Pete Buttigieg in The Root
Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind was worth years of therapy for me. The moral philosopher explains how people make moral, including political, choices based not on reason but based on subconscious thoughts. Then, when asked, we layer on a rational-sounding explanation for our choice.
So, someone might say (and many did): “I’m voting for Trump because he’s done more for women than any other president.” If that’s what your husband said, and you generally trust your husband, you are prone to believe him. You are then prone to vote according to your beliefs, not based on the fact that Trump openly boasts groping women without their consent. There’s also the fact that he cheated on all 3 of his wives, and also that he finds his daughter sexually attractive. Yet many women believe Trump is “good for women.”
Haidt explains that the mind is like an elephant and a rider: The rider (the rational brain) likes to think he is calling the shots and moving in the direction he has chosen. But in fact, the elephant (the subconscious mind) is far bigger and more powerful. It’s the subconscious mind — our limbic brain’s need for survival and tribal coherence — that leads us to the moral and political choices we make.
It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that Pete Buttigieg isn’t popular among black Americans. This seems to have started as lack of approval for Pete in places like South Carolina, where many African Americans are Baptist. The Baptist church is against gay marriage. Yet it’s now become a trend, and more and more African Americans on Twitter gladly proclaim, “I will never vote for Pete Buttigieg.”
Most of the reasons given center around his “inability to solve the racial tensions in his hometown.” As though any mayor in America has solved racial tensions once and for all.
The piece in The Root that came out today levels the accusation against Pete that he “doesn’t want to change anything” when it comes to black people and education. He has benefitted from “whiteness,” and he even says things “whitely.” (Yes, it’s an adverb now, though “blackly” could never be, nor would we want it to.) The author reads Pete’s mind without reading his policies. Attributing motive is a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop the author: Pete “doesn’t want to change anything. He just wants to be something” (emphasis his). The fact that the candidate has an entire plan for the empowerment of black people isn’t worth mentioning, because the author can read Pete’s mind. The elephant rules.
We vote more on emotion than on facts.
If facts were to matter, the author could mention that Pete has an entire plan for the empowerment of black America. It happens to be called The Douglass Plan. It includes a host of social, healthcare, financial, and educational measures designed to level the playing field and tackle historic inequality. It’s much more extensive both in awareness of the depth of inequality and in the breadth of solutions than the plan proposed by Kamala Harris, who has the biggest share of the black vote (5%, vs. Pete’s 4%). Besides The Douglass Plan, Pete’s plan for education includes giving $50 billion to HBCUs and free college to anyone with a household income under $100,000. But facts don’t make passionate pieces in The Root. The elephant, not the rider, rules.
Neither do facts sway voters, at least not the ones who responded in droves today: “This Black man will not be voting if Pete’s the nominee. Trust and believe.” “This guy Pete is f*kcing racist. If you are voting for him, you are worse than Trump-voters.” Powerful pieces in The Root sway voters, especially when they’re not based on facts.
I’m afraid this is voter suppression as a self-own for black people. Stacey Abrams is making huge strides with Fair Fight to bring black people to the voting booth. Yet hundreds of black voters proclaim they’d never vote for Pete.
Obama in the last 3 weeks has spoken publicly along moderate lines. First he cautioned us not to be too pure and to watch out for cancel culture (a far left propensity). Then he said Americans don’t want to remake the whole system (implying M4A, another far left policy). What if Obama, a moderate, were to endorse Buttigieg, also a moderate, who’s also winning Iowa? Will these people reconsider voting for him? Will the facts have changed, or will Obama’s endorsement lead them to think that’s the best choice for them? We vote for the best of our group, however we conjure our group to be.
Neither does it make sense that Biden is much more popular among black people than Pete. Biden says far more objectionable, borderline-racist things right on the debate stage. Yet, the association prevails of him having had Obama’s back for 8 years.
We don’t vote on facts. We vote on emotion, and especially emotion tying us to our tribe.
I doubt any of the self-suppressed voters today have read The Douglass Plan. It’s clearly the most comprehensive plan to level the playing field. Our job as voters is not to get so swept up in emotion that we completely ignore facts. Look at The Douglass Plan. Listen to Pete’s book on Audible. He talks about the police chief incident and how much it rocked him. You’ll see genuine concern and awareness of the systemic disadvantages against people of color in this country.
And read or listen to The Righteous Mind. Same as Trump voters, Democrats too are capable of voting against their self-interest. We are far more irrational than we think.
