A senior adviser to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign subtweeted Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) for walking back her position on federally mandated busing just after berating former Vice President Joe Biden on the Democratic debate stage last week over the issue.
Buttigieg’s Lis Smith argued in a tweet on Thursday that candidates shouldn’t use debates to “litmus test policies they’re gonna disavow once they get a poll back.”
The story of the 2020 Democratic primary shouldn’t be how individual candidates used debates to deep six rivals and push litmus test policies they’re gonna disavow once they get a poll back.
Keep calm, carry on, and win the era!
— Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) July 4, 2019
Harris has been criticized by people in the Biden campaign and pundits alike for walking back her position on busing. When reporters asked Harris on Wednesday whether she thought busing should be federally mandated, she hedged and only opted to say it was a “tool” that could be used to desegregate schools.
Yawn. Harris didn’t walk back a thing. The question included the words ‘federally mandated busing’. Her answer was ‘yes’ it should be a tool in the toolbox. Her own campaign confirmed her position a few days ago. Her interview in Bloomberg a few days ago confirmed her position. Biden keeps bringing this up and he has been tying himself in knots today at all of the 4th of July parades he’s attending in IA. Buttigieg dropped post-debates. His road back is to pick up Swalwell’s ‘pass the torch’ theme and take votes from both Biden and Bernie. This is just a bad take from Lis Smith both substantively and politically for her candidate.
Yeah, just keep ignoring what she actually said, maybe it’ll all blow over.
We’re supposed to be better than this, not calling something fake news that isn’t.
I bet this comes up in the next debate, at the end of the month. I presume that she meant that she supports busing in specific instances, but she is going to have to work on a better answer. (And she needs to remember that knives, rhetorically speaking, will be out.)
I posted the whole exchange below and excerpted a key quote below. The whole conversation assumed mandated busing as an option and she unequivocally said ‘yes’. That the clueless white commentariat like David Axelrod want to find some wiggle room here and parse words doesn’t mean the rest of TPM has to buy this bullshit.
Way to go gang. How about, we remember who the enemy who the is. TRUMP lest you forget.