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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26609 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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It's amazing how effectively Buttigieg has branded himself as a nerd technocrat chungus and gotten so much support from, well, the type of people who want that, given that we've now seen him in a national-level role perfect for wonky technocrats and he was useless at best. Maybe being President is easier than being Secretary of Transportation? (At this point, I think that might not be a sarcastic thing to say)

President has like actual powers and heft. Transportation feels like an area where the swamp is particularly thick and cloying on the basis of the amount of go nowhere infrastructure project blackholes.

TBF, getting anything done as secretary of transportation under the woke, catty and obstructionist Biden admin may be a harder job than being President. Look at Kamala. I don't know her personal opinion on open borders, but it didn't look like she had much power to affect what would happen at the border.
Did the Biden admin get anything done ? Cabinet members were seen blocking policies, doing woke stuff and allocating budgets. Sounds like those were the only things the wider apparatus allowed them to do.

It's not branding. Compared to the other candidates (Kamala, Newsom, AOC), he is the the technocrat chungus. Then there are the 'blue-winners-in-read-states' candidates, none of which have differentiated themselves.

OK, sure, compared to the other candidates he probably knows how to read policy briefs the right way up. And he has glasses and eats weird. Some people are just desperate for a Revenge of the Nerds president, but Pete has done nothing in his entire career to show he's capable of more than dealing with local property developers in South Bend. If there was any substance there, he would have been able to ram through some wins either around the obstructionists in the admin, or just under the table. Even just do something to slow the decline in e.g. air traffic control. Instead the sum total of his accomplishments, in one of the Cabinet jobs that most needs an effective technocrat, was to dispense some NGObuxx and go on a stunningly brave paternity leave. At what point does it become obvious it's all branding?

Kamala thought he was too gay to take a risk on (and my jaw dropped over that, because Pete is the least gay gay they could pick, in fact he's been criticised for being too normie). I have to think this is her explaining away her poor choice of Walz:

Of the eight names on the list for vetting, I might as well say that Pete Buttigieg was my first choice. Harvard grad, multilingual Rhodes Scholar, business consultant, naval intelligence officer, twice-elected Midwestern mayor, cabinet secretary, loving husband and father: he was well qualified in so many respects. I love Pete. I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends. He is a sincere public servant with the rare talent of being able to frame liberal arguments in a way that makes it possible for conservatives to hear them. He knows the importance of taking our case to people who aren’t usually exposed to it and is magnificent at sparring with opponents on Fox News.

He would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man. But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.

I wonder if he has a chance as a VP pick? The problem is, he's a white male and that may not run with the Democratic party who will not pick white guy for President and white guy for VP both. As to how he'd do in the job, well he didn't shine in Transportation (but as people have pointed out, that's a morass) but he would need to be really terrible to be worse than the Coconut Queen. If it's a Newsom/Buttigieg ticket and by some miracle the Dems win 2028 with that, Gavin might be open to letting Pete handle the technocrat stuff (after all, Gav is dyslexic as he reminds us all) while he does the Statesmanlike Man Of History stuff.

Now I kinda want to see that ticket running! 🤣

He'd be an excellent VP. A Newsom-Buttigieg may work. I get the sense that Newsom loves to be a pretty face, while an in-the-weeds VP gets work done. A Reagen-Bush1 / Bush2-Cheney ticket if I've seen one. #ReturnOfTheNeolibs ?

The Dems heavily rely on American Black voters and are equally heavily subservient to their interests. Black people hate gays (per polling data).

This kills Buttigieg. Full stop.

Southern Blacks don't decide elections anymore. NC and GA have lost importance. Dems don't need either state to reach 270. PA, MI and WI are the most important swing states now.

On a longer timeline, the Democrat's dream of a multi-colored coalition is no more. They imagined an impregnable blue wall built off the increasing number of Hispanics, Browns, Blacks & Liberals. That illusion has been fully shattered, as many men of all persuasions have gone full MAGA.

The Democratic National Committee will choose one state each from four regions as well as a possible fifth state:

  • East: Delaware, New Hampshire.
  • Midwest: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan
  • South: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia
  • West: Nevada, New Mexico

If Pete gets through the primary, Blacks are still going to vote Democrat. Losing a small percent of black voters isn't disastrous. For these primaries, early voting states will matter a lot. I'd say Pete has a good shot with 3/4 regions.

Southern Blacks don't decide elections anymore. NC and GA have lost importance. Dems don't need either state to reach 270. PA, MI and WI are the most important swing states now.

It's not just southern blacks; it's blacks in general. While their percent is smaller in northern states, without their solid black support, the Democrats cease to be competitive. Look at Wisconsin, for instance: the 2020 margin for Biden was 0.5% . From wikipedia, the black population of Wisconsin is 6-7%. If they vote 85-95% Dem, and their voting population is roughly their state population, then their presence turns an R+5 victory into a D+0.5 victory. It's the same story in many other Northern states.

I was curious about how crucial the black electorate is democrats in the north. I asked ChatGPT to crunch the numbers on the non-black electorate in 2020, and it calculated that, in regards to the northern states:

Biden still wins the non-Black electorate in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine. He loses the non-Black electorate in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

That's 2020. In 2024, even states like Illinois start to be competitive without the black vote. While I don't think Pete is going to make blacks a republican or neutral constituency, blacks are a necessary part of any Democratic coalition if they hope to win.

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