With few Confederate statues left to topple, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg thinks it's now time to take out Thomas Jefferson.

Look at the jackassery he displays in this interview with Hugh Hewitt, reported by the Daily Caller:

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg says Americans should not be honoring Thomas Jefferson by naming events and places after the founding father. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Friday and said he believes removing — not celebrating — Jefferson is “the right thing to do.” The subject came up when Buttigieg was asked about the name of the annual Indiana Democratic dinner that used to commemorate the statues of Jefferson and Andrew Jackson within the party, the Washington Free Beacon reported. “Well, let’s go to policy now—a very blunt question because you talk about going to every Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Indiana when you were running statewide. Should Jefferson-Jackson dinners be renamed everywhere because both were holders of slaves?” Hewitt asked. “Yeah, we’re doing that in Indiana. I think it’s the right thing to do,” Buttigieg said. “Over time, you develop and evolve on the things you choose to honor … Jefferson is more problematic. There’s a lot of course to admire in his thinking and his philosophy, but then again if you plunge into his writings, especially the notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew slavery was wrong.”

Had enough? The man from the party of openly anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar and blackface sitting Gov. Ralph Northam isn't upset about those particular people - he just wants to get Jefferson erased from any commemoration in the streets, in the statues, in the names of schools, or even Democrat rubber-chicken dinners, in favor of someone more conducive to the progressive agenda. See, Buttigieg knows best, and as a superior moral person, the morally lower Jefferson has simply got to go, founding father or not, author of the Declaration of Independence or not, founder of the University of Virginia or not (all these things on Jefferson's understated tombstone). Can't have any moral defectives in the street names, only the virtuous (as defined by Buttigieg, whoever the hell he is) need apply. Is he all in for erasing Jefferson's image from Mount Rushmore? Hewitt didn't ask.

It brings to mind that once upon a time, Democrats used to rever Jefferson. Remember how John F. Kennedy, according to his gushing lefty-liberal biographer Arthur Schlesinger, once called a room full of Nobel laureates seated at the White House "the greatest assemblage of intelligence at the White House since Jefferson dined alone"?

Democrats used to like the guy.

And they had more than one reason besides anything Schlesinger or Kennedy might have thought.

Jefferson also takes the much-hailed title as the founder of the Democratic Party. No, he didn't found the Democrats of yore exactly, let alone the socialists we see now, but he was the leader of the early political party that eventually became the Democrats. Jefferson in fact provides the Dems with one rare example of someone they've gotten elected who has not been an embarassment to their record.

Well, that's too much for Buttigieg, so Jefferson's got to go. How's he going to rename the Jefferson Memorial? Will it now be the cherry blossom pavillion? The temple of leftism?

Coming from a guy who can't hold a candle to any of Jefferson's achievements, this is rich. One can only hope he's off the political scene and back on the rubber chicken circuit, suitably renamed something stupid, to best accommodate his talents.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain, with minor modification by Monica Showalter