Okay, if @PeteButtigieg is ending his campaign, time to say some things I refrained from saying because, you know, Neutrality and all that.
1) I know both Pete and @Chas10Buttigieg and consider myself lucky to do so. Two wonderful people who make an even more wonderful couple.
1) I know both Pete and @Chas10Buttigieg and consider myself lucky to do so. Two wonderful people who make an even more wonderful couple.
2) While never sure if Pete would make the best nominee for President -- I am not sure of anything -- I had no doubt he would make an excellent President, and someday, he still might.
3) All the people On Here and elsewhere who insulted him, mocked him, for not being Democratic enough, for not being gay enough, for not being progressive enough, for being insincere and manufactured... you were all, every one of you, dead wrong the whole time.
4) If you still hate him, then you'd better loathe me, because I'm not a fraction of the man he is. In fact, watching my friend get flamed every day On Here made me finally see how toxic Twitter, and maybe all discourse, is these days.
5) (To paraphrase an old joke On Here... you know who else mocks, belittles, insults and slanders his political opponents?)
6) Pete is going to do great things, not for himself, but for others. Like me, he was given a lot, and chose -- in a way I never did -- to try to give back. So I have no doubt that he will continue to do so, and I look forward to seeing it unfold.
7) But in the meantime: congrats to my friend for being a pioneer, for making history, being a leader, for inspiring so many, and for never, ever, stooping to the level of his worst critics.
Well, this seems to have blown up. Couple of points: Of course people can criticize him, his manner, his background, his positions. Of course you can argue for other candidates. over him. That's democracy, and that's what he signed up for when he chose to run.
What I was appalled by was how vicious, personal, and simply *false* many of the attacks on him were. Eg: he's a secret Republican. No he's not, he's spent his entire adult life working in and for Democratic politics.
Or more specific lies: eg, that he said he'd appoint justices like Kennedy. Nope: a distortion of a more complicated argument he made about expanding the Supreme Court.
But the larger phenomenon, of people deciding that he must be a traitor/rat/liar simply because he had the temerity to criticize or even just oppose Their Favored Candidate was alarming to me.
The rise of Trump said a lot of about him, and about the Republican party. But it also said a lot about the nature of people most deeply involved in politics, something that is apparently not limited to one party, and something that fills me with apprehension as we move forward.
