Pete Buttigieg by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Pete Buttigieg has fallen out of favor the last few weeks. When he first came onto the scene, he quickly became a media darling and launched himself into the 2nd tier of candidates. He even appealed to some conservatives who saw him as moderate and honest. Mayor Pete liked Chick-fil-A. He had to be a decent guy, right?

That facade is collapsing though. He released his policy proposals and they are just to the left of Bernie Sanders. He wants to pack the Supreme Court. He unfairly and grossly attacked Mike Pence and other Christians with no provocation whatsoever.

Then there’s the left wing of his own party going after him. Major liberal publications have ran stories proclaiming he’s too clean cut and benefits from white privilege. Some have even painted him as not gay enough, as ridiculous as that sounds. As usual, inter-sectionalism is eating its own.

Worse, Buttigieg is now facing questions on the issue of race and things aren’t going well for him.

The backstory is that a white police officer shot a black man in South Bend, IN. The officer’s body camera was not turned on during the encounter and charges of racism have be leveled via protests put on in part by Black Lives Matter.

In reality, the shooting appears justified. The man was attempting to break into cars. When the officer exited his vehicle, he was immediately met with the suspect having a weapon. That’s the logical reason why he didn’t have time to worry about getting his body camera turned on. Upon asking the man to drop the weapon, he instead raised it toward the officer. He was then shot in the abdomen and would die later.

This was clearly not an “execution” given that only one shot was fired, nor is there any evidence at all that race played a part in the ordeal. But it’s 2019, so literally every shooting involving a white officer and a black suspect is protested as racism and this one is no different.

As the heat got turned up, Buttigieg returned home to try to handle the crisis in person. That lead to this exchange.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg: “I do not have evidence that there has been discipline for racist behavior…” Protester: “You running for president and you expect black people to vote for you?” Buttigieg: “I’m not asking for your vote.” Protester: “You ain’t gonna get it either.” pic.twitter.com/tK1Ys0Yvfc — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 22, 2019

To start, the protestor’s question is ridiculous. Why would their be discipline for racist behavior when there’s no evidence there was any? We’ve reached a point where mobs demand blood on the basis of nothing but emotion and it’s dangerous. The rule of law still matters and absent compelling evidence otherwise, this police officer reacted in a legal way when faced with a deadly threat.

As to Buttigieg though, he can probably cancel his campaign right now. He was already struggling with black support and I’m failing to see how this doesn’t sink him further given the realities of the Democrat voter base. You simply can not win the primary without a majority of the black vote.

To be fair, what I think Buttigieg was trying to say is that he wasn’t operating as a candidate at that moment so he wasn’t asking for anyone’s vote given the setting and situation. The women snapping back at him is a awful look though. Buttigieg appeared weak and scared in the clip, unable to handle the slightest push back. His entire image of being an honest, well spoken candidate was shattered in 10 seconds of video.

This couldn’t happen at a less opportune time for Buttigieg either. The debates start next week and he’s going to be on stage with almost a dozen other people ready to hit him on this. I almost feel sorry for the guy, but then I’m reminded of the bad faith attacks he’s propagated against his political enemies lately. There’s a fair amount of just desserts being served here.

I don’t believe things are going to end well for Mayor Pete at this point. But I could be wrong.

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