Pete Buttigieg, Latest in Long Line of Happy Warriors, Aims for DNC Chair

Feb. 24, 2017

In December, I caught upward with Ed Rendell. Like then many reeling from Donald Trump's upset victory, he seemed in daze. "I go on waiting to wake up," he said. I've known the onetime mayor and governor for over 20 years; we've argued about politics, bonded over sports, and shared laughs over our common honey of pulling pranks on those closest to us. But I hadn't heard this Ed Rendell before; Rendell is substantially an enthusiast, an ebullient people person…but, on this day, the tone of his voice was flatter, more somber.

To brand matters worse, his beloved Eagles football team, after a promising start, had faded late in the season. What was there to look forward to? I asked. There was a long pause. "Allow's encounter what happens when Ben Simmons plays," he replied, referencing the Sixers' injured top draft option. (Who still has not taken the court!)

Yes, Rendell is a partisan Democrat, so part of his sadness was understandable; his side, after all, had lost. But, as we moved from hoops to the land of our disunion, it became clear that he had some real concerns about the tenor of the national chat. We'd only had a very angry ballot; it was as if Trump's darkly pugilistic spirit had spread across the body politic, that we'd just elected a screamer-in-main. Every time you flicked on the Idiot box, if yous didn't hear Trump insulting people, you heard pundits talking over ane some other, or you lot heard Bernie or Hillary shouting.

"Whatever happened to the Happy Warrior?" Rendell asked. He was right; I came of age when there was Hubert Humphrey on the left and Jack Kemp on the right, political centrists who fiercely stuck to their principles…only always with a smiling on their face up. Rendell governed that way, also; he wore his heart on his sleeve, which sometimes caused controversy, just it led voters to reach conclusions near him that every political leader pines for: Here's a guy who cares. Here'southward a guy who is existent.

Humphrey, the U.South. Senator from Minnesota who was the Democratic nominee for president in 1968, is the most renowned Happy Warrior in contempo political history. In the 1960s, he shepherded the landmark Ceremonious Rights Neb through Congress; at 37, in 1948, right hither in Philadelphia, he argued before the Autonomous Convention for a civil rights plank in his political party'southward platform:

There are those who say to yous—nosotros are rushing this consequence of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late. There are those who say—this effect of civil rights is an infringement on states rights. The time has arrived for the Democratic party to go out of the shadow of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

His speech led Southern Democrats to tempest out of the convention and start a rival party. Information technology likewise gave the Democratic party—and embattled President Harry Truman—a cause, and a commitment to a guiding moral principle. Merely Humphrey's greatest legacy may have been his knack for disagreeing without being disagreeable, thereby converting others to his point of view.

"One of the things that excites me nigh the free energy in our party right now is that we're all supporting each other," Buttigieg said. "You saw that in the Women's March. There were people of all ages, and they were resisting what they see as wrong but doing it past supporting one another. That sense of beingness a Happy Warrior is what we need to carry frontwards. It's not about opposition for its own sake, it's most standing for our values."

In one case, he was asked if he was too happy in an unhappy world: "Well, possibly I can brand information technology a footling more happy," he said. "I realize and sense the realities of the world in which we alive. I'm not at all happy about what I see in the nuclear artillery race…and the machinations of the Soviets or the Chinese…the misery that's in our cities. I'm aware of all that. But I practice non believe that people will respond to do better if they are constantly approached by a negative attitude. People have to believe that they tin can practise better. They've got to know that there's somebody that'south with them that wants to help and work with them, and somebody that hasn't tossed in the towel."

Ever since our conversation, I've been thinking nearly Rendell's call for a Happy Warrior, and I've been wondering: Where have you gone, Hubert Humphrey? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Wednesday dark, I turned on CNN and watched a debate among the candidates vying to become the next chair of the Democratic National Commission; delegates volition vote tomorrow. The two frontrunners are D.C. insiders, Congressman Keith Ellison, the outset Muslim to serve in Congress, and former Obama Labor Secretarial assistant Thomas Perez. Ellison is a protege of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Perez comes with the imprimatur of both Obama and Hillary Clinton…in that sense, they're all relitigating the 2022 primary.

But also on the stage was the 35-year-quondam mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who Rendell, bucking the establishment, had endorsed concluding week. I first became enlightened of Pete Buttigieg concluding summer, when New York Times columnist Frank Bruni profiled him, and the bona fides seemed also good to exist true: Harvard. Rhodes Scholar. Lieutenant in the Navy reserve, deployed to Afghanistan in 2014. A leader in urban innovation, using public fine art to reinvigorate downtown and demolishing or repairing 1,000 blighted buildings in 1,000 days. And did I mention that he's gay? The headline of Bruni's slice was "The First Gay President?"

And so in that location he was Wednesday night, looking more than mayoral intern than mayor, and you couldn't help merely suspect he'd been coached past Rendell. Asked virtually the Left's potentially overreaching movement to resist Trump on everything at all costs, Buttigieg sounded a note of reasonable caution. "It tin can't be resistance for its ain sake," he said, in a calm cadence we likewise seldom hear in our politics. "One of the things that excites me well-nigh the energy in our party right now is that we're all supporting each other. You lot saw that in the Women's March—it was actually fun to be a part of that. In that location were people of all ages, and they were resisting what they run into equally wrong but doing information technology by supporting one another. That sense of being a Happy Warrior is what we need to deport forrad. Information technology's not about opposition for its ain sake, it's about standing for our values."

The other candidates seem mired in waging former battles; at a previous forum, one candidate, Emerge Boynton Brown, who is white, even said the political party needed to teach volunteers "how to be sensitive and how to shut their mouths if they are white." Buttigieg, on the other hand, seemed to borrow from the Humphrey model. "Don't go mad," he told his party true-blue. "Get on your school board."

In outcome, Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-border-border, as all-time I could tell) made the case that a much-read New York Times op-ed by Mark Lilla advanced after the election: That Clinton, by "calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, LGBT and women voters at every stop" had encouraged working-class whites to run into themselves equally just another interest grouping, and one that Democrats weren't every bit interested in championing. No wonder, come election day, the scores of working-form white voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan who, having voted for Obama twice, took a flyer on Trump. Democrats, Buttigieg said, tin can't be seen as a party that plays groups of voters off against one another. "Nosotros're all in this together," he said. "That has to be the message."

The other candidates seem mired in waging sometime battles; at a previous forum, ane candidate, Sally Boynton Brown, who is white, even said the party needed to teach volunteers "how to be sensitive and how to shut their mouths if they are white."

Buttigieg, on the other hand, seemed to borrow from the Humphrey model. "Don't get mad," he told his party faithful. "Become on your school lath."

To those on the stage who were, in consequence, proxies for the Sanders and Clinton campaigns? Get over information technology, he seemed to say. "I didn't honey living through the 2022 primary the first fourth dimension," he said. "I don't know why we as a political party would want to live through it a second time. Nosotros have to look forward, not back."

Asked how the party could attract more millennials, he smiled. "One matter you could do to improve appoint millennials is put a 35-yr-old in as chair of the DNC," he said. At one betoken, he mentioned in passing that he'd gone hunting with his fellow's father, earlier catching himself: "How'due south that for a 2022 judgement?"

Even before election day, Ed Rendell sensed that his party needed something new. He fifty-fifty chosen college-ups at the Clinton campaign and urged them to put the candidate in a car and travel the western part of his state with populist Braddock Mayor and former U.South. Senate candidate John Fetterman. Now information technology appears Rendell may have constitute that new affair.

Buttigieg's candidacy is a long shot, though he has the back up of past chairmen like Rendell and Howard Dean. Sure, if you're playing the identity politics game, you could complain that of class the older white guys are rallying to the cause of the young white male person candidate. Simply you lot could just as hands see Buttigieg as someone who has spent six years innovating and getting results in a red state urban center, someone making a difference in real people's lives, someone far from D.C. insularity, someone with a cheery, forrard-looking message. Our politics are broken and both parties seem destined to remain tone deaf. Maybe information technology's fourth dimension for some generational change.

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/pete-buttigieg-dnc-chair-happy-warrior/

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