South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg tweeted that his support of the Obama administration comes from a “personal place” after a reporter accidentally misquoted him as attacking the former President during a noisy campaign rally.
The media is not always helpful…
To everyone who used one quote to jump all over @PeteButtigieg, I look forward to your corrections.
Yeah. That is somewhat snarky.
Frankly, I think “failures of the old normal” is worse. How much more non-specific and content-free can one get?
I’ve supported Mayor Pete since first hearing him at the CNN town hall in early spring. It’s amazing the vitriol he gets from Daily Kos front pagers as well as rabid Bernie and Warren supporters throughout social media. Just another example of progressives looking for a “gotcha” to jump on and willingness to think the worst of him.
“A lie gets around the world before the truth gets its pants on.” Same for a misquote…
My story about @PeteButtigieg ends with him referring to the “failures of the Obama era.” That’s an inaccurate quote — the result of transcribing a noisy recording at a loud rally. His exact words were “failures of the old normal”.
How eager people are to hear what they want to hear.
“Democrats in disarray!” is like crack to corporate journalism.
This is weird. Chuck Todd claims it isn’t the job of journalists to set the record straight.
To me the “old normal” is Republicans and Democrats always ending up on the side of corporations and making small, incremental changes within a system that was not working at all. Not hard for me to get at all.
What I don’t get is the knock that Pete is content free. He’s pretty darn clear on how Medicare for All Who Want It and College Aid for Those Who Need It are different than M4A and free college (and still big changes to the systems we have now). People might not like those policies, but snarking on him as content free for every comment he makes about anything seems a little unfair. Same with the criticism of any challenge from Pete, Klobuchar or Biden as being “Republican talking points.” Good people can disagree on the best ways to move forward.
Correction of misreporting is good, critical reflection on reporting is even better, but the pretense of balance in an unbalanced world is still leading us downhill; a false ‘centrism’ that is in fact solidly conventional, and right of center.
The next time CNN asks Elizabeth Warren how she is going to pay for something she should just be like:
"If I tell you Mexico will pay for it will you give it 32 hours of free airtime per month?"
Conor
Chuck Todd’s latest book on the art of journalism:
Well, that’s the point of that kind of political language: people hear what they want to hear. I am in no way singling out Buttigieg for that, 'cos everybody does it. Obama was a master of feel-good hear-what-you-want-to-hear rhetoric. That doesn’t mean that Obama was only a talker, but personally, I’m old enough so that my eyes glaze over when I hear that sort of talk. I want to hear policy.
Once known as high Broderism.
It is like a Rorschach. You can give it any meaning you choose.
Policy talk is all well and good—but it loses elections.
Voters don’t want to get into the weeds about policy differences.’
They want to feel good about their candidate, and listen to the policy details later.
Oh, everyone says that, but it’s a lie. People want to hear what they want to hear, and lefties are not immune to this, although they believe otherwise because they’re supposedly better informed.
Project much?
Look, I don’t necessarily like being called a liar. Especially when what I say is a sincerely held observation. If you want to say it, yet you know it’s a lie, knock yourself out.
Glad to hear this. I was surprised that such a comment was attributed to Buttigieg; he’s smarter than that. “Comes from a very personal place” is bad enough. If “Normal” is one of the languages you speak, dude, I’d suggest using it when possible.
Lose the word “rabid,” though. I’d vote for Pete in a heartbeat over Trump or Pence, but there is, of course, a history of Democrats demonizing the supporters of other candidates in the primaries, depressing turnout, and look where it got us…
If by “voters” you mean me, then you’re wrong. I’m perfectly aware that most people vote on “feelings” toward a candidate, and that’s how the bamboozle keeps going and going.