Understanding Mayor Pete's Appeal

[femmedem]

12. Ah. I can understand why people are upset by that. Here's my take.

Last edited Sun Mar 31, 2019, 06:48 AM - Edit history (1)

I don't think he was disparaging her platform, or her personally. I've only heard him speak positively about Democratic policies. But he thought the messaging was ineffective. Now, I don't know if Clinton personally ever said that America is already great, but it was certainly a Democratic theme in 2016 in response to MAGA. Obama said it during his convention speech, and the Democrats literally sold blue "America is already great" baseball caps for debate parties. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/256571-dems-selling-america-is-already-great-hat and https://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-democratic-convention-2016-live-watch-president-obama-urges-voters-to-1469678869-htmlstory.html

And Buttigieg is mayor of a rust belt town where unemployment was high and things weren't feeling particularly great. People in these towns didn't feel that "America is already great" acknowledged how much they were hurting. For residents of these towns, a nostalgic message like MAGA gave them false hope that they could turn back the clock and have their thriving factory towns again. He's also said that some Trump voters understood that Trump is an awful human being but voted for him anyway because they wanted to try something, anything, different--to "burn the house down." For these voters, too, "America is already great" wasn't an effective message.

So I think this is all Buttigieg was saying, in shorthand. Not "Hillary Clinton ran a crap campaign" or "Clinton didn't stand for anything." It's a very minor criticism, if he meant it the way I think he meant it. And honestly, she had better policies and is so much smarter, more ethical and more experienced than Trump. So what was it about her messaging that prevented her from winning those few critical states? What is so horribly wrong about trying to answer that question?