Pete Buttigieg Just Sunk His Chances…

The Transportation Secretary of the Biden administration, Pete Buttigieg has pretty much taken himself out of the running for the Democrat nomination for president in 2024. And he can’t blame Republicans, he can’t blame Kamala Harris, or Joe Biden. This one is all Pete’s. Once again, Pete has proven to the nation one thing.

He sucks at his job.

Buttigieg has been Transportation Secretary for two years now. In that time, he’s been embroiled in a couple of scandals that have proven he’s not big enough for the job. In fact, as I understand it, there are several in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana that think he wasn’t big enough to be mayor of that town. Apparently, filling potholes was a problem for “Mayor Pete” even back before he thought he should run for president.

Buttigieg ran into trouble when the supply-chain debacle took hold in this country. A Transportation Secretary that has something on the ball would have been front and center during that time. Remember the store shelves being empty? That was Pete Buttigieg’s fault. It was his fault because he had no vision. See, a person with vision would have realized that coming out of lock-down pandemic like COVID would cause problems. You had to first and foremost get the people back to work. Truckers’ were lax in getting back to work for basically one simple reason. Gas prices were through the roof and diesel was even higher. Why would anybody in their right mind decide to take a job as a trucker to lose money?

And yet, Buttigieg compounded that problem by taking a leave of absence, so he and his partner could celebrate adopting two brand new babies. He was all for the PTO back then after his adoption. What he wasn’t all for was solving a national problem that landed on his doorstep. And so, ships filled with shipping containers lined up off the coast of Long Beach, waiting to unload their goods from China. And without a lot of longshoremen to unload the goods, and truckers to move them from Cali to the rest of the country, the goods sat…and store shelves remained empty. And Mayor Pete was nowhere to be found.

Then you’ve got the possibility that there would be a railroad strike that could shut down that industry. The Biden administration worked long and hard trying to reach a conclusion. And don’t believe that the Transportation Secretary wasn’t in the middle of that one! But in the end, Biden couldn’t do anything about it. Buttigieg couldn’t do anything about it. Their leadership skills were sorely lacking when it came to getting a binding agreement between the unions and management. Instead, the issue was punted to Congress, who basically had to declare that the agreement that was originally penned would stick and both sides would have to abide by it. What it meant was that railroad workers wouldn’t be getting the one thing they were seeking…paid time off for sick leave.

Fast forward to this Christmas. Southwest Airlines was hit with yet another weather related problem. We didn’t hear from Buttigieg on the problem for days. All airlines suffered delays and cancellations, but none were stung more than Southwest, who cancelled well over 12,000 flights and delayed more than 25,000 others leading up to and just after the Christmas holiday. Where was Buttigieg? Nowhere to be found. Oh, he did make an appearance to say that he was on top of things. He issued a strongly worded statement to the CEO of Southwest Airlines saying he was going to make sure to look into it. However, there weren’t any real teeth in that bite.

And if you go ahead and look backward a bit, Buttigieg was interviewed on a national TV program and said that he thought there wouldn’t be a problem with travel around Christmas. He was sure everything was running smoothly.

It’s obvious that Buttigieg is in way over his head on this job. I mean, let’s face it, being the Transportation Secretary is more of a figurehead position. This year has been one where that particular position has been thrust front and center in the public’s eye. In every instance, Pete Buttigieg was nowhere to be found. And when he was found it was a dollar short and a day late of getting anything done to solve the problem.

And he wants to run for President?

All of the polls out there show Joe Biden as the person most people think will be the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. In second place is K-baby Harris. Pete Buttigieg is third. Tell me that none of these three folks will be on the ballot in two years…PLEASE!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Kicking The Can

I think it was two months ago that Joe Biden first came up with the fact that his administration needed to get involved with the pending rail strike in this country that effected some 12 different unions. I remember him saying that he was set to help both sides come to an amicable agreement. We’re two months down the road, and there are still differences. Big differences. In fact, the Biden administration has admitted that they can’t solve the impass. So what’s Joe to do?

Kick the can to Congress and tell them it’s their problem now!

This is just like Biden. If you look over the last two years of his presidency, he has time and time again taken the real heavy lifting topics, like the rail strike, and kicked it to someone else so he wouldn’t do the lifting. After all, the guy is 80 years old now! He could easily throw out his back.

He first kicked a can K-baby Harris’ way on the southern border crisis. Of course, she’s been trying to find someone to kick the can to ever since. He kicked a can to Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg on the supply chain problem, which got in the way of Buttigieg’s personal vacation time and family leave time. Very little has been done there. He’s kicked a can to Europe when it came to the climate. Oh, I know he talks a good game, but he doesn’t follow through with it, allowing Chevron, as I said yesterday, to drill for oil in Venezuela. And it goes on and on. The man wants to be Teflon coated, but he’s not.

Biden originally said he was going to tackle this problem. Oops. Or did he. Well, he did, and according to his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre said time and time again that Biden was “personally involved” in the negotiations. That came as a surprise to Biden, who over the Thanksgiving weekend, while vacationing in Nantucket, said he had not personally gotten involved in the dispute at that point. Someone is missing some facts somewhere!

Now, Biden is kicking the can on the potential for a rail strike to Congress, telling a lame-duck session of the Legislative Body to come up with a solution. It’s not like they don’t already have enough on their plate with the budget running out on December 16th, and the debt ceiling about to be breached. And now Congress needs to act quickly to get this done by December 9th. And actually sooner because the rail lines will stop hauling hazardous material on December 5th. Of course, Congress is expected to start voting on this as early as today.

This is the latest example of the leadership style of a weak president. Are you telling me that someone like an Abraham Lincoln or a George Washington, or even an FDR would sit around and complain about not being able to get a deal on a rail strike and then kick it to Congress to do with less than a week to do it in? Biden’s had two months and couldn’t make progress. What makes anyone with a sense of honesty in their soul feel that Congress, that monolith body that takes forever to decide what to order for lunch can do in five days? Especially do so in a fair manner whereby both management and the unions get a fair shake. It’s upset the unions, and they aren’t sure they are going to be able to go along with it.

If the GOP isn’t busy already making commercials for 2024 highlighting the foolishness of this president, they are doomed to lose yet another election to the Democrats. If you’re telling me that the Republicans cannot find someone, ANYONE to defeat Joe Biden after the miserable two years he’s had and the mistakes he’s made, then we deserve to be a socialist country. Hell, you or I could run for president and defeat Joe Biden. I think the only person that says he’s a Republican that probably could and would lose to Biden is Donald Trump. But that’s the topic for yet another blog.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill say that they can come together to solve this problem. And the problem is, is it going to be something that the unions and management will both agree to? Now to be sure, Congress can and has done this before. In fact, back in 1991, Congress voted to have union workers end a strike that had started just hours before and get back to work. So, this is nothing new for folks on the Hill. The problem for Biden is what that’s going to look like to the union heads, and will he still be the most union-friendly president in history? I think not.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!