Pete Plays Identity Politics While Ohio Burns, and Of Course His Supporters Don't Care
A full 10 days after the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Secretary Pete Buttigieg finally addressed it in a Twitter thread which began as follows:
Note his deliberate use of the word “continue,” as if to suggest this had been a top priority of his since the incident occurred. He just somehow failed to utter a word about it before being shamed for his silence online and on Capitol Hill.
In his defense, though, he was busy. At Monday’s National Association of Counties Conference, Pete urgently lamented the lack of diversity in construction crews.
In case anyone out there still doubts Pete’s Presidential aspirations, this ought to put such reservations to bed. As off-putting as it is to see our Transportation Secretary make such hollow appeals to diversity and representation just as a preventable railroad accident seems to have set off a horrific ecological and public health calamity, no one hip to the Democrats’ perennial M.O. should be all that surprised. The weaponization of identity politics to mask their fealty to the donor class is a staple of the Democratic Party playbook, and that’s precisely how Buttigieg is using his stint as Secretary of Transportation.
Many chalk up his awful record to simple incompetence, which is fair enough. After all, his only real qualification for this position seems to have been his willingness to help sabotage the Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign in the 11th hour before Super Tuesday.
On the other hand, Buttigieg is far from stupid. And as is true for many McKinsey alumni before him and since, what you see and what you get are often two very different things.
I therefore posit that Pete’s time as Transportation Secretary is unfolding more or less as planned, and that this is all to lay the groundwork for a White House run in 2028.
First, despite his strategic placement of six supporters of color at his Iowa “victory” speech in 2020 (pictured below), Pete knows that his support among nonwhites is almost nonexistent. This explains why his aforementioned lamentation of mostly white hard-hat workers is one of many attempts to attract minority voters since assuming his position in the Biden cabinet. In 2022, he gave an exclusive interview to BET while promoting Biden’s infrastructure bill, launched a billion-dollar pilot program to “build racial equity in roads,” and pledged to diversify both the airline industry and the recipients of federal infrastructure contracts.
Of course, none of these political maneuvers or policy initiatives are intrinsically bad in their own right. But Pete’s grander scheme can be understood by putting them in context, which in this case means weighing them against his kid-gloves approach to the very private sector power players he’s currently tasked with regulating. From refusing to crack down on the airline industry even as they’ve scammed travelers for tens of billions of dollars worth of unserviceable flight tickets, to his lax approach to supply chain crises, to his failure to reinstate Obama-era regulations that would minimize the scope and severity of accidents like East Palestine’s, Pete has been remarkably friendly to transportation industry giants these past two years.
Come 2028, companies like Norfolk Southern and Southwest Airlines are likely to remember how well Pete looked after them during these trying times. Both firms are generous political donors. In 2022, Norfolk Southern’s “Good Government” PAC donated $725,000 to federal candidates, including $10,000 each to top Democrats Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn, and Hakeem Jeffries. Southwest Airlines, between PACs and individual employee donations, wrote over $600,000 in campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. Clearly, air and rail companies have deep pockets, and they aren’t shy about buying political influence.
And so Pete Buttigieg, in typical Democrat fashion, is simultaneously courting big money donors with corporate-friendly policy, and voters of color with platitudinous gestures.
Unfortunately for Pete, his brand of transparent virtue-signaling plays much better with guilty neurotic white liberals than it does with actual POC, which is why my money is still on Pete’s next Presidential campaign faring roughly the same as his previous one. But, importantly, he won’t do worse than last time despite his embarrassing performance at his current job. Even after his egregious non-response to this most recent disaster, the Democratic base of shallow and self-serving PMC automatons rushed to his defense. None did so more outrageously than Brian Krassenstein, who both defended Pete’s inaction and then gaslighted an angry Ohio resident to further excuse it in the following exchange:
Anyone who’s spent any length of time debating the likes of Krassenstein knows he’s far from alone in his abject partisan hackery. This mindless defense of prominent party officials is the rule, not the exception, amongst rank and file Democrats. And there simply is no evidence to suggest that this dynamic will change anytime before the 2028 primary.
Therefore, while Pete’s cynical triangulation as head of the DOT is likely not enough to propel him to the Democratic nomination, much less the Presidency, it’s also certain not to cost him all that much politically. His ultimate calculation - that he can get away with screwing ordinary people at corporate donors’ behest and stay on the base’s good side with flowery rhetoric and superficial pandering - is, unfortunately, correct.
It’s a tried and true recipe for success within the Democratic Party, and the voters themselves are to blame for it. After all, they’re the ones who’ve failed to hold any of their own accountable for such treachery. From Bill Clinton announcing his Presidential candidacy at the literal birthplace of the KKK, to Barack Obama letting bankers skate after the 2008 financial crisis and instead sicking his DOJ on homeowners, to Hillary’s support for the Iraq War, to Biden’s appalling record on criminal justice, foreign policy, bankruptcy legislation, and much more, Democratic voters have rewarded just about every double-talking weasel they’ve had the chance to since before Pete Buttigieg was born. Given this history, why shouldn’t he think he may be next in line, and why wouldn’t he act accordingly?
So no, this isn’t simply incompetence on Pete’s part. He’s executing his plan with the precision for which his bloodsucking consultant class is known. And while he’s probably not gaining ground, he’s not losing any either.