New Hampshire gold
She has a touch of gold
Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,
One each of everything as in a showcase,
Which naturally she doesn't care to sell.
- “New Hampshire”, Robert Frost
Tomorrow, New Hampshire votes.
I’d planned to be there. Set aside time on my schedule, made all the logistical arrangements. Most of my presidential primary experience is in Iowa; while I’d visited New Hampshire on occasion during past primary clashes, I’d never actually been there for the primary itself. I looked forward to talking with Actual New Hampshire Voters™ (as opposed to the political tourists who besiege Concord, Nashua, Manchester, and Colebrook this close to the election); I eagerly awaited running into people I knew, both on Bernie’s campaign and others, particularly Elizabeth Warren’s.
It’s not happening.
Instead, I’m at my house in New York City, struggling to recover from what I thought was a simple (ha!) head cold which has now twisted itself into something more enervating. My head aches; my ears throb; I struggle to breath. I spend morning, afternoon, and night in a hazy fog which occasionally clears. Doctors and nurses look at me in pity, shrug phlegmatically. It’s a bad cold; what are you going to do? Just gotta ride it out. I’d gotten my flu shot earlier, for which I’m grateful. So maybe it’s a reaction to it? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m mired in a version of myself that aches, depleted and worn.
In any event: I gaze on New Hampshire from afar, and wonder what tomorrow will bring. Today? Well, we’ve got the Miscellanies.
The unbearable banality of Pete Buttigieg
One unwelcome result of Iowa’s chaos is Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s return to prominence, rising again like a horror-movie villain. I’d expected Elizabeth Warren’s highly professional field organization to pay off by giving her a better-than-expected finish.
It did. However, her performance wasn’t enough to overtake Buttigieg, who claimed victory in the caucuses. In the shambolic aftermath, Warren was erased from the “narrative”, as the political media focused on Bernie Sanders’ effective tie with Buttigieg, and Joe Biden’s collapse into fourth place.
The result was that Buttigieg, not Warren, got what “bump” could be gotten from Iowa. That lifted him into a tie with Sanders in New Hampshire, and it’s left Warren trailing badly, all but frozen in third place.
Friday’s debate, therefore, turned into a pile-on on Pete Buttigieg. For the most part, he emerged battered but not wrecked, avoiding major damage — except for one critical passage.
The key exchange (second time asking question):
DAVIS: "How do you explain increase in black arrests in South Bend under your leadership for marijuana possession?"
BUTTIGIEG: "Again, overall rate was lower"
DAVIS: [interrupts] "No, there was an increase..."
And then Warren with the hammer blow. Except that, unlike in 2016, when Chris Christie obliterated Marco Rubio, none of the candidates on stage did that to Buttigieg. Warren’s answer was excellent, but it also allowed Buttigieg to escape further damage.
Do I dislike Pete Buttigieg? No. What I am is deeply disappointed in him. Here’s a guy who, when given the chance to pursue wealth as an elite consultant, decided instead to pursue a life in public service - first as mayor of his hometown, and then concurrently as a Naval reservist. And yet: I find his candidacy empty, vain, devoid of meaning, purpose, or substance. It is an empty suit campaign. The man speaks in bromides, and offers nothing but banality.
Don’t believe me? Here, have a taste:
“This is a time for addition, not rejection. For belonging, not exclusion. Together, we can turn the page on the politics of the past and usher in a new American era.”
“Every time Democrats have won the White House in the last 50 years, we’ve done so with a nominee who was new on the scene and was opening the door to a new generation of leadership. What we saw in Iowa, and what we’re seeing beginning to stir across the country, is the hunger of Americans for a new kind of politics. They’re ready to put the politics of the past in the past, and turn the page to an era defined by belonging, boldness, and action.”
“The biggest risk we could take at a time like this would be to go up against this president with the same old playbook and political warfare we have come to accept from Washington, D.C. We have exactly one shot to defeat Donald Trump. We’re not going to do it by division. We’re not going to do it by saying, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ This is our shot to unify this country and galvanize an American majority to win.”
What in the fuck does any of that mean? It’s meaningless bafflegab, meant to generate applause lines in the moment, but otherwise devoid of substance. It’s as if someone mainlined all of Aaron Sorkin’s discarded scripts from the first two or three seasons of The West Wing, and decided to use them as speech-writing material. Thirty seconds after you hear it, never mind thirty minutes or thirty hours, you’ve forgotten all of it. There’s nothing memorable at all here, nothing you can hook on to.
Actual words aside, though, you see two things coming out of this parade of platitudes.
First, all these words are vaguely reminiscent of Barack Obama’s famous 2004 DNC keynote, and Obama’s 2008 campaign more broadly, except far more pedestrian and devoid of any artistry. That makes sense, because that’s how Buttigieg is casting himself - as a new, transformative figure who can somehow transcend the divisions plaguing America. But it’s as if whomever’s crafting this prose didn’t quite grok what made Obama Obama, thought that his chief claim to power and leadership was being the new hotness, and mistook the superficial rhetoric for the substance.
Second, notice what Buttigieg never mentions in his speeches. It’s the same thing that makes Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stand out as candidates.
Give up? Villains. Enemies. Antagonists.
Warren and Sanders are both keen on naming the enemies in their stories. For Sanders, it’s the billionaires and millionaires; for Warren, it’s corruption and corrupt people. And, Donald Trump aside, it’s what’s perpetually missing from any speech Buttigieg gives.
Pete Buttigieg is probably the purest exemplar of this, but this is a common failing among lots of liberal politicians. It’s so common that a political science professor named David Ricci wrote a whole book about this, titled Politics Without Stories. Here’s the thing - if you don’t name enemies, then how can you tell a large, coherent narrative about what you’re trying to accomplish? Every story needs a protagonist, and it also needs an antagonist.
Buttigieg constantly, consistently avoids naming one. And it’s why, to me, he seems so unmoored, and was easily able to transmogrify from a vaguely leftish candidate early in the primary cycle into a candidate who’s openly and not-so-subtly appealing to Republicans in a bid for votes. Don’t believe me?
Seriously…the deficit? The deficit?! It’s not just the subject, which is fundamentally conservative in nature; it’s how he phrases it, by punching to the left. And how about his comeback to Joe Biden’s last-gasp attack ad on him?
“To which I say, that is very much the point, because Americans in small, rural towns and industrial communities and yes, in our biggest cities, are tired of being reduced to a punchline by Washington politicians, and ready for someone to take the voice to the American capital.”
That’s indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill Republican hack who’s run on “INSERT-STATE-NAME values” for the last 30 or 40 years. Or how about this sneaky, racially coded appeal?
Let me break down how that appeal works, just so we’re clear.
First, it ignores that many “small towns” are actually pretty fucking diverse, and not just living Norman Rockwell set-pieces from the ‘50s. Second, it treats “Washington” as a vaguely menacing, out-of-touch, alien place.
And here’s the really toxic part: Washington is one of the most African-American cities in America; it’s served as one of the cultural lodestars for Black America, in fact. When Buttigieg contrasts “Washington” with “our small towns”, he’s subtly but unmistakably referring to the white, idyllic postcard image of small towns, and saying that only white small-town residents are “real” Americans. Which is why Washington “needs” to look more like small towns.
See how that works?
It’s toxic, it’s racist, it’s absolutely divisive, and it has no place in Democratic politics. But it’s done in such a banal manner that it’s all too easy to miss. Incredibly, that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is this:
Pete Buttigieg’s trite appeals to unity, and his inability or unwillingness to name enemies are precisely how we’ve gotten to this tragic, terrible point in American history. He’s asking us to overlook the serial crimes perpetrated in our name, and asking us to come together with people who have no problem with caging children, breaking up families, looting the public treasury, and shredding the Constitution and rule of law.
I said this a week ago, and I’ll say it again: This isn’t a time for “unity”, a time for “coming together”. People who are asking you to do that are asking you to be okay with what’s going on. They’re asking you to be cool with concentration camps and autocracy and corruption. To be complicit right along with them, because they lack the moral courage and spiritual fortitude to do what's right.
That’s what Pete Buttigieg’s asking you to do. He’s asking you to look the other way, because that’s more comfortable. When he talks about turning the page, this is what he’s turning the page on — holding people accountable for the moral and legal crimes done in our name.
I get it. It’s exhausting to be confronted with this depravity, and even more exhausting to deal with it. But we have to — the only way is through. Anything else puts off the inevitable reckoning we must have.
Okay, I think that’s enough. I love every single one of you. I don’t have much of a family; but what I do have I treasure — and my friends are the family I’ve chosen. I think all of you are awesome, and you’re going to do your wonderful things this week. If you need anything, please — just hit reply! If you think someone will enjoy this, share it with them.