I don't pretend to know who the Democrat Party will choose to nominate for president in 2028. But I do know that we are beginning to see the opening salvos in what will be a mad media blitz to puff up, overstate, and exaggerate the qualifications and credentials of a cacophony of individuals painfully unprepared to hold the office.
The socialism and silliness of AOC will be downplayed while her charisma and confidence will be highlighted.
The glibness and goofiness of Cory Booker will be softened in deference to stories about his education and experience.
Yet, it's hard to imagine the media having to do more heavy lifting than what they'll need to do in order to make former mayor and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg a viable presidential candidate. Not that it isn't possible; the media made Barack Obama into a president, after all.
Now the same culprits who superimposed halos around the former president's magazine headshots and fawned over his every word, are revealing they are intent on giving Buttigieg the full Obama treatment:
Truly, how does a person not feel an immediate need to bathe after reading something like that?
But it's not so much the puffery that moves the political needle. It's the framing of stories and the refusal to call out hypocrisy and glaring failures.
Remember, Buttigieg is the man who spent $42 billion of taxpayer money on a rural broadband plan that failed to connect a single American. That could be because rather than hire responsible companies and private contractors, his own department put in place regulations to "prioritize the employment of ‘justice-impacted' people with criminal records to install broadband equipment."
That is much like his department demanding companies commit to "intentional outreach to underserved communities" if they wanted to qualify for grants to build EV chargers. He spent tax dollars to prioritize those "who speak languages other than English" when disseminating such grants.
With such a track record, it would seem the media might raise an eyebrow and point a finger or two when that same man prances onto Jen Psaki's MSNBC show, scoffing at government regulation that prevented him and Biden from getting more things done, and complains that it is "so hard to build and do things in this country."
In reality, it was Buttigieg's backwards leadership that paved the way to our current collapses in transportation infrastructure.
Remember with every new breaking story about how Newark air traffic controllers are losing working radars in their control towers that Buttigieg passed on upgrading such systems for four years. Instead, he spent taxpayer time, money, and energy on making aviation language gender-neutral. Pilots may be flying blind into busy airports, but at least they'll know they are sitting on the "flight deck" rather than in the "cockpit."
That's the record of success Buttigieg has carved out for himself. And it's one that you can expect to hear nothing about in the coming years.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
