2020 Democratic presidential primary

If someone said it was true would you believe it?

Which is to say no, I don’t believe the campaign has asked

The NYT reported it

Sorry, didn’t mean to make that a Gotcha, I’m just walking with a phone

feels like it would be in the best interests of both pete and mckinsey if the nda remained in place, and it gives them a vaguely plausible reason to keep avoiding scrutiny of his lucrative stint personally strangling afghan babies

now that i'm back at a computer, here is the context:

As Mr. Buttigieg explains it, that is not a matter of choice. For all of his efforts to run an open, accessible campaign — marked by frequent on-the-record conversations with reporters on his blue-and-yellow barnstorming bus — McKinsey is a famously secretive employer, and Mr. Buttigieg says he signed a nondisclosure agreement that keeps him from going into detail about his work there.

But as he gains ground in polls, his reticence about McKinsey is being tested, including by his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Warren, responding last month to needling by Mr. Buttigieg that she release more than the 11 years of tax returns she already had to account for her private-sector work, retorted, “There are some candidates who want to distract from the fact that they have not released the names of their clients and have not released the names of their bundlers.”

(On Friday night, after this article was published, Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign released more information about his McKinsey years, describing his projects in general terms without naming the clients. His assignments, it said, included work for a nonprofit health insurer in Michigan in 2007, a California environmental nonprofit in 2009 and, the following year, a logistics and shipping provider in Washington.

Speaking in Waterloo, Iowa, that evening, Mr. Buttigieg reiterated his request for McKinsey to release him from the nondisclosure agreement. “It’s not like I was the C.E.O. — I was making a lot of spreadsheets and PowerPoints — but people want to know from somebody who proposes to be the president of the United States, what’s in your past,” he said.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-mckinsey.html

the last two paragraphs of that (everything in parentheses) were modified since i originally read the article. before, i believe it said simply something generic like "pete claims he has asked mckinsey to release him from the NDA."

NDA excuse is bullshit

they're not gonna prosecute him

oh noes, i sure wish i could talk about my time working on very normal, non-evil projects for kittencrushers llc but goshdarn it they just won't let me for some reason

The NDA took my Butti away

NDA excuse is bullshit

they're not gonna prosecute him

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, December 9, 2019 8:59 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yah, this is the flimsiest shit ever. tho the pete stans on internet are taking his refusal to violate the NDA as a sign of his honor. like, breaking the NDA would make him no better than trump or something

i mean, i get all that and pete is not exactly my fave. mckinsey blows, of course, ahd the company itself has gotten involved in terrible things, like, i don't know, putting children in cages. but i don't think there's a bunch of terrible secrets related to his time at mckinsey.

uh okay sounds totally unproblematic

Asked about criticism over Bloomberg News not being able to investigate Democrats, @MikeBloomberg says employees "just have to learn to live with some things."

"They get a paycheck. But with your paycheck comes some restrictions and responsibilities." pic.twitter.com/32q7KPEIV9

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) December 6, 2019

i guess it depends how you define 'terrible secrets': on the one hand, he probably wasn't directly involved in actual murders but given mckinsey's active role in making corporate america even more amoral and depraved, the chances of him not getting his hands dirty in firing people, removing their healthcare, and generally enabling businesses to indulge their sociopathy seems... slim xp

Bloomberg/Buttigieg's approach seems to be "Lenient Liberal Overlord 2020: Making Sure Your Peloton Subscription Remains Active in 2028"

with meagre paychecks come great responsibilities

these are the lessons of uncle mike

Pete B on Maddow saying how he wants to advocate for big bold ideas but doesn’t want to be like others who measure bigness by how many people they alienate.

...

too bad, he'd do p good on that metric

His entire personality seems like a deliberate, relentless project to satisfy the superego, Every utterance so exquisitely calibrated to say the most proper thing possible. Ugh

exquisitely calibrated to say the most proper superficial and meaningless thing possible

ftfy

he wants to advocate for big bold ideas but doesn’t want to be like others who measure bigness by how many people they alienate.

Sounds like a slightly fuzzier regurgitation of Biden's defeatist 'I hope Dems don't really win' talk. Of course with Pete it's probably really just some coded message he's sending to Zuckerberg.

Oh he's actually throwing shade on Warren isn't he. sorry I'm a little slow atm. Ok, always.

Going back to Jacobin et al:

nickn otm. Now is the time to boost your favorite candidate and tear down your opponents. That's democracy. AFTER the primary is when you make nice, if you feel like it.

I think this is the thing, though. I don't really think of "campaigning" as the role of journalists and magazine writers.

“Journalism” is a corrupt ideology

It brings me no joy that my hunch that @petebuttigieg advised Blue Cross Blue Shield in the run-up to layoffs and rate hikes, was revealed to be right. Campaign spin aside, as a former insurance exec I know what that work really entails, and it is devastating. (1/7) https://t.co/kPxx3xBoWi

— Wendell Potter (@wendellpotter) December 11, 2019

Pete going from "supporting" m4a to outright attacking it on Maddow within...what, a year? nine months? is some shit

who among us has not evolved politically over time

Pete is a shithead, but who didn't see this coming? This is what happens when the focus is just on 'moving the overton window' instead of nailing down what the policy actually does. Once the details come out, the overton window moves right back.

glad to see Democratic candidates learning a lesson from Trump, the man who was famously elected president after putting forth a number of very detailed plans and policies.

tbf, if we pass medicare for all, there will eventually be a bunch of layoffs in the health insurance sector. rate hikes, though....

I'm grateful that the current moment has brought this Wendell Potter guy to my attention. It's nice to see someone who completely flipped relatively late in life and seems committed

there will eventually be a bunch of layoffs in the health insurance sector

boo fucking hoo

can we get all the hedge funders to lose their jobs too, so i can afford Brooklyn again?

This is insane. Insane. Does anybody understand that you’ll get eighteen months of “summits” and executive orders followed by Hawley running on the “do-nothing Democrats”? https://t.co/I8CHaaPkSh

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) December 11, 2019

tbf, if we pass medicare for all, there will eventually be a bunch of layoffs in the health insurance sector.

plenty of new jobs in an actually useful sector available when the green new deal passes iirc

yup!

and the administration wing of medicare will need a lot more pencil pushers in the near term

if you're only planning on serving one term, you should just drop out of the fucking race

this like the 12th disqualifying statement/action of his campaign so who'll even notice now

somehow I suspect if Uncle Joe becomes prez he's not going to be carefully combing through his daily briefings or hashing out intel with a team of canny advisors. he's just going to sit back and trust that everyone's gonna think he's doing a great job because he's not staging psychotic rallies throughout the year or shitting out bugfuck tweets.

biden has definitely said he plans to be a one-term president before

tbf, it's not like he has a choice

there's one obvious choice i could think of which would prevent him from being a one-term president

choosing Bloomberg as veep?

sorry bizarro, Biden has been chosen by god to lead us to the compromised land

well, i was thinking 'drop out' but that would work too xp

"the compromised land" is very elegant, applause.

if you're only planning on serving one term, you should just drop out of the fucking race

Bernie has indicated that a one-term presidency isn’t out of the question for him, too.

because they're fucking old men

and old men themselves as well

saw that as soon as I hit "submit"

"the compromised land" is very elegant, applause.

yes

A piece about Buttigieg and how he represents the crumbling of gay radicalism:

Over Thanksgiving weekend, a new Buttigieg TV ad airing in Iowa started making the rounds on Twitter. “I believe we should move to make college affordable for everyone,” Buttigieg says in the ad. “There’s some voices saying, ‘That doesn’t count unless you go even further, unless it’s free even for the kids of millionaires.' But I only want to make promises that we can keep.” (As Politico reporter Alex Thompson pointed out, this indirect dig at Sanders and Warren overlooks the fact that they’ve both suggested programs that would be paid for primarily by taxes on millionaires and billionaires.)

In a Twitter thread responding to Buttigieg’s new policy position, professor and BuzzFeed News contributor Steven Thrasher pointed out how strange it is that 18-year-olds — legal adults who can be “sent off to war to die” — are still legally dependent on their parents for things like health insurance and student aid. “By demanding LGBTQ young adults specifically (& young adults in general) be bound to their parents’ earnings … Mayor Pete is using the family as a locus of social control in the most cynical, conservative way,” he wrote.

Thrasher points out that an unfortunate historical turn in the gay rights movement was the pivot from advocating for universal health care to the less ambitious goal of expanded private health insurance access through same-sex marriage, which has left gaping cracks in the system. Given those gaps, a young person (or anyone) without familial ties, which is very common in the LGBTQ community, might be left without coverage granted by state-sanctified marriage, family, or employment. (Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” program, which is decidedly not Medicare for All, emphasizes “affordability and choice.”)

“Pete is trying to reinforce the existing, conservative social order,” Thrasher finished. “Bernie is offering something akin to queer liberation by way of liberated access to learning & health.”