Liberals and progressives, which one Pete Buttigieg is, and whether local DemoDisneyDixiecrats are either.

Valletta, 2016.

I'll give a respectful nod to Pete Buttigieg for being that rarest of breeds, a Maltese-American. The Knights Templar aside, I'm not very impressed with Mayor Pete's positions so far.

This article interests me for two reasons. Secondly, it briefly surveys Buttigieg's policies to date, and these come up lacking. But before doing so, the author contrasts the political identifiers known as liberal and progressive.

There are an increasing number of Democrats locally referring to themselves as progressive. I've even done it at times, so no stones are being cast by me. I'm not sure being a progressive interests me much any longer, probably because so many local progressives are liberals -- and the governing elite is neither.

Anyway, I consider myself less of a "progressive" and more a Social Democrat of the mixed-economy, European model; since there's no place for such a beast in L'America, I scrape by as a pants-down independent.

And while independence may never be enough to win an election, it's an honest designation and describes me pretty well. I'm comfortable with that. Groucho Marx was supposed to have said, "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

Yeah, that's me.

Here's the link, with the opening passage about the difference between liberals and progressives. Broadly speaking, I agree with the author's assessment.

Pete Buttigieg Is Not a Progressive, by Jacob Weindling (Paste)

The word “progressive,” means something. It’s not just the basic definition of moving progress forward, but it is a political ideology that stands opposed to the tenets of the ideology of liberalism. Liberalism approaches politics from the standpoint that the capitalism-based status quo is worth preserving, and policy focus should be on fixing its deficiencies around the edges. Progressivism takes the attitude that the status quo is the problem, and the only solution is to get rid of the system perpetuating the unsustainable status quo.

This is important because whether or not it gets covered, the dramatic ideological split on the left will have a massive impact on the 2020 election. In 2016, 43% of the Democratic Party did not vote for the party’s hand-picked nominee. Progressives are not some small faction of the party, and in fact, given that millennials prefer socialism to capitalism, you could define our generation—the largest in human history—as largely “progressive.”

I bring this up because Pete Buttigieg is having a moment in the early 2020 Democratic Primary, and the former McKinsey consultant has (falsely) branded himself as a progressive ...