If Mayor Pete Is So Smart, Why Does He Say Such Dumb Things?

(1)  Lame excuse: Mayor Pete must appeal to the left wing to win the nomination. 

While this excuse may be legitimate for people of limited mental resources, a smart guy would find an honorable way to secure the nomination without kowtowing. When a candidate caters to positions that he knows are terrible, he lacks integrity and champions the notion that the nation needs more lies. Assuming Mayor Pete could win the election, now is the time for him to make integrity the foundation for his governing.   

(2)  Mayor Pete speaks of a yearning for reconciliation. 

This naiveté reflects three areas his intelligence has yet to tackle: Social Group Work, Keynesian Economics and American Political Philosophy. In that respect, he is no different than any other Dem or GOP candidate running for any office. 

(3)  People want blood, not reconciliation. 

What Pete must do is say he will work for a centrist consensus even though neither side wants that. This fact represents a great opportunity for Mayor Pete. Here’s how he could start building a centrist Congress to be his partner as President. Right now, he rejects both the extreme left and the extreme right. (This concept is not complicated. If you do not like bigotry, shun bigots.) 

(4)  Why Mayor Pete can reject both ‘White Is Right’ and Identity Politics. 

He is whiter than white so he can talk about the good things that white people have done, like the Declaration of Independence, and show how the Alt-Right stands for the antithesis of individual inalienable rights. As a gay guy, he can reject the divisive Identity Politics of Nancy Pelosi and the left wing. Most gays do want any special label; we want to be treated as individuals based on individual merit without liabilities and without special rights. No individual should face any discrimination or merit special treatment based on ascriptive status. 

One thing that all GOP and Dem members have in common is that they are individuals. It is the political hacks like Pelosi and AOC who want to categorize individuals into arbitrary groups and then claim the individuals in those groups owe their allegiance to the Dems. 

When the nation watches Mayor Pete reject extremist groups on the right and left after the election, the extremes will be without power. (The moderate GOP had no choice but to cozy up to the odious Freedom Caucus, as Pelosi made certain there would be no center.) President Pete will owe the extremes nothing. That means the Dems and GOP in Congress will also owe the extremes nothing.   As a result, sensible Congressional members can return to yesteryear when Congress members with varying philosophies could still cooperate with each other for the good of the nation.  

Now, during the primary season, Mayor Pete must lay the groundwork for his eventual governing. If he cannot do it now, why run? 

(5)  Keynesian Economics. 

Like algebra, Keynesian economics holds true whether one understands it or not. There is one thing that probably unites all billionaires – a hatred of Keynesian economics. Keynesianism does not rely on taxation to take wealth away from the super wealthy. Instead, it makes certain there are no super-duper wealthy. Under anti-Keynesian Obama, 90% of productivity increases went to the top 1%.  

Complaining that the 1% does not pay enough taxes is not only closing the barn door after the horse gets out, but that horse is in another county. The best description for people who claim that the answer is “tax the wealthy” is a “liar, liar pants on fire.” The Keynesian answer is to structure the economy so that all people get a fair return on their efforts in the first place. Let’s remember that the GOP and the Dems jointly presided over the anti-Keynesian demise of the working middle class. 

(6)  American Political Philosophy. 

There is nothing more out of fashion and yet more praised in the abstract than American political philosophy. Here, Mayor Pete is at his worst. The nation was founded as a constitutional Republic which means it abhorred mobocracy. The role of the Electoral College is to make certain that the majority does not run roughshod over the minority so that California, Florida and Illinois would henceforth elect all Presidents and any cultural differences in between would be ignored. 

The fact that Hillary was too self-obsessed to count electoral college votes and called the swing voters “deplorables” is not the fault of the Electoral College. Candidates have known since the Constitution was adopted that the point of the Electoral College was to force candidates to pay attention to smaller groups of people. In practice, it worked as designed. Hillary ignored the plight of the Rust Belt workers as she kept shoving down their throats the BS pablum about how great Obama’s regressive economics had been for them. The opioid crisis began with Obama’s deal with Big Pharma. Since Hillary had been Secretary of State, she used her position as the perfect foil to distance herself from the Obama-Geithner domestic fiascos and promise the white Rust Belt a New Deal – a Democrat idea which she forgot. 

(7)  Mayor Pete should acknowledge the dangers of mobocracy. 

He must realize that in a Republic, there are values more important than winning the most votes. Paying attention to the quality of life of all Americans is of paramount importance. In 2016, the Electoral College reminded us that parading to one’s coronation on the backs of those who are suffering is not a winning formula. 

(8)  Climate Change. 

What laws Congress enacts about climate change will not be decided during the election. The Presidential campaign is a disingenuous time to propose any plan of action since whatever is done will be decided by who is in power. The country can take reasonable steps on climate change after sensible people who understand science and its limitations hold sway in Congress. That means Mayor Pete must arrive in Washington with a centrist Congress who recognizes that President Buttigieg ran a campaign which freed them from the totalitarian control of extremists. Yes, he needs to reject group rights advocates of the Alt-Right which controls the GOP and the new Left which controls the Dems.  

Millions of GOP Americans want freedom from their lunatic fringe, while the Dems have a growing resentment against the socialist anti-Semites who are aping the Alt-Right. If Mayor Pete wants to govern as a centrist President, then he must run a primary campaign that appeals to the moderates of both parties, rejecting the extremes on both sides. If he cannot figure out how to do that, then maybe he ain’t so smart after all. 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photo: JStone/Shutterstock. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.