Announcing “affairs” seems carefully chosen. “Affair” implies an ongoing extramarital relationship. Sampling each of Epstein’s new child sex slaves would be pedophilia and cheating, but not affairs. He wants to imply his only extramarital sex was with consenting adults.
This was posted here 11 days ago: https://slrpnk.net/post/34163757
It’s a combination of two things, neither of which is totally disqualifying.
The first is his previous employment at McKinsey. They’re a consultant firm that frequently gets brought in by companies to basically do bad things like fire a ton of people or manipulate prices. Not kidnapping children, but it’s a weird place to work if you’re driven by higher values.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-buttigiegs-shadowy-consultant-past-at-mckinsey-matters/
The second is in the 2020 primary he started out with progressive messaging and then pivoted to the role of moderate because Bernie and Warren sucked all the air out of that lane. So it just kind of paints the story that he doesn’t really believe in anything. And with the moderate switch he courted a lot of money from big money fundraisers and spent a lot of time talking about what we can’t do.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/us/politics/buttigieg-campaign-moderate.html
I don’t get the impression he’s deeply committed to any ideology. If he saw progressivism as the best way to advance his political career, he’d be progressive, but with the influence of big money and lobbyists, I doubt it’d work out that way. On the optimistic side he’d be an Obama, that talks hope and change and then continually defaults to “practicality” as lobbyists and establishment politicians tell him not to move too fast. On the pessimistic side he’d be a Sinema, who said progressive things in their younger days but then abandoned it all for ruthless centrism.
I don’t think any of the moderates have the ability to put the threat of fascism behind us, but I think Buttigieg could definitely talk his way through the issue and maybe triangulate a position to say just enough without ruffling donors’ feathers. Or maybe he’ll just be a progressive in the next run. I think he’s a chameleon and went moderate simply because the progressive channel was full up.
Though really, I think Harris probably could have done that too. People really wanted to like her and not have to deal with that “genocide” cognitive dissonance. Her and Biden’s failure on that front really was an extraordinary level of political obstinance.
Again: If they could have done that to win the primary, they would have stuck with Harris and done it. Or if they were secret Biden stans the whole time they would have managed Iowa and New Hampshire to not be such a failure for their chosen one. They’re reacting and tweaking, and they have more effective and more efficient options.
This just shows that money can boost a candidate but not make them happen if they don’t have the ability. Biden was the default, the refuge after all their other candidates weren’t demonstrating an ability to go the distance. If money alone was enough, they would have just stayed with Harris.
Newsom doesn’t have the history to be that default option. Why choose him when Buttigieg is out there, no longer just a mayor, or Beshear is telling his red state success story, or Kelly is out there as a purple state astronaut? Plenty of moderates to choose from with better stories and better personalities.
Yeah, they sure seem like they’re just going to keep doing that though. So all of us sober and sane voters who know how critical this election is going to be should just make sure we don’t let Newsom become the candidate, right?
Harris is a great example because she had a lot of institutional support and big money backing in 2020 and flamed out. With alternatives available, he’s toast.
He just can’t compete on emotional appeal with people like AOC or Buttigieg (I don’t trust him, but he can speak well). And some of the other governors could point to political achievements, but his governing highlights have been stopping Democrats from creating law to help people and thinking his own rules didn’t apply to him during the pandemic.
Harris had a lot of the exact same rich people backing her in 2020. Some politicians just don’t have “it” no matter how much money is behind them.
Watching a few of his answers and the smarmy face he maintains throughout them makes me wonder why anyone in the know thinks this guy has a chance in the primary.
Some of this is just double dipping/bumping their earlier report, but I really appreciate that they follow up on the impacts of their reporting and announce corrections in the same place that highlighted the failure. So many other news outlets just do a story and then it’s over. Anything that doesn’t happen in the first 24 hours becomes basically irrelevant and they’re not particularly careful about what they say in those 24 hours.
He’s not actually a prince. He’s the son of the previously non-royal wife of the crown prince from before the marriage.
The people targeted by videos of places in the UK most Americans don’t even know exist aren’t Americans. You’re delusional if you think the same sort of reactionary racist Boomers who eat this shit up in the US don’t exist all across Europe.
DOW reaches new highs, Trump and news organizations talk about how good the economy is. Also the government can no longer be questioned by Congress for some reason.
He’s really just hurting the party every time he gets in front of a microphone. In his metaphor, he’s not being run off his own block, he’s sitting there in quiet defiance while a klansman pisses in his face. He’s framing this as being tough and it’s just embarrassing.
He really highlights that leadership is chosen by donor rapport rather than political talent or broad party appeal.
Didn’t he already do this to distract from another scandal?
Most of the changes aren’t law so they don’t need approval from anyone else to be repealed. Whether or not that means they’ll actually do that is the question, but if they don’t the only villain is the president.
I don’t care at all but it’s been at the top of Google News headlines for weeks. I saw a story today with the headline that the police chief said someone somewhere knows the perpetrator. A completely worthless statement making headline news because the victim is white and related to someone on TV.
We’re literally in the pre-primary process. Critiquing the candidates with supporting information is how it’s actually supposed to work.
And he at minimum thought Epstein was a good person to ask about illicit sex-related problems. So it wasn’t just “Melinda thinks this guy has a bad vibe”, it means he would absolutely have known about the conviction for pedophilia. And he was close enough to Epstein that he felt comfortable revealing a potentially damaging secret and reveal he intended to commit a crime against his wife.