Many Democrats feel that the 7%-8% Pete Buttigieg gets in national polling is an
embarrassment for the party-- as if Democrats haven’t learned the lesson from the 2016 election: the danger of
electing an unqualified, untested man president. And yet there are scores of dedicated liberals raising tens of millions of dollars for a man who has never had to win more than
11,000 votes for anything (see Buttigieg's election results from his 2011 and 2015 mayoral elections).
But if you weren’t already skeptical of Buttigieg's candidacy, this great investigative piece
by The Root should change change your mind fairly quickly. The article very convincingly outlines
why Buttigieg is scoring a big fat ZERO among black voters. While there is
simply too much to summarize in Michael Harriot's excellent piece-- I'll give it a try.
There’s the three high-ranking black city
officials who were gone three months after Buttigieg first took office,
including the demotion of the police chief for recording racist cops being racist. Those racist cops? Three were promoted; the fourth
moved away. Buttigieg claimed he fired the chief because he was the
target of a federal investigation-- except that was a lie.
Ultimately, half of the city’s black police officers made discrimination complaints during Buttigieg’s tenure as mayor, and not a single one got justice. Ultimately, this led to an exodus of black police officers. “When
Buttigieg became mayor in 2012, the South Bend Police Department was 11 percent black (29 of
244 officers),” writes Harriot. “There were 28 black officers in
2013; 26 in 2014, and by the time Buttigieg announced his run for
president, the South Bend police force was six percent black, with 15
black officers.” South Bend is 26% black.
It should be no surprise to anyone why Buttigieg is not registering with black voters-- and likely never will. Let's move on.
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