Buttigieg "wine cave" event attendee details the fundraiser in new op-ed

[regnaD kciN]

38. I find there's a real ugly overtone to this "wine cave" mantra...

Like it or not, plenty of candidates hold fundraisers for rich donors. I'd venture that most Democratic candidates this time around have done so. So why is the "wine cave" mantra being used so much? How is it so much worse than, say, a fundraiser held in the banquet room at the Waldorf Astoria or Ritz Carlton, or at a wealthy backer's home (as Oprah Winfrey did for Obama in 2008, or George Clooney did for Clinton in 2016)? I maintain that those who are spreading this mantra are doing so because they're hoping that, for voters, it adds a subtext of "not really American," as wouldn't be the case if such a fundraiser was held, for example, at a high-end microbrewery. "Wine cave" gives a sense of being European, or, worse French...and, as we learned in the days of "freedom fries" and "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," when John Kerry could be slurred for supposedly "looking French," there are few things Americans love to hate more than France. Americans love to consider ourselves as "plain, unvarnished, manly men," while France is seen as a haven of the snobbish, the elitists...and, most importantly, men who us Amurricans like to ridicule as limp-wristed and effeminate. Given such prejudice, might I detect another subtext at work here? Basically, the notion that "where else would you expect Buttigieg and his kind (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to hold their fundraisers?"

It's one thing to call out candidates for being potentially in league with the ultra-rich. But this "wine caves" mantra seems to me to be spreading another, uglier message that's right in line with Trump's America.