HAPPY LABOR DAY 2025!

Happy Labor Day, readers in the United States! This is a holiday that recognizes and honors the American labor movement of the late 19th century and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws, and well-being of the country.

I believe in the power of labor and work. I believe in the dignity of labor and work. I believe in the power of unions to protect workers from abuse by companies and corporations, and I am a proud union member. Now more than ever in this current political climate, I believe all of these things. I believe in the sense of fairness toward which the human spirit strives. Happy Labor Day!

Standing together with co-workers in a union makes a tangible difference you can feel every day. Here are just a few benefits:

• Workers in labor unions make 18% more in wages than our nonunion counterparts.
• We are more likely to have health care benefits. More than nine out of 10 union members have access to employer-provided health insurance, compared to 68% of nonunion workers, according to the Department of Labor.
• We work in safer workplaces. One study found job sites that were unionized have lost-time claims at a 31% lower rate than non-unionized sites.
• We have more job security—even and especially in moments of economic crisis.

Countries where most workers are in a union are among the happiest and healthiest on Earth.

Life is better in a union.

https://aflcio.org/laborday

HAPPY LABOR DAY 2024!

Happy Labor Day, readers in the United States! This is a holiday that recognizes and honors the American labor movement of the late 19th century and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws, and well-being of the country.

I believe in the power of labor and work. I believe in the dignity of labor and work. I believe in the power of unions to protect workers from abuse by companies and corporations, and I am a proud union member. Now more than ever in this current political climate, I believe all of these things. I believe in the sense of fairness toward which the human spirit strives. Happy Labor Day!

Standing together with co-workers in a union makes a tangible difference you can feel every day. Here are just a few benefits:

• Workers in labor unions make 18% more in wages than our nonunion counterparts.
• We are more likely to have health care benefits. More than nine out of 10 union members have access to employer-provided health insurance, compared to 68% of nonunion workers, according to the Department of Labor.
• We work in safer workplaces. One study found job sites that were unionized have lost-time claims at a 31% lower rate than non-unionized sites.
• We have more job security—even and especially in moments of economic crisis.

Countries where most workers are in a union are among the happiest and healthiest on Earth.

Life is better in a union.

https://aflcio.org/laborday

If By "Liberal" You Mean...

Considering the upcoming election, this is worth a repost:

Address of John F. Kennedy upon Accepting the Liberal Party Nomination for President, New York, New York, September 14, 1960:

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal.' But, if by a 'Liberal,' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say that I'm a 'Liberal.' [Applause.]

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, 'Liberal,' to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a 'Liberal,' and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my views - I hope for all time - 2 nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take this opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a super state. I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale Federal bureaucracies in this administration, as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons, that liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility."

For the complete speech, follow this link to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Liberal-Party-Nomination-NYC_19600914.aspx

HAPPY LABOR DAY 2023!

Happy Labor Day, readers in the United States! This is a holiday that recognizes and honors the American labor movement of the late 19th century and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws, and well-being of the country.

I believe in the power of labor and work. I believe in the dignity of labor and work. I believe in the power of unions to protect workers from abuse by companies and corporations. Now more than ever in this current political climate, I believe all of these things. I believe in the sense of fairness toward which the human spirit strives. Happy Labor Day.

Standing together with co-workers in a union makes a tangible difference you can feel every day. Here are just a few benefits:

• Workers in labor unions make 18% more in wages than our nonunion counterparts.
• We are more likely to have health care benefits. More than nine out of 10 union members have access to employer-provided health insurance, compared to 68% of nonunion workers, according to the Department of Labor.
• We work in safer workplaces. One study found job sites that were unionized have lost-time claims at a 31% lower rate than non-unionized sites.
• We have more job security—even and especially in moments of economic crisis.

Countries where most workers are in a union are among the happiest and healthiest on Earth.

Life is better in a union.

https://aflcio.org/laborday

Happy Labor Day 2021

HONOR LABOR.

https://aflcio.org/

Humanism In A Nutshell

https://humanism.org.uk/

The Humane Middle by John Pavlovitz

I’m Not The Radical Left, I’m The Humane Middle

John Pavlovitz

Apparently, I’ve been radicalized and I wasn’t aware.

Certain people call me the “radical Left” all the time.

I never considered myself radical before.
I just thought I was normal, ordinary, usual.
I thought equity was important to everyone.
I imagined America was filled with people who took that Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness stuff seriously—for all people.
I thought the Golden Rule was actually mainstream.

Recently I took an inventory of my positions, screening for the extremism:

I believe in full LGBTQ rights.
I believe we should protect the planet.
I believe everyone deserves healthcare.
I believe all religions are equally valid.
I believe the world is bigger than America.
I believe to be “pro-life,” means to treasure all of it.
I believe women should have autonomy over their own bodies.
I believe whiteness isn’t superior and it is not the baseline of humanity.
I believe we are all one interdependent community.
I believe people and places are made better by diversity.
I believe people shouldn’t be forced to abide by anyone else’s religion.
I believe non-American human beings have as much value as American ones.
I believe generosity is greater than greed, compassion better than contempt, and kindness superior to derision.
I believe there is enough in this world for everyone: enough food, enough money, enough room, enough care—if we unleash our creativity and unclench our fists.

I’m not sure how these ideas became radical, though it seems to have happened in the last few years.
I grew up being taught they were just part of being a decent human being.
I grew up believing that loving my neighbor as myself, meant that I actually worked for their welfare as much as my own.
I was taught that caring for the least in the world, was the measure of my devotion to God.
I thought that inalienable rights of other people were supposed to be a priority as a decent participant in the world.

I don’t think I’m alone.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that most people reside here in this place alongside me: the desire for compassion and diversity and equality and justice; that these things aren’t fringe ideologies or extremist positions—but simply the best way to be human.

I think most people want more humanity, not less.

I think the vast middle is exhausted by the cruelty of these days.

That these aspirations seem radical to some people, is probably an alarm that they’ve moved so far into the extremes of their fortified ideological bunkers and been so poisoned by the propaganda, that normal now seems excessive, that equality now seems oppressive, that goodness feels reckless.

Maybe the problem is, these people are so filled with fear for those who are different, so conditioned to be at war with the world, so indoctrinated into a white nationalistic religion of malice—that they’ve lost sight of what being a human being looks like anymore.

I am pretty sure that I don’t represent the “radical Left,” but the vast, disparate, compassionate, humane Middle; people who are not threatened by someone else’s presence, who do not see another person’s gain as their loss, who don’t worship a Caucasian, American god.

I suppose humanity feels radical to inhumane people.

In that case, I’ll gladly be here in my extremism.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/

If It's A Right You Can Have, It's A Right Everyone Can Have

https://humanism.org.uk/

Happy Labor Day 2020

Honor Labor.

https://aflcio.org/

BIDEN HARRIS 2020

VOTE!

VOTE!

And donate!

https://joebiden.com/

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by John Lewis

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

By John Lewis
Mr. Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death, to be published upon the day of his funeral.

July 30, 2020

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html

VOTE FOR JOE!

http://www.calltoactivism.com/

"Why we need to be more emotional to save the world" by Ari Wallach for BBC

Lovely article by Ari Wallach on BBC Future.

Why we need to be more emotional to save the world
By Ari Wallach*
1st March 2020

If our species wants to enjoy a long-term future, it might need to tap into the very human qualities of emotion.

Think about some of the knottiest problems facing the world today and the suggested solutions to them. Climate change? Answer it with carbon sequestering and transitions to clean energy. Migration? Answer it with streamlined visas and new systems of border control.

Humans tend to seek solutions to problems like these – both macro and micro, simple and complex – through a short-term, external perspective that doesn’t obligate individual participation.

In the West, the dominant approach to tackling the challenges we face has been to amputate emotion from our decision-making whenever possible. We instead opt for cold, technical solutions.

This hyper-rational perspective is at least as old as Aristotle, who described passions as capricious, dangerous roadblocks on the path to becoming fully human. It became integral to the Western ethos during the 18th Century Enlightenment and still persists today.

And there is a utilitarian wisdom to this position. Emotions can be stoked by forces outside of our control. Lynch mobs and market bubbles can occur when our emotions run away with themselves and feelings spread like contagions through crowds. Propagandists can exploit our emotions to stir up loyalty among their supporters and belligerence towards outsiders. In response, rational movements, such as Effective Altruism, hold that the best way to create positive, long-term change is through a dispassionate calculation of the greatest good one can generate through one’s actions.

But trying to suppress our emotional responses to our current circumstances cannot eliminate the role they play entirely. Our feelings are not only an integral part of our moral, social, and personal well-being, but also are vital tools for solving complex challenges we face individually, organisationally, and even as a species. As Emiliana Simon-Thomas of the University of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center says, “[Emotions] provide us with quintessential information about what’s important and what to do next and how to do it and who to do it with.”

Humanity is in a period of great upheaval. For people and organisations attempting to thrive in this tumultuous time, old mindsets and approaches no longer work. To create a better future where everyone can flourish, leaders and organisations need to find ways to engage and encourage emotions more fully.

In recent decades, an array of scientific insights have reshaped the way we view emotions, particularly in the way they affect how we think about the future. We have learned that emotions can be harnessed to guide us toward rational choices and cooperative action. Emotions can be geared toward long-term thinking and behaviour and are essential to the evaluation of simulated possible futures, known as “pragmatic prospection”.

If we are to truly shift course, to make individual commitments that allow us to build better futures, we need to find ways of using emotion to our advantage. For as Anne Frank said, “...feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem." They are and will always be a part of us and we need to learn how to leverage them for the betterment of ourselves and the generations to come.

A good starting point for developing this kind of mindset is to nurture a suite of feelings known as “self-transcendent emotions”. These emotions – which include feelings of empathy, gratitude, and awe – evolved to help manage social relationships with others and orient humans to a world that is bigger than themselves. They can be found in any coalitional behaviour – from hunting a woolly mammoth to building a suspension bridge – which requires people to sacrifice short-sighted, egoistic gains in order to work together toward mutual benefits. They also manifest in intimate, individual actions, such as the advent of grandparenting.

Self-transcendent emotions allow people to manage complex, cooperative situations without needing to overtax their resource-intensive, rational thought processes. They also help delay the need for instant gratification or reward.

For example, empathy – our connection to other people’s thoughts, emotions, and well-being – motivates us to act positively on behalf of others.

Harnessing empathy – specifically transgenerational empathy – can help us make decisions that impact us for the better both today and for generations to come. This might include eating less red meat, which helps both our own cardiovascular health as well as the health of the ecosystem for decades to come. Empathy for future generations provides the positive emotional jolt needed to transcend our short-term impulse to take the easy way out – to take a car versus mass transit and at a more psychological level to have the difficult conversation today rather than let the underlying discontent fester for days or even decades.

But for all its power, empathy is also fragile, often going missing just when we need it most. For instance, people find it difficult to empathise with those who differ from them politically, racially, or ideologically. Similarly, empathy comes more naturally when we have direct access to people’s emotional cues – their faces, voices, and stories. As a result, people tend to empathise preferentially with others who are close to themselves: spatially, socially, and temporally. When this happens, we also dole out kindness in uneven, nepotistic, and potentially short-term ways.

But this limit is not “baked in” to the nature of empathy. Like other emotions, people can regulate empathy, pointing it toward targets with whom they might typically find it difficult to connect.

One way to build empathy is by cultivating a sense of psychological safety, especially through close connection to other people. For instance, reminding people of positive attachment figures, such as supportive family members, renders them more empathic and helpful to others. Likewise, reflecting on positive people in our histories can also help us to extend empathy to those beyond our immediate spheres. If we connect to the sacrifices made by our ancestors that have allowed us to flourish today, we can build upon that gratitude to influence how we might become great future ancestors for generations to come.

We also have reason to believe that emotional primes, like recalling experiences of awe or the perception of something vast, can promote altruistic action. Awe helps reduce the occurrence of “temporal discounting”, the tendency to undervalue a future reward in favour of an immediate, but lesser, return. The popular rise of the environmental movement, for instance, is often linked to the collective awe inspired by astronaut Bill Anders’ iconic “Earthrise” image.

If more policymakers were to seek a sense of awe from images like this or experiencing the raw beauty of nature, might they be more open to taking the drastic steps we need to tackle environmental issues like carbon emissions, pollution and biodiversity loss?

We as individuals too may rethink how we live our lives if we could harness this sense of awe. This has in part already been happening with the backlash against plastic. Natural history programmes like Blue Planet 2 create a sense of wonder at the natural world before cruelly showing us what we are doing to it. They led millions to seek ways of reducing their use of plastic and forced multinational corporations to do likewise.

Even less-desired emotions can be activated if they are useful to a task at hand. For instance, individuals who are about to get in an argument may guide themselves into anger, and individuals who are about to ask for a favour may likewise choose to feel sad. Emerging research suggests that we can also “point” emotions like these – by using visualisations of desired outcomes – toward particular long-term goals, like helping future generations to thrive or in planning for our far futures.

As humans, we often tend to get stuck in short-term thinking and look for external solutions to the challenges we face, but we need not settle for this limitation. There are many ways to cultivate long-term choices and priorities that can be of benefit for us today and to those that will follow.

Rather than ignore or suppress our emotional nature, if we can harness this very human side of us to support a future that we can feel positive about and become the good ancestors, and possibly even the great ancestors, the future needs us to be.

* Ari Wallach is the founder of Longpath, an organisation focused on cultivating future-conscious thinking and action in order to ensure human flourishing on a thriving planet Earth for centuries to come.


Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200228-how-our-emotions-could-help-save-the-world

Pete For Joe For President 2020

I got on the Pete train even before he officially announced his candidacy, so I was very sad to see Pete pull out of the race but I completely understand and agree with why he did it. So I am pleased to share with you that Pete has officially endorsed Joe Biden for the next President.

When we got into this race, our goal was not simply to win the presidency. It was to help unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and usher in the era that must come next.

That is why I’m proud to stand with Joe Biden to help make him our next president of the United States.

And it’s why I’m urging everyone who came to our campaign in order to change our politics and defeat this president to support him too.

If you’re ready to defeat Donald Trump and usher in the era that must come next, please consider making a donation to Joe Biden’s campaign right now.

Our politics today is filled with noise and division, mistaking being loud for being right. And that kind of politics has failed us for too long; it’s just too small to meet this moment.

The only way we’ll beat Donald Trump and deliver a better future is with a politics that gathers people together -- a politics that reflects the decency of the American people.

It’s the kind of politics we tried to model in our campaign. And it’s the brand of politics Vice President Biden has practiced his whole life -- knowing how to build a broad agenda that can truly deliver for the American people, treating people with dignity and offering empathy.

And that’s what it’s going to take to not only win the White House, but also hold the House, win the Senate, and bring along all those down-ballot candidates to ensure we make real progress.

Leaders can bring out what’s worst in us or what’s best. And Joe Biden knows how to bring people in and bring the best of them out.

We see it in the way he carries the concerns of his neighbors in Scranton and Wilmington to Washington. The way he honors the men and women I served with by carrying in his pocket the names of those we’ve lost. The way he takes time out of his day to meet with young people who struggle to speak and families who struggle with loss.

Joe Biden is a good person. And simple as it may seem, it makes a world of difference to have a good person in the Oval Office. Please join me in making a donation today to make sure Joe Biden has the resources to win this nomination and defeat Donald Trump in November.

I’m proud to be voting for him, and I look forward to working as hard as I can to make Joe Biden the next president of the United States.

Thank you,

Pete

https://joebiden.com/

Mayor Pete Flew Sky High by Frank Bruni

I am a little heartsick about Pete dropping out, but this wonderful article by Frank Bruni at the NY Times sums it all up.


Mayor Pete Flew Sky High
The youngest of the Democratic candidates did the grown-up thing, and dropped out.
By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist

To Pete Buttigieg’s many other virtues, add these: He’s not delusional, and he can see beyond himself.

He looked at what happened in South Carolina on Saturday. He looked at what was likely to happen in the many states that will vote on Tuesday. And he recognized that he had no path to the Democratic presidential nomination and that staying in the race would probably help Bernie Sanders, the rival he had branded a dangerous nominee.

So on Sunday he got out. Just like that. No praying for a miracle. No waiting too long. No protracted melodrama or slow-building drum roll of hints. No, the youngest of the Democratic aspirants did the grown-up thing.

I can only imagine how bitter that felt, given how high he had flown. And I can only hope that he and the rest of us never minimize that altitude.

Some other Democrat will carry the party’s hopes in November. Some other Democrat — please, God — will replace Donald Trump in the White House and both dull the memory of him and clean up his mess.

But no other Democrat will be able to claim a more surprising, disarming showing in 2020 than Buttigieg can. After the first two contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire, he had more delegates than anyone. He finished in the top four in all of the first four states to vote.

That was despite the fact that his highest political office was mayor of South Bend, Ind., with only about 100,000 people. That was despite the fact that he’s 38 and would have been the youngest person ever elected to the presidency.

That was despite the fact that he’s married to another man. For many Democrats Buttigieg’s sexual orientation made him a trailblazer and was cause for excitement, but for others it made him a risk and was cause to turn away. The degree of success that he nonetheless enjoyed reflected his ability to rise above stereotypes, to soar above identity politics and to pull voters up with him.

Buttigieg was the first major openly gay presidential candidate, and he challenged and changed Americans’ preconceptions of what such a candidacy would look like, as I wrote in a column just before the Iowa caucuses. One of the wonders of his unprecedented campaign was how little his sexual orientation was talked about as his bid progressed. That spoke to the range of political talents he brought to the contest and the breadth of the issues he engaged. He was a novelty who resisted being just that, a symbol who wouldn’t be content with mere symbolism.

Rush Limbaugh, to whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January, was more deviation than norm when he gawked at the hypothetical scenario of Buttigieg, as the Democratic nominee, “kissing his husband onstage next to Mr. Man Donald Trump.” Mr. Man? In a Buttigieg-Trump face-off, only one face would glow oddly orange, and only one head of hair would appear to be the work of a dozen tipsy sprites.

Of course Buttigieg, ever dexterous, had the perfect retort when asked about Limbaugh’s ugliness during a CNN town hall. “The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values, I mean, sorry, but one thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse,” he said. “They want to debate family values, let’s debate family values. I’m ready.” Was he ever.

While some of his critics on the left conducted an offensive discussion about whether he was gay enough, he performed an important balancing act, integrating his gayness into his candidacy without letting his candidacy be defined by it, seizing teachable moments without ever becoming tendentious or tedious, showing the world that being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or queer is an essential part of who we L.G.B.T.Q. people are but not all of who we are.

On Sunday night in South Bend, where he delivered a poignant valediction to his campaign before hundreds of cheering supporters, he noted that it had “sent a message to every kid out there wondering if whatever marks them out as different means they are somehow destined to be less than.” They could look at him, he added, “and see that someone who once felt that exact same way can become a leading American presidential candidate with his husband at his side.”

He was talking about the experience of being in a minority and being marginalized — about the sorrow and the fear — and one of the great disappointments of his candidacy was his inability to build a bridge between himself and others who have had that experience. He was getting better and better at it, though. He was ever more attentive to that crucial task — in his last debate, for example, and in his speech on Sunday night.

I listened to it and realized that what most impresses me about him isn’t his intellect per se — the fancy degrees he has, all the languages he speaks — or his crazy poise or the manner in which he handled the unconventional aspects of his candidacy.

It’s his thoughtfulness. I first met him in 2016, when I traveled to South Bend and spent half a dozen hours over two days in his company, and I remember being struck above all by how deeply he had examined and how carefully he spoke about issues like freedom, globalization, automation. He was a walking tutorial, and a sweetly earnest one at that. I wondered then if he could upsize that trait for a presidential campaign. Over the past year, I — and the rest of America — got the answer.

Sure, he turned prickly and even somewhat overbearing at times during the most recent debates, taunting Sanders, talking over him and trying to break through beyond Iowa and New Hampshire as the clock ticked down. But still he wrestled eloquently with the meanings of things.

I think that’s why my inbox was so crowded on Sunday night and Monday morning with emails from admirers of Buttigieg’s and by their expressions of regret. One email came from my friend Bob Kerrey, the former governor and senator from Nebraska and a onetime Democratic presidential candidate himself. He shared with me the daily reflection on events in the news that he writes to his teenage son. Monday’s was about Buttigieg.

“This morning I regret not throwing my support to Pete instead of Joe,” Kerrey wrote, referring to Joe Biden. “We need a generational change and with him out of the race, that is not going to happen. We need an outsider who knows that Washington must change, but now that is also not going to happen. We need a president who can speak the language of other nations, but now that is not going to happen.”

“I do not think my support of Pete would have enabled him to win,” he added. But, he wrote, “It would have made me feel a little better about his loss this morning. Americans have missed an opportunity to turn the page to a much different future. We should feel remorse at losing that future.”

On Sunday night Buttigieg said: “Politics at its worst is ugly. But at its best, politics can lift us up. It is not just policymaking. It is moral. It is soul craft.” At his best, Buttigieg demonstrated that.

He has an opportunity over the coming months to demonstrate it further. “I will do everything in my power,” he said, “to make sure we have a new Democratic president come January.”

Mayor Pete, I’m holding you to that. We all are. Because your power is remarkable.


Yes, I agree...his power is remarkable. And when I got on the Pete train, I vowed that I would ride it as far as we could make it go. But if it could not reach the White House, I always said that Pete is young, and he has a whole political career ahead of him. Governor, Senator, Congressman, and yes, another run at the White House! Potential and possibilities, that is all he has ahead of him.

I thank you too, Pete...now run for something else, because you will make a difference, even more than you already have!

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/opinion/Pete-Buttigieg-speech.html

Pete For President 2020

Pete for President 2020!

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Pete Is Electable! Pete For President 2020

Vox published this wonderful survey of Pete's qualities and came up with a great conclusion: Pete is electable and is possibly poised to be the best candidate. I particularly want to point out the information in the section titled "Advisers are more important than experience." Just look at who is on board helping him, and then imagine what kind of an incredible, capable, dynamic cabinet he would put together!

Pete Buttigieg is more electable than Bernie Sanders — and more progressive than you think
The fourth in a Vox series making the best case for each of the top Democratic contenders.

By Dylan Matthews@dylanmattdylan@vox.com Feb 4, 2020, 9:34pm EST

The case for Pete Buttigieg is simple: The Democratic Party wins when it nominates young, charismatic leaders who are able to convince people outside the party’s base that Democratic values are their own.

It is a model that drove Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and John F. Kennedy to the presidency. And it could be the model that puts Pete Buttigieg there.

As the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he’s not the most experienced candidate running. And while he would probably be the most left-wing nominee since at least Walter Mondale, he is hardly the leftmost candidate in this primary, and he’s worked hard to differentiate himself from the maximalist platforms of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

But Democratic primary voters are weighing competing priorities. They want a nominee who is progressive but still electable. They want a leader who is smart and even-tempered but who ideally isn’t of an age and health status that puts their ability to run a presidential campaign and serve a full term in doubt. They want a president who can represent underrepresented groups while speaking to Obama-Trump voters who feel threatened by that kind of social progressivism.

There is a strong case that Buttigieg is the candidate who best fulfills those competing demands. He would be able to pair a form of liberalism that’s more ambitious than Obama’s with a sophistication about political institutions and structures that Obama sometimes lacked.

The combination could prove incredibly powerful, and redefine the party for a generation. The results out of Iowa suggest that Democratic voters are beginning to see it too.

Pete Buttigieg is a liberal who makes people think he’s a moderate
Amid the “Mayo Pete” and “Pete is CIA” jeers of his left-wing critics, it can be easy to forget what Buttigieg’s actual policy agenda is. That agenda would easily be the most progressive by any candidate for the general election in decades. Here is a brief rundown of economic and social policies he’s endorsed and promoted:

*A $15-an-hour minimum wage
*Quadrupling the earned income tax credit for single adults
*“Affordable, universal full-day child care and pre-K for all children from infancy to age 5”
*A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants
*A Medicare buy-in open to all meant to “create a natural glide-path to Medicare for All”
*A cap on all student loan payments as a share of income, forgiven in full after 20 years

But that’s not all. Buttigieg has devoted attention to big structural problems that afflict our democracy, and has proposed solutions that are genuinely radical.

*DC/Puerto Rico statehood, banning gerrymandering, ending the Electoral College, and ending the filibuster
*Expanding and reforming the Supreme Court to curb partisan rulings
*Sectoral union bargaining where agreements apply to whole industries, not just individual companies
*A carbon tax rebated to taxpayers in cash, plus a quadrupling of research and development funding for clean energy

Taken as a whole, his agenda isn’t as ambitious as that of Sanders or Warren. But make no mistake: This is a bold wish list, full of items that either the Obama administration struggled to pass even with 59 senators (like immigration reform and a price on carbon emissions) or that would’ve been too radical for Obama to begin with (like a $15 minimum wage, universal child care, a Medicare buy-in not limited to the elderly, and sectoral bargaining — the last of which has barely received any coverage, but which would at a stroke vastly increase the power of the American labor movement).

The fact that his agenda isn’t as progressive as those on the left flank of the party is a plus for Buttigieg, not a minus. Sanders and Warren have performed a valuable service by making the objectively quite ambitious agenda of Buttigieg appear, by comparison, incredibly mild, a centrist approach to expanding the safety net.

A perception of relative moderation will most likely help, not hurt, the eventual nominee. The most rigorous studies on this question from political scientists tend to find that moderate nominees have a distinct advantage over ones perceived as more extreme, largely because they don’t activate their opponent’s base the same way a more extreme nominee would.

Put another way: Sanders would terrify and turn out Trump’s base, whereas Buttigieg likely would not.

We can get more specific here, too. Buttigieg’s most prominent point of differentiation from his leftier rivals is on Medicare-for-all, which he shares as an ultimate goal but rejects as a step too far in limiting choice for the time being. Instead, Buttigieg is pushing “Medicare for all who want it,” which is exactly what the name implies: a buy-in option for Medicare that he sees as setting us on the path to Medicare-for-all.

Buttigieg’s position may inflame die-hard left partisans, but it might be a better general election play. The best evidence we have from the 2018 midterms, as compiled by Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz, suggests that supporting Medicare-for-all cost Democrats about 4.6 percentage points in swing districts; the average Democratic margin was higher in districts where the Democratic candidate didn’t back Medicare-for-all, despite those districts being more Republican-leaning overall than districts where pro-Medicare-for-all candidates ran.

More to the point, although Democrats control the House, there is not a House majority for Medicare-for-all at the moment, and there certainly isn’t a Senate majority or even a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus that supports it. If the next Democratic president proposes a full Medicare-for-all bill to a Senate where the pivotal members are moderates and avowed Medicare-for-all opponents Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV), the idea will be dead on arrival. After negotiations, Warren and Sanders will inevitably arrive at a compromise that will likely involve some kind of buy-in proposal.

So the question is: Is it worth paying a potentially significant electoral price for backing Medicare-for-all considering the very low likelihood that any Democratic president could enact it anyway? If the answer is no, then the case for Buttigieg looks strong.

Buttigieg has a far more realistic view of today’s politics than Joe Biden
Much of the above can count as a case for Joe Biden, who, like, Buttigieg has positioned himself as a moderate alternative to Sanders and Warren. As my colleague Ezra Klein has noted, despite being labeled moderates, “if Biden or Buttigieg actually win the nomination, they will be running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in history.”

But it would be a mistake to throw Biden and Buttigieg into the same bucket. Whereas Biden remains wedded to romantic notions of returning to a pre-polarization Washington where Republicans and Democrats hobnob and work frequently across party lines, Buttigieg has a clear-eyed view of the institutional barriers to progressive policy and how to remove them.

Biden has repeatedly told supporters that he expects the Republican Party to come to their senses upon his election. “With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany,” he told fundraiser attendees in November, “Mark my words. Mark my words.” While his comments about working with segregationist senators like James Eastland in the 1970s drew ire for the racial implications of those collaborations, at their heart was this conviction on Biden’s part that he could work with anyone, that the raw power of his commitment to collaboration could overcome the deep forces polarizing American politics.

It’s just one piece of evidence among many that Biden is out of step with where the party is.

And it’s not just Biden. Even Bernie Sanders has brushed off the idea of abolishing the filibuster in favor of a bizarre gambit to exploit the budget reconciliation rules to pass Medicare-for-all. At best, this would only enable one piece of controversial legislation to pass, leaving the rest of the policy agenda abandoned; at worst, it will appall old-school Senate Democrats even more than filibuster abolition.

Buttigieg, by contrast, has a much stronger connection to the more brass-knuckled realities of 2020s politics.

Instead of relying of Republican goodwill, he has concrete plans to amplify Democrats’ relative power: by repealing the filibuster to enable the passage of popular social programs that Republicans will then be reluctant to repeal; using a slim Democratic majority in Congress to add DC and (if they so desire) Puerto Rico as states; reducing the Republican geographic edge in the Senate for years to come; and passing sectoral bargaining to build up labor unions as a countervailing power to American business.

He also sparked the first serious conversation of the campaign about revamping the Supreme Court to prevent partisan rulings striking down progressive legislation. He has floated the idea of expanding the Court to 15 justices, five from each party and another five selected by the partisan justices, in hopes of breaking the narrow conservative majority that threatens everything from Medicare-for-all to universal free college.

In an era crying out for structural political reform, Buttigieg’s approach on this front is vital. He understands that Democrats need to fight with all the tools at their disposal to get even a modest legislative package accomplished. And he’s laid out plans to use those tools.

What’s remarkable is that he’s been able to take that approach without coming across as shrill or unduly combative. He presents as a moderate, as a “hope and change” candidate like Obama who is able to use rhetoric and charisma to overcome the resistance of skeptical moderates and center-right voters.

The model of a charismatic rhetorician packaging progressive ideas in a moderate message is one that has worked incredibly well for Democrats historically. Like Obama, Buttigieg would make history: He would be the first gay president, Chasten Buttigieg would be the first first husband, and the two of them would become America’s first couple barely six years after they were legally allowed to marry in their home state.

And Buttigieg is unique in pairing the Clinton/Obama approach of hopeful promises of a changed politics with a more hardheaded approach to institutions and the rules of the game than Clinton or Obama ever had.

Advisers are more important than experience
The most serious case against Buttigieg is that he lacks the necessary experience to hold the office of president. His sole tenure in government has been as mayor of a tiny city — smaller than Waterbury, Connecticut, or Peoria, Illinois.

But it is not obvious why Buttigieg should be considered less experienced at being an executive than many of his major rivals. It has been three decades since Bernie Sanders served as a mayor, and in that case as mayor of a smaller city than South Bend. The same goes for Elizabeth Warren. They might know how “Washington” works, but that’s hardly the same as knowing how to run the executive branch.

The candidates’ résumés, with the notable exception of Joe Biden’s, tell us little about their ability to manage complex bureaucracies. But Buttigieg has performed well at other tests of executive judgment and temperament. As the saying goes, “personnel is policy,” and Buttigieg has assembled some of the most impressive personnel of any candidate.

Danny Yagan, the Berkeley economist and one of Buttigieg’s top economic advisors, is widely considered one of the world’s top young public finance economists, and has already reshaped how the profession thinks about taxing wealth.

Austan Goolsbee, formerly the Obama administration’s top economist, is advising Buttigieg as well, despite having served with Joe Biden. And he’s not alone: Various foreign policy luminaries, including Clinton’s national security adviser Tony Lake, Iran expert Vali Nasr, and top Obama adviser Philip Gordon, have endorsed Buttigieg. What Buttigieg lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in the accumulated expertise of his supporters.

What’s more, one of the best tests of presidential capability is how well candidates manage their own campaigns. Presidential campaigns are vast, sprawling operations with hundreds of employees, dueling advisers, tough strategic decisions, and huge demands on their leader’s time and resources. The experience of running is of course different from the experience of being president, but it’s a test of executive mettle nonetheless.

The fact that Buttigieg has run his campaign exceptionally well, lapping candidates who on paper should have far outpaced him, like Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Govs. Steve Bullock (D-MT) and Jay Inslee (D-WA), says only good things about his managerial acumen. There was no reason to think the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, could wind up as one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination, and Buttigieg deserves substantial credit for the operational decisions that helped bring him to that point.

There are arguments for Buttigieg that I frankly won’t echo here because they don’t hold water. Winning the incredibly Democratic-leaning city of South Bend doesn’t say anything about his ability to win Indiana, much less the rest of the Rust Belt. He is not a “Washington outsider” in any meaningful sense: Indeed, his deep ties within pan-geographic elite networks have produced his impressive corps of advisers.

But while it’s easy to knock down bad arguments for Buttigieg, it’s harder to rebut the real arguments for his nomination: that a liberal perceived as a moderate, with a hardheaded view of American institutions but a hopeful, charismatic approach to campaigning, is exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now.


Link to the original article on Vox.com:
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/4/21121636/pete-buttigieg-beat-trump-win-2020-election-primaries

Pete For President 2020

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