
This was largely true; however, a significant number of voters decided on Biden early on, and candidates pushing more “progressive” policies did not gain traction. Later on, of course, a lot of their policy positions influenced Biden administration policy.
Geminid
@Sure Lurkalot: I want to see what AMTRAK does with the $60 billion allotted to it from the Infrastructure bill. That is not enough, but according to AMTRAK’s chief it still exceeds total capital investment in that passenger rail system since it’s inception. Their service map has been static even as our country added over 100 million people. Now it will be expanded in many states.
The Infrastructure bill also funds investment in local transit, both bus and rail. New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority alone will receive $10 billion.
realbtl
@Ben Cisco: So you want to share the skies with the flying car equivalent of a bro-dozer?
Kirk Spencer
@Ben Cisco:
And I am glad flying cars are not a thing. Well, flying cars as common transportation are not a thing, because we’ve had exotic and prototype flying cars for a couple of decades now.
Thing is, every time flying cars come up I think of two things.
First, the people who cut around instead of staying in lanes. To include the ones who, seeing traffic slowing on the interstate, will drive across the grass strip to get onto the adjacent feeder. I’d blame Texas but I’ve seen it in other states as well.
Second, the number of people who drive with bad wheels or small spares or unrepaired damage – who do not do basic operational maintenance until the car breaks.
I put those together, and “It’s raining men” is no longer just a humorous song by the Weather Girls. But also women, children, and car parts – onto schools and homes and… yeah.
Please, no flying cars
eta: realbtl got there first.
Miss Bianca
@germy: He’s got a point.
Gvg
@satby: I still think he wasn’t ready for the presidency. Too young, not enough experience and not enough contacts. His future looks bright however, and his “problems”are fixable. The other thing is we were all really tense and afraid to lose. It made us kind of snappish. Hillary lost in our opinion, partly because she was a woman, and a straight white guy was….safer.
My dad and I had a similar quandary when choosing a candidate for Florida’s Governor. We thought the well connected but boring white woman was safer than the more exciting black mayor that we liked better and voted for her, but the other primary voters didn’t agree and then Florida picked deathsantis who is even worse than we predicted. No guarantee she would have won either….just remember why people didn’t want Pete. We thought the electorate was still too anti Gay.
And I personally don’t like too inexperienced for President. Particularly when I knew what he was going to have to clean up if elected. I am not thrilled with too old either, but that is why I wasn’t interested.
Lyrebird
@Gvg: Hoping that DeathSantis’ true colors will get more neighbors siding with the non-Trumpian Fla voters.
What’s the opposite of a rainbow flag? Shades of grey? No too complex.
Starfish
@Brachiator: Biden was the last choice of a lot of people. When various other candidates dropped out and endorsed him, we were going to muster all the enthusiasm for our second, third, or fourth choice candidate because people understood the urgency of the moment.
The post-election grudge fest is a luxury that most people could not afford to dwell in before this last presidential election. Some people seem to be dwelling in it now. ?
different-church-lady
@Baud:
It seems to me there are a whole lot of people who don’t like a whole lot of things that no longer hang out here.
Brachiator
@Starfish:
Among Balloon Juice jackals, there was a lot of love for Warren and various other candidates. But Biden and Sanders won primaries, with Biden pulling ahead. Biden was clearly the favorite of black voters. No one else really came close.
The “I will back whoever the eventual winner is” sentiment was strong, and people held to this, a kind of unanimity among the diversity of opinion.
Kropacetic
I mean, so do I, but I’ve subsumed it safely into a sexual fetish. That’s no way to vote.
My grudge was more with the media. I rather like how Biden has been doing in office, but at the time the endless parade of media pushing “only Biden can win” polls onto front pages had me really resentful. People are too easily swayed by the media and it’s rare that it works to our benefit.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Yeah, Tom Cotton isn’t thinking of swank high-rises here, it’s old images of Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini-Green. “Democrats want to make white people live in squalor like the black people.”
Kineslaw
@Kirk Spencer: I realized flying cars should not be a thing during a scuba diving class in the deep end of the pool. Human beings have a hard enough time dealing with watching for objects on a plane. Adding in the vertical dimension is not a good thing.
Soprano2
@Martin: Quite a few times I heard variations of “Covid won’t get us because we don’t live on top of each other like they do in the big cities.” There was a lot of implication that many people in cities are dirty and thus unhealthy, that the way they live is inherently dirty. They think strange things about what cities are like. I would say “You know that in small towns everyone goes to the same Walmart and the same two places to eat and to church together, right?”
Kent
I liked and was impressed with Buttigieg. And I was happy to see him nominated to the Cabinet.
I didn’t, however, think he was the right Democratic candidate to defeat Trump in 2020. That was a singular and seminal moment in history and Biden was the right candidate to do that. Not someone who’s highest elective office was mayor of a town of 102,000.
There is a difference between liking Pete and thinking he is the best candidate to take on Trump and the massive conservative war machine behind him
And in any event, Biden is by far the most progressive Democratic president since FDR. The only thing stopping more progressive initiatives is Manchin and Sinema.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never gave much thought as to what kind of president he would be because the idea that a thirty-seven year-old mayor of a mid-sized college town, gay or straight, veteran or McKinsey drone, could, should or would be the Democratic nominee, much less winner of the general election in 2020, was so far-fetched that it didn’t seem worth thinking about. Maybe in ten or twelve years I’ll have to give it some thought, if I’m still with you all.
I will say, of all the young-ish and very (excessively? time will tell) ambitious white guys who decided, in a fit of collective
madnesssilliness that still somewhat baffles me, to run for president to “build their brand”– Moulton, Swalwell, Ryan… I think there were thirteen or fourteen others clogging the debates but my memory is clouded– he was clearly the most politically talented. More’s the pity he didn’t see what twitter-Nixon advised after the fact: He should have moved to a bluer state before launching his political career. Now he’s susceptible to charges of carpet-bagging.Jim, Foolish Literalist
well…. the only ones willing to be seen stopping more progressive initiatives. And it may well blow up in at least Sinema’s face
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Kropacetic: Who else could have won?
AM in NC
@Caphilldcne: I am a white, straight woman
@Caphilldcne: I am a white, non-military, straight woman, and I feel the same way about Sec. B.
Caphilldcne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’d love for him to run for senate in Indiana in 2024! Or move to Texas and take out Cruz. Or Florida and take out Scott.
Caphilldcne
@AM in NC: cheers!! We are in accord!