6. He seems to have a blind spot on on race.

Buttigieg has admitted to not knowing about segregation in his community , but when he was running for mayor in 2011 he had very strong opinions on why black kids don’t succeed in school:

Michael Harriot, in his powerful piece in The Root, writes,

“This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a misstatement. Pete Buttigieg went to the best educational institutions America has to offer and he — more than anyone on the goddamned planet — knows that everything he just said is a baldfaced lie.”

Buttigieg had an opportunity to step up for justice in 2014 when, after Eric Garner’s death and the Notre Dame women’s basketball team began wearing “I Can’t Breathe” shirts, a South Bend police officer began selling “Breathe Easy, Don’t Break the Law” shirts that seemed to mock Garner’s last words. Members of the South Bend city council asked the officer to stop selling the shirts, but Buttigieg remained neutral and even found a way to say that Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter are actually pretty similar.

Pete thought these shirts were okay.

And when he’s not being cowardly about race, he’s betraying a remarkable level of either ignorance or dishonesty about it, take your pick. Either way, he is completely wrong about the history of slavery in this country.

7. He has almost no support among black voters.

Perhaps because of this record, Buttigieg has polled poorly among black voters, and it’s not because of low name recognition. A January poll found that “Nearly 4 in 10 black voters say they would either not vote or vote for someone else if Buttigieg were the nominee.”

Buttigieg is polling at 0% among Black voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll.

He released his Douglass Plan for Black America in July, and the Washington Post reported that “Buttigieg persuaded hundreds of prominent black South Carolinians to sign onto the plan even if they are not supporting Buttigieg himself.” He then released an “open letter” listing a number of prominent black supporters, implying that they had endorsed his campaign. But The Intercept reported in November that many were unaware that their names were on the letter:

“The blowback came immediately. [Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika] Devine, who has not endorsed a candidate yet in the presidential election, told The Intercept that she did not intend her support for the plan to be read as an endorsement for Buttigieg’s candidacy, and believes the campaign was “intentionally vague” about the way it was presented…. [state Rep. Ivory] Thigpen, meanwhile, has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, and was startled when he learned the campaign had not only attached his name to the plan, but also listed him as one of three prominent supporters atop the letter….“I actually had not circled back to give them a quote, so I was alarmed and very much surprised to see, particularly, the headline as such because I do think it muddies the water, I do think it was a misrepresentation, and it easily could have confused a lot of people as to where I stood.”

On December 4th, Buttigieg tried again to prove his bone fides on race by promoting what his campaign called a “special announcement” from black South Bend leaders. A protest broke out at the event, the mayor’s campaign tried to blame a “white” Sanders supporter, and BLM South Bend responded:

Black Lives Matter has also protested at his events, and it’s perhaps bad form for his white supporters to chant “USA!” instead of hearing their concerns:

Conclusion: Buttigieg talks about how he wants to bring the country together, but he has so far failed to bring his own small city together. His critics believe he has not done nearly enough, through his leadership and policies, to create racial justice, and BLM South Bend has gone so far as to call for his resignation. The Washington Post reports that even his “Friends and colleagues describe him as a man still forming a sensibility about African American issues and culture, a work-in-progress.” No Democrat can win if Black voters stay home. For the good of the country, he should continue his learning somewhere other than in the White House.

8. He’s wrong about free college (and he knows it).

Pete made news by running an ad criticizing Warren and Sanders for their tuition-free college plans because letting rich kids go to college for free would be a handout to millionaires and billionaires. It’s the same argument Hillary Clinton used, and it’s clearly wrong. Free college would not be a giveaway to the rich if it were paid for by higher taxes on the very rich.

Buttigieg is smart. He knows that it is easy to make a college program progressive and not a regressive tax on the poor. It’s simply good public policy for many reasons, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained.

But Pete knows all this. So what is he doing? Perhaps this explains it:

Conclusion: Buttigieg claims to be the new ideas guy, but while other candidates actually offer new ideas, he keeps drifting to the center and using the same talking points older centrists have been using for years to tell working class Americans why we can’t have better lives.