s a Corporate Tool, Buttigieg Is Now a Hammer to Bash Sanders
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
25 February 20
Soon after his distant third-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, Pete
Buttigieg sent out a mass email saying that "Senator Sanders believes in an
inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to
mention most Americans." The blast depicted "the choice before us" in stark
terms: "We can prioritize either ideological purity or inclusive victory. We
can either call people names online or we can call them into our movement.
We can either tighten a narrow and hardcore base or open the tent to a new,
broad, big-hearted American coalition."
The bizarre accusations of being "narrow" and not "inclusive" were aimed at
a candidate who'd just won a historic victory with one of the broadest
coalitions in recent Democratic Party history.
Buttigieg has gone from pseudo-progressive to anti-progressive in the last
year, and much of his current mission involves denouncing Bernie Sanders
with attack lines that are corporate-media favorites ("ideological purity .
call people names online . a narrow and hardcore base"). Buttigieg's chances
of winning the 2020 presidential nomination are now tiny, but he might have
a bright future as a rising leader of corporate Democrats.
Weirdly, Buttigieg's claim that Sanders has "a narrow and hardcore base"
came from someone who appears to be almost incapable of getting votes from
black people. In Nevada, columnist E.J. Dionne noted, Buttigieg "received
virtually no African American votes." And Buttigieg made his claim in the
midst of a Nevada vote count showing that Sanders received more than three
times as many votes as he did. The Washington Post reported that Sanders
"even narrowly prevailed among those who identified as moderate or
conservative."
As chances that Buttigieg could win the nomination slip away - the latest
polling in South Carolina indicates his vote total there on Saturday is
unlikely to be any higher than it was in Nevada - his mission is being
steadily repurposed. After increasingly aligning himself with the dominant
corporate sectors of the party - vacuuming up millions of dollars in bundled
checks along the way - Buttigieg is hurling an array of bogus accusations at
Sanders.
Four months ago, while Buttigieg's poll numbers were spiking in Iowa and big
donations from wealthy donors poured in, I wrote an article with a headline
dubbing him a "Sharp Corporate Tool." The piece cited an influx of
contributions to Buttigieg from the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and
hospital industries - while he executed a U-turn from proclaiming support
for Medicare for All to touting a deceptive rhetorical concoction called
"Medicare for all who want it." I concluded that Buttigieg is "a glib ally
of corporate America posing as an advocate for working people and their
families."
Since then, continuing his rightward swerve, Buttigieg has become even more
glib, refining his campaign's creation myth and fine-tuning his capacity to
combine corporate policy positions with wispy intimations of technocratic
populism. Buttigieg is highly articulate, very shrewd - and now, in attack
mode, more valuable than ever to corporate patrons who are feverishly trying
to figure out how to prevent Sanders from winning the nomination. During
last week's Nevada debate, Buttigieg warned that Sanders "wants to burn this
party down."
Over the weekend, the Buttigieg campaign sent out email that tried to
obscure its major support from extremely wealthy backers. "At the last
debate," Buttigieg's deputy campaign manager Hari Sevugan wrote indignantly,
"Senator Bernie Sanders condemned us for taking contributions from
billionaires. That's interesting. Because what that tells us is in the eyes
of Bernie Sanders, the donations of 45 folks (that's .0054% of our total
donor base) are more important than the donations of nearly 1,000,000
grassroots supporters."
But Sevugan left out the pivotal roles that very rich contributors have
played in launching and sustaining the Buttigieg campaign, with lobbyists
and corporate executives serving as high-dollar collectors of bundled
donations that add up to untold millions. Buttigieg's corresponding shifts
in policy prescriptions make some sense if we follow the money.
In a detailed article that appeared last week, "Buttigieg Is a Wall Street
Democrat Beholden to Corporate Interests," former Communications Workers of
America chief economist Kenneth Peres summed up: "Buttigieg and his
supporters like to portray him as a 'change agent.' However, he has proven
to be a change agent that will not in any significant way challenge the
current distribution of power, wealth and income in this country. Given his
history, it is no surprise that Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Health
Insurers, Real Estate Developers and Private Equity have decided to invest
millions of dollars into Buttigieg's campaign."
In the aftermath of the Nevada caucuses, Buttigieg is escalating his attacks
on Sanders (who I actively support), in sync with "news" coverage that is
especially virulent from some major corporate outlets. Consider, for
example, the de facto smear article that The New York Times printed on
Sunday. Or the venomous hostility toward Sanders that's routine on
Comcast-owned MSNBC, which has stepped up its routine trashing of Sanders by
journalists and invited guests.
More than ever, corporate Democrats and their media allies are freaking out
about the grassroots momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign. No one has
figured out how to stop him. But Buttigieg is determined to do as much
damage as he can.
