When Will Buttigieg Add an Issues Page to His Campaign Site?
Judging by his stances on certain issues, they might end up hurting the candidate.
Update: four days after this article was originally published, Pete added an issues page to his website.
On the whole, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign website is entirely serviceable. It introduces Buttigieg, shows his experience, and wastes no time asking for your support. It also, in my opinion, looks great from a design standpoint. One key thing that it’s missing, however, is an “Issues” page. Sure, the “Meet Pete” page gives the visitor a general sense of where he stands — equal rights for all Americans, investment in technology, reformation of the economic system, etc. etc. Noticeably absent, though, is a breakdown of where the candidate stands on any specific issue.
For some, this may not be important. Since Obama’s victory in 2008, every Democratic candidate seems to demonstrate a need to prove that they’re “fresh” and “with it” as the youth say (we don’t care that you can skateboard, Beto), and this works for some better than others. It might impress the average Redditor on r/aww or Whole Foods shopper, but luckily some people are waking up to the fact that this doesn’t guarantee a win come Election Day. To those people, the cool factor comes off as disingenuous.
Buttigieg explained his website’s lack of an “Issues” page by chopping it up to his “non-traditional campaign,” and stated that they would add a feature where visitors could search for a topic that they were curious about and watch videos on said topic. That feature has yet to be implemented on the website, and whether or not those videos exclusively contain Pete is unclear. Admittedly, I can’t argue with his explanation, as not having an “Issues” page certainly is a non-traditional choice for a political candidate’s website.
So, where does Pete stand on the issues? Upon a quick Google search, I found a summary of his views “in under 500 words.” I would be remiss if I didn’t take umbrage with the underlying philosophy behind this article. Why would anyone want to hear a detailed explanation of where a politician stands? Just tell me if they’re cool! That’s not to chastise the author of this piece either, as I’m sure they were pushed to make their article as “optimized” as possible for the most clicks by some higher-up at Axios. In any case, let’s go down the list of issues, and see what Pete’s going to do about this whole mess, and why, perhaps, we can’t find most of this information on his own website.
College costs: Has concerns about soaring student debt and believes college is too expensive for "too many people." He supports expanding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that clears loans in exchange for public service work.
Hoo, boy! So, while candidates like Sanders and Warren have floated the idea of complete student loan forgiveness and/or free undergraduate tuition at public universities, Buttigieg is over here with the hot new concept of “work to pay off your student loans.” Performing public service? Great, I’m down. Performing it in exchange for loan forgiveness? Somewhere between prison labor and an internship. Next.
Climate change: Supports the Paris climate agreement and the Green New Deal, and he thinks climate change is a national security threat. He is supportive of government-subsidized solar panels.
Not much to knock Pete for here, but I’d love to know what he wants to do beyond subsidizing some solar panels.
Capitalism: Says he is a capitalist, […]
Next!
[…] but that democracy is "more important" than capitalism: "If you want to see what happens when you have capitalism without democracy, you can see it very clearly in Russia."
You can also see it very clearly right here in the United States.
Guns: He is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and supports universal background checks and banning guns in schools.
Nothing worth noting here. I would assume Pete wants to end the gun show loophole, but I don’t know for sure, and I don’t like to assume.
Health care: Supports single-payer health care, but wants to transition to the model via an all-payer rate-setting, which would not eliminate private insurance companies.
I’m sorry, but I fail to see how giving insurance companies more market power, and private ones at that, is a good transition point between what we have now and a single-payer system. Big next.
Immigration: Buttigieg supports providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.
Great, but once again, providing the bare minimum amount of detail. Just because he’s a Democrat does not inherently mean Buttigieg will have good immigration policies.
Discrimination: He supports updating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to explicitly apply non-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community.
Again, this is a progressive idea that I stand behind, but I — and I’m sure members of the LGBTQ community — would love to know just how they’ll be protected.
Abortion: Said on Meet the Press that abortion is a "question that is almost unknowable ... a moral question that is not going to be settled by science. So the best way for it to be settled in practice is by the person who actually faces the choice."
This answer implies that Pete is pro-choice, but wow does he dance around that fact. Not sure if this is some strange effort to please everyone, or just a long-winded way of saying, “Of course I’m pro-choice.”
Supreme Court: Proposed having a 15-justice court with 5 Democratic appointees, 5 Republican appointees and 5 selected by agreement of the other 10 justices.
Full disclosure: I’m not going to pretend like I know what should be done with the Supreme Court, if anything, so I have no comment on this.
Electoral college: Supportive of abolishing it.
Alright. It’s worth noting that the electoral college is now a key issue after the last election. I’m sure we’ll forget about it again if a Democrat wins.
Vaccines: Initially said he believes in personal/religious exemptions to vaccines when there is no public health crisis. But after criticism on Twitter, his campaign reeled back his statement: "There is no evidence that vaccines are unsafe, and he believes children should be immunized to protect their health."
Well, that’s a relief. This last one does give us some hope, that being Pete is receptive to public criticism. Just how receptive he is remains to be seen. As of right now, though, he stands to the right of candidates like Sanders and Warren, and that’s concerning to say the least. Besides Biden — who seems to be running on a platform of, “Hey, remember me? Those were the good ol' days, huh? Come on back to Uncle Joe.” — the other Democratic candidates' main draws are, unsurprisingly, their increasingly progressive policies. Will these positions hurt Buttigieg in the long run? That also remains to be seen, but again, these brief blurbs are going to be enough for some people. One Opinion contributor for the Los Angeles Times provided a summary similar to the one provided on Axios and wrote, “What’s the current line in Vegas on whether a mayor whom the right will inevitably brand as a gay socialist can win the presidency?” To that I say, I hope you didn’t bet anything yet, and I certainly hope you didn’t bet on whether or not he’s a socialist.
At the end of the Axios article on Pete Buttigieg’s positions, there’s this:
1 fun thing about Buttigieg
Buttigieg was a Rhodes scholar and speaks multiple languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Maltese, Arabic and Dari.
Not that fun.
