Buttigieg Says Trump Can Only Be Beaten With Ideas--Not Investigations.

[elleng]

'“People who voted for this president already know he’s not a great guy.”

In a wide-ranging conversation in front of a sold-out San Francisco audience Thursday night, presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said President Donald Trump can only be beaten by fresh ideas and policies—not by investigations.

“No investigation is going to turn up some piece of evidence that’s going to suddenly show us that the president’s not a great guy,” Buttigieg said. “A lot of people who voted for this president already know he’s not a great guy…If we’re not paying attention to that, I think we run the risk of making the same mistake over again.”

His comments come as congressional Democrats are demanding that Trump’s Justice Department release the full report on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and are also pursuing numerous other inquiring into the president’s conduct. “Of course we’ve got to confront this president,” Buttigieg said. “When he lies, we’ve got to correct it. When he does something wrong, we’ve got to confront it. But that’s not a message. A message is something that makes sense no matter who you’re running against.” . .

His platform combines traditional progressive policy ideas (a “Medicare-style public option that everyone can buy into,” getting dark money out of politics) with more ambitious and controversial goals (potentially balancing the Supreme Court ideologically by expanding it to 15 justices, abolishing the Electoral College). And as the leader of a Rust Belt city in a red state (albeit in the Democratic stronghold of South Bend), he is acutely aware of his opportunity to appeal to working-class voters who feel left behind and expressed this frustration at the ballot box in 2016. He said a mistake made in 2016 was the whiplash that occurred when Democrats, faced with the possibility of a Trump presidency, quickly shifted their focus from their candidate to Trump.

“The more we can convey what we care about in terms of how it’s going to cash out in everyday life, how your life is going to be different, the better off we’ll be,” he said. He noted that a lot of big-ticket issues that many Democrats see as progressive—sensible immigration reform, for example—are actually viewed as practical by voters. “A lot of these so-called left positions are actually centrist by the standards of the American people, just not by members of the American Congress,” he said with a laugh.

These sentiments elicited loud applause from the packed, 300-seat room, but it was his pivots to the personal that perhaps got the most positive reaction. Buttigieg, who’s now 37, didn’t come out to his family until 2015. “You could either be out or you could be in office in Indiana, you could not be both,” he said. “You could either be serving [in the military] or you could be out, but you could not be both. I lived with that.” . .

The mayor from South Bend knows he has an uphill battle ahead of him, but if he continues to draw crowds like he did Thursday, he may have reason to be optimistic. And he knows it, too. Asked how Democrats can steer clear of the infighting that arguably helped Trump win in 2016, Buttigieg said with a grin, “What you want to do is nominate a really forward-thinking, inclusive, new-generation, young…” He trailed off, and the crowd went wild.'

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-mueller-elizabeth-warren/?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I'm more and more impressed with this guy.

[USALiberal]

2. I think investigations can look like we are not focused on solutions. Nt

[elleng]

3. Right.

Seems that Pete is a thoroughly SOLUTIONS guy.

[mobeau69]

5. Pete cares.

He wants to make a difference.

[crazytown]

15. What he said is we can't rely on investigations

to bring Trump down, even if those results are bad for him. Pete did not say anything about instigating or winding back investigations. No Democrat has or would.

[Devil Child]

6. It is hard to hear but Buttigieg is correct

Unfortunately, investigations are not the easy cure for the trump cancer. There is no way trump can win in 2020 if Democrats are united and deliver clear ideas to voters on how their lives will improve under a Democratic president. Buttigieg is very effective in communicating such ideas. I'm becoming quite a Buttigieg fan and will send some donations his way.

Thanks for the article and update elleng!

[elleng]

7. Thanks, Devil Child.

'There is no way trump can win in 2020 if Democrats are united and deliver clear ideas to voters on how their lives will improve under a Democratic president.'

[dalton99a]

9. +1. Silence is acquiescence.

[rogue emissary]

10. It's not about Donny being a "great guy".

It's about prosecuting crimes against our country.

Great idea Buttigieg. Let's see how far he goes with "too awful to investigate" position.

[elleng]

11. Who said "too awful to investigate?"

ANYONE?

[rogue emissary]

13. Again we are not investigating Donny on if he's a great guy.

Which is what the below quote says

No investigation is going to turn up some piece of evidence that’s going to suddenly show us that the president’s not a great guy,” Buttigieg said. “A lot of people who voted for this president already know he’s not a great guy…If we’re not paying attention to that, I think we run the risk of making the same mistake over again

.”

So stopping the investigation because we all know Trump is a crook is tantamount to saying "too awful to investigate."

[elleng]

17. I do not think anyone has suggested 'stopping the investigation.'

[rogue emissary]

18. Thread title should be changed.

Because that's the impression I got from the quote in original post.

[elleng]

21. 'Thread title' comes from Mother Jones article title.

“People who voted for this president already know he’s not a great guy.”

' “A lot of people who voted for this president already know he’s not a great guy…If we’re not paying attention to that, I think we run the risk of making the same mistake over again.”'

[bigtree]

14. there's a point there, but this is mostly an opportunistic slap at Dem committees investigating

...doing the hard work of the nation in holding this administration accountable.

Easy enough to say for this fellow drifting around the country without a job.

How about he keeps the investigations out of his mouth if all he's going to do is spread cynicism about them.

And this is a crap take. We need Trump to go into the election off-balance and beleaguered by his scandal. Buttigieg is too enamored of his own patter to appreciate that the rest of us are working to soften up Trump for the takedown, and he won't have a chance against a reinvigorated, rehabilitated cheetolini.

[Drunken Irishman]

16. Nope. Sorry. I like Pete but this is completely wrong.

Pete is falling for the same traps that hurt Democrats in 2016 - focusing on ideas and substance will defeat Trump, not going after his shady background and questioning his character.

It doesn't work that way. Hillary was at her most effective when she was hitting back at Trump on his past exploits. She largely went away from that in the debates and I think it had a pretty negative impact on her. The problem with Trump is that he's going to suck up all the oxygen in the room with his rapid fire claims that, factually, are completely incorrect. If your response is to fight back on the issues, well guess what will get reported? Yeah - not your claims ... but the blistering attacks.

THAT doesn't mean you can't have a substantive debate ... it just means you've got to attack him all fronts.

But focusing just on the issues won't sell. Sorry.

[crazytown]

19. And if you spend your time refuting his claims,

he is setting the agenda, and by the time you’re cutting through, exposing his last lie, he has moved on to the next one.

[Drunken Irishman]

20. Fight fire with fire...just go full-throttle after him.

[crazytown]

23. Going After him is the problem.

Cutting him off BEFORE he get’s there is more like it, but much more difficult.

[Drunken Irishman]

24. Going after him by attacking...get him tongue-tied.

There was one moment that stood out in the debate that proved to be Hillary's strongest moment and it was when she called Trump Putin's Puppet and his only response was, "you're the puppet..." had she continued that kind of assault on him, he would have had way more of those moments and looked positively stupid. But she'd ease back in, start discussing policy, he'd throw out an attack line and she'd ignore it or only passively dismiss it but it became apparent, over time, those lines were increasingly effective. You can't treat Trump with passive dismissal. You've got to be on the offense and go hard at him because, believe it or not, shocker, I know, he's at his worst when put on the defensive.

But if you're just going to talk policy with him, he'll come back and throw out some insane talking point that is proven untrue but lands because it's now something EVERYONE talks about. Then what you just said is completely lost on everyone as the focus is now this line from Trump.

[matt819]

22. Yeah, well. . .

Obama insisted that it was time to look forward, not back - on the Iraq war actions/possible war crimes, etc. So no investigations.

We need investigations. It's the only way to stop this kind of irrational, eratic, and vile behavior. Or, if it doesn't prevent anything in the future, at least it holds people responsible in a meaningful way - jail time - for their actions.

Or follow the South African approach to Truth and Reconciliation in the 1990s, which required an admission of your involvement in illegal, immoral, and vile actions, policies, etc.