Mayor Pete knows the big money he needs to win is in big tech. I wouldn't call him a "Corporate Democrat" at all though. I think he'll still take money from big money donors because he understands its necessary especially in general until the Democratic party can take enough power in DC to effectively reverse Citizens United. Doesn't mean he's going to sell out the American people to Wells Fargo & Exxon when he becomes president. I obviously prefer a pure candidate who takes only small dollar donations from regular citizens, but I do realize that it's not a winning formula when the GOP is able to get hundreds of millions from PACS fueled by the Koch brothers, and foreign money laundered through organizations like the NRA. If the Dem nominee has to take money from big dollar donors then I would prefer big tech. Big Tech doesn't poison our water, or pollute our environment. Most of the people that work in their workforce are left leaning as well which isn't the case with Oil & Gas. If Mayor Pete can win Iowa & then become the nominee, I'll be proud to throw my support behind him. I think he's incredibly smart, has the pragmatism that a president needs (echos of Obama alot with him), and we know he in his own beliefs is very progressive. He's just running the primary to stake out the Biden voters because he realizes like we all should how weak of a candidate Biden really is. I would much prefer Mayor Pete to Biden in the general.
There is also a lot of money in the young white community in Hollywood and the white male community in Hollywood. Do you realize how you sound? You might as well throw in how the Jews fit into the Hollywood community as well.
I sound accurate. a quick google search will help you find articles in The NY Times and other sources about early financial support from LGBTQ donors being what lifted Mayor Pete when he had almost no support in the polls. you see this as a smear and I don’t know why. Fringe candidates always need a money foundation to help get them into the race and then they hope to catch fire. Williamson was the same she just couldn’t capture real support like Mayor Pete has.
Well, beyond that, should "Mayor Pete" get the nomination (and I wouldn't mind it, long shot that it is), you already have a large portion of the electorate who won't vote for him because he's gay. EDIT: To be fair, they (fundamentalists, Evangelicals) probably wouldn't have voted for him anyway. Hopefully the black community would support him, although I've been to black churches and the preachers excoriate, blast, homosexuality.
well that’s what I said. He got early financial support because he was gay which helped launch his candidacy. Now it’s his biggest roadblock. I’m not attacking the guy, don’t understand the defensiveness. him being gay is a huge issue with black voters no question
In the current electoral college system where the election is decided by a few swing states, having Pete as the candidate for the Dems would be great for Trump. Black voters, religious voters who may be disillusioned with trump and other groups may not show up to vote.
I am not disagreeing with your premise that the early financial support from LGBTQ did not lift him or keep him afloat. My issue is with you claiming it was some group of Hollywood gays that was doing it. I just think he had as has a wider group of supporters than the niche your making it out to be.
The RICH donors in the gay community that backed him included some hollywood folks. They are on record about this. I don't remember the name, but you can find the NY Times article where some movie producer and his husband talk about it. I genuinely didn't mean this as an insult. When candidates without national brand recongitiion need to get money to launch a campaign they go to rich people. Those people can be on wallstreet, hollywood, etc. His happened to be some from Hollywood. He has wider support NOW. He needed money to get the boost to earn his current spot. This is my argument. He had some money from people who backed him because they were impressed by him and he was gay so they boosted him. He has earned his way UP the polls since then and now I think his sexuality puts a ceiling on his support.
Ok we are really not in disagreement about anything, I just think he initially had a lot more going for him than just being gay initially. You seem to agree, no biggie. Yes he does have a ceiling on his support but I think he could win over a lot of voters and he has the ultimate foil in Trump. I think he would make Trump look like a fool on the debate stage he has some good retorts.
I just want to be really clear here. I know you aren't arguing with me, but you are, maybe unintentionally, implying that I said that's all he had going for him and I did NOT mean that. He's clearly extremely talented. I'm ONLY talking about the reality of campaign building. It's brutally tough for people without a national brand to find the money necessary to get put onto the early stage. You have to get someone/or lots of someones to believe in you enough to spend a TON of money. An Indiana mayor as young as he is with ZERO national brand just couldn't have done that if he didn't have the unique quality of being gay that got him an audience with big donors who were also gay. Those folks met with him and were impressed and suddenly it seemed viable to them that a gay man could be president, not in the abstract, but in a real present way. So they put money behind him and helped him run. Then he worked his tail off and impressed a lot of people. If he could get to a general I think he could clown Trump for sure. I think elect-ability is a big issue for him though. I think he'd suffer in black turnout a LOT and I think the hope of capturing a lot of those conservative independents would be at risk.
I think I just misinterpreted what you posted, my bad. I agree he will not get the black turnout in a primary but I think he could tour that around in the general. I would love for him to be the VP so he could be groomed to take the mantle. If I was king maker I would like Mayor Pete to be the candidate, I could settle for a Warren - Pete ticket.
you may be right and I’m sure he has support from some big Hollywood donors. But I remember he got lots of individual contributions right after his town hall at cnn and he was one of the first if not the first to meet the min individual donors threshold requirement for the 1st dnc debate. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/politics/pete-buttigieg-2020-campaign/index.html Beginning with a star turn at a CNN-sponsored town hall at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, earlier this month, praise for Mayor Pete has been bubbling up from every corner of the party. And all of that positive attention seems to be feeding on itself and producing tangible results for his campaign. Buttigieg announced last week that he has already crossed the 65,000-donor threshold that qualifies him for the upcoming Democratic presidential debates. A story about him speaking conversational Norwegian went viral. He'll be on "The View" -- for a second time! -- on Friday. In short: Everything is falling into place for Buttigieg. (One thing that might bring him back down to earth? If Buttigieg has a less-than-impressive first quarter of fundraising -- the deadline to raise cash is March 31.) The reasons for the attention he's drawing and excitement he's creating aren't hard to figure out; He's young, charismatic and personable. He knows how to talk like a regular person -- an underrated trait in a field filled with front-running senators. And he has a remarkable resume: Rhodes scholar, military veteran, gay mayor of his hometown.
x1000 Pete has gone on record being supportive of ending Citizens United, expanding healthcare meaningfully, addressing climate change, ending discriminatory policies against minorities, and investing in marginalized communities. I fail to see any policy he advocates that indicates he is beholden to corporate interests, but those who are skeptical of Pete, please help me see what I'm missing. Questions about the efficacy of his policies are more than fair game (i.e. can government effectively negotiate health care pricing if they are only responsible for providing care to half of Americans, as opposed to all of them? I believe so, but @CometsWin does not), but it's clear that Pete is a sharp guy and knows how to frame his policy in a way that is palatable to Americans across the political spectrum. Most importantly, the Trump campaign has $158 MM in hand. Dems are tying one hand behind their backs by saying the only worthwhile donations are from small-donor Americans.
Go back before the townhall to campaign building. Here's a good article from NYtimes that was about how he build up early staffing: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-gay-donors.html https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/pete-buttigieg-gay-money-democratic-secret-weapon There are more behind the paywall. I'm not sure why anyone should be defensive over this.
Thx for the links. Not defensive. As I said, there is still much inherit bias against gay people and for that I personally prefer someone else to win the nomination. That belief of mine is why I think he is polling lower than what he would if he was not gay. Cause everyone think like me .
So Pete, how do you accept money from millionaires, billionaires, and corporations and then fight their corruption?
Why is this so difficult? Candidates and parties take money all the time from people who they then work against. If Bernie is the candidate, he will get money from millionaires and bankers and hedge funds and big pharma execs and all sorts of other people - because they are Democrats or anti-Trump. You can be sure that plenty of billionaires will support him. Can he not work against them? Republicans who are liberal on social issues or the environment gave money to Trump too. He had no problem ignoring them in his policies. This is completely normal and happens every election.
You can believe that the cheese and the mouse are interchangeable but that's not really the issue. Millionaires, billionaires, and corporations get influence from their much larger donations that you and I could never possibly get. The guy who donates $50 doesn't get a seat at the table with Dick Cheney behind a locked door to craft a national energy policy but BP did. When lobbyists write legislation that is rubber stamped by the recipients of political contributions then we have a serious problem. More specifically, when we talk about something like why Medicare doesn't leverage its user base to get lower prescription drug prices for its members the answer is corruption financed by lobbyists and large dollar political contributions. It's sure not my $50 doing that. It's a problem that Pete would honestly believe (and he probably doesn't which is perhaps an even bigger problem, no collusion) he will take Billy Bob's million dollars to get elected and then not take Billy Bob's call when he wants something. He's either lying to you all or he's lying to himself.
So every millionaire, billionaire and corporations are corrupt? People accept money from them all the time yet fight specific battles. And then you have this. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ber...ives-donations-prior-pledge/story?id=64390750 Bernie Sanders called on his fellow Democratic presidential candidates Wednesday to reject donations from health insurance and pharmaceutical industry executives during what was labeled as a "major address" in Washington, D.C., but an ABC News review of FEC records earlier in the day found that Sanders himself accepted some of the same types of donations earlier in the campaign cycle. And this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/sander...r-pacs-links-to-wall-street-donors-1455300881 It seems this is a convenient talking point when you no longer need them and it's pretty naive to think big donors are not just bundling donations into individual donors.
So you think every millionaire is looking to leverage a candidate for the same issue? Or that these big corporate donors don't have competing interest? You thought process is pretty naive and leaves out a lot of moving parts.