Pete Buttigieg Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

What Is to Be Done?

Three scholars of democracy respond to the protests

June 4, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

I believe this extraordinary nationwide mobilization is the best answer possible to the Democrats who engineered the destruction of the Sanders primary campaign -- I mean Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, James Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, and the innumerable reporters and media “experts” who from the beginning insisted ...

North America

If Sanders Wants to Lead the Democratic Party…

Then he should do more to build bridges and stop attacking “The Democratic Establishment”

March 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

At the same time, Bernie Sanders clearly has assumed front-runner status. It is no surprise that this has his supporters jubilant, and has his opponents concerned and even frightened. There surely are some Democratic donors and operatives who absolutely hate the thought of a Sanders nomination -- whether for ideological or tactical reasons -- ...

If Sanders Wants to Lead the Democratic Party…

From the Editors

The 2,000-Year-Old Men

February 26, 2020 • by Claire Potter

We have had this guilty thought long before Mayor Pete articulated it for us in his unique tone, one in which he manages to convey optimism, despair and his own brand of aggression simultaneously. Lately, as Sanders’s actual policies seem to be impressing more and more voters, and an extraordinary ...

North America

Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

Slandering the party’s leading candidate is bad

February 24, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This does not obviate the real limits of the Sanders campaign and the challenges it must address moving forward, if Sanders is to successfully claim the nomination much less the presidency. On Saturday night Jacobin, the organ of Sanders’s hard-core ideological supporters, declared that “After the Nevada Blowout, It’s Bernie’s Party Now” (indeed, ...

Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

From the Editors

When Steve Kornacki Has to Scroll Down the Big Board to Find You…

…You don’t have a ticket out of New Hampshire

February 12, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Settling in for the long night that all elections seem to have become now, we recalled, as if it had occurred in another country, the 2016 New Hampshire Primary that changed everything. Sanders drubbed Hillary Clinton by 22 points, something that had not seemed possible. Donald Trump beat John Kasich, which seemed just -- ...

When Steve Kornacki Has to Scroll Down the Big Board to Find You…

Past Present

The 2020 Iowa Caucuses

Past Present Podcast, Episode 215

February 11, 2020 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The 2020 Iowa caucus was a logistical disaster. Natalia cited this POLITICO piece about longer standing concerns about Iowa. Neil wrote about Pete Buttigieg’s historic showing in Iowa in his column for The Week. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia discussed the Amazon ...

North America

America’s Weimar Moment

Bernie Sanders & the Future of Democracy in America

February 6, 2020 • by James Miller

But here we are. While progressive Democrats this cycle have been dreading the instincts of centrist liberals like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, moderates cringe at the prospect of an avowed socialist leading their party. Some fear Sanders would split Democrats, and doom him to a defeat as sweeping as that George McGovern suffered ...

From the Editors

The App That Ate the Iowa Caucuses

As we head into the New Hampshire primary, politics – and political media – need a reboot

February 4, 2020 • by Claire Potter

One thing that was clear is that our system for broadcasting elections needs overhauling. Election night shows are over-reliant on provided endless amounts of trivial information, in the name of context, that actually distracts audiences from taking in, or thinking about, the bigger picture. In fact, the MSNBC team seemed desperate to persuade us ...

From the Editors

49 People, 33 Doors

Partisans are slogging through the snow in Iowa and New Hampshire

January 29, 2020 • by Claire Potter

The first primary is, of course, in the great state of Iowa, a place our volunteer has visited exactly once, to give a talk at a university, and had a lovely time. This week, Iowa is being bombarded with volunteers, journalists, camera crews, and a great many surrogates for the Senators who are ...

North America

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

And why I would support anyone of them

December 11, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“I am devastated. All of my public commitments are under attack. I thought there was progress during my lifetime. Democracy and the positive developments of democratic culture, free speech and expression, social justice and the fight against racism, sexism, class exploitation, xenophobia, and much more, all seemed to advance, even ...

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

North America

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

But Pete Buttigieg is not my guy

December 4, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Many remember this loss because of Dean’s cowboy moment at the lectern. Masochists and political junkies can watch the famous “scream” that provoked endless media mockery here. But the swift collapse of the Dean campaign following Iowa also revealed other weaknesses that early polling had not: the excitement of this ...

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

Podcast

Pete Buttigieg, Groypers, and Sesame Street’s 50th Anniversary

Episode 205

November 26, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: “Mayor Pete,” once a long-shot candidate, is increasingly a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Natalia referred to Michael Kruse’s POLITICO piece about the electoral viability of a gay candidate. Neil noted Buttigieg had won the 2000 Profile in Courage Essay Contest for an ...