With billionaire Michael Bloomberg eclipsing him in national polling and Iowa less than a week away, Pete Buttigieg’s presidential dreams have reached their do-or-die moment. In his last-ditch attempt to appeal to the early states he needs to continue his candidacy, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor has continually reemphasized that, unlike the rest of the 2020 front-runners, he’s not a product of Washington.
In the face of unprecedented challenges, we need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington politics we’ve come to know and expect.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) January 29, 2020
In a manner unsurprising for our deeply dumb times, the outrage came for Mayor Pete for this milquetoast tweet, one almost surely written by some sleep-deprived campaign staffer.
A sampling:
Two things:
1. “Heartland” translates to white. Pete knows this.
2. Using this term implies other parts of the country DON’T have heart, which is just mean. https://t.co/BgF94H1nto— Sam Sanders (@samsanders) January 30, 2020
It is a dog whistle. And maybe Mayor Pete isn’t aware of that. There is nothing more virtuous about a vision honed in the Heartland. Again—he should sit with his staffers of color and have them explain this to him. (And yes, I’m tired of politicians pandering.) https://t.co/7GhGhlNzi6
— Soledad O’Brien (@soledadobrien) January 30, 2020
I was not shaped by the American Heartland. I was born and raised in California, a state of nearly 40 million people. Thus, I am not a real American. I am a Replicant, a son of Pakistani immigrants. I drink elitist coffee because it is not from a coffee shop in the Rust Belt.
— Wajahat “Shaped by the American Coastland” Ali (@WajahatAli) January 30, 2020
For those not jumping to join this (and every other) Stalinist purge of those with impure thoughts, the word “heartland,” in common parlance, has always included the cities in America’s interior — Chicago, Nashville, Des Moines, Kansas City, etc. Buttigieg is obviously including his hometown of South Bend, which is actually a pretty diverse place. It’s a city of more than 100,000 people, only about 60% of whom are white. It’s not exactly Hickory.
Buttigieg is clearly referring to the “heartland” as anywhere in the nation removed from the Acela corridor; and in this case, since he is pandering to Iowans, he surely means places where people drink Old Style. I don’t know who got the idea that the word “heartland” is synonymous with “rural,” but he or she is probably not from the heartland.
This isn’t complicated. Buttigieg, the former mayor of the 306th largest city in the country, needs to frame his relative lack of experience as an asset. That means sizing up the front-runners’ combined 57 years in the Senate, 16 years in the House of Representatives, and eight years in the White House as evidence that they’re out of touch with the rest of the country.
You know who else thought this was important? Our first black president, you woke imbeciles.
I regret to inform you that the white woke scolds must retroactively cancel Obama for saying this in 2012:
“When we have foreign visitors, they’re only visiting the coasts. They go to NYC, to DC, to LA. But you know the heartland is what it’s all about.” https://t.co/jDGhm2qtqT
— Christopher J. Hale (@chrisjollyhale) January 30, 2020
