ON OUTREACH, BUTTIGIEG SCOLDS, WHILE WARREN ACTS

Onlty a few weeks ago, we were regularly being told that Democratic presidential candidates were ruining the party's chances at a 2020 victory by trying to out-progressive one another. Well, now Joe Biden is in the race and leading, so I guess it was inevitable that some candidates would be seeking to out-"centrist" one another, attempting to prove that they're even less progressive than Uncle Joe by stereotyping and slandering fellow Democrats.

Here's Pete Buttigieg:

Pete Buttigieg ... call[ed] out fellow Democrats on Saturday for playing “identity politics” and pitting one group’s grievances against another’s.

In a risky speech to the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBT rights group, Buttigieg warned of a “crisis of belonging in this country,” arguing it was exacerbated by “so-called identity politics” that emphasize how one person hasn’t walked in another’s shoes — “something that is true, but it doesn’t get us very far.” ...

“What I worry about is not the president’s fantasy wall on the Mexican border that’s not going to get built anyway,” Buttigieg said. “What I worry about are the very real walls that we are putting up between us as we get divided and carved up.”

... In doing so, Buttigieg offered the most pointed critique of his own party so far in the campaign, in a moment that had echoes of Bill Clinton’s “Sistah Souljah” moment in 1992 when he distanced himself from a black political activist who had made controversial comments about race.

“When an auto worker, 12 years into their career, is no longer sure how to provide for their family, they’re not part of the country we think of ourselves as all living in together. That’s why we can’t seem to get on the same page,” Buttigieg said.

Such "divisive lines of thinking” have entered Democrats’ mindset, Buttigieg said, adding: “Like when we’re told we have to choose between supporting an auto worker and a trans woman of color, without stopping to think about the fact that sometimes the auto worker is a trans woman of color, and she definitely needs all the security she can get.”

Meanwhile, instead of scolding her opponents on the subject of outreach and inclusion, Elizabeth Warren is simply doing it -- and, according to Politico, doing it successfully:

KERMIT, W. Va. — It was a startling spectacle in the heart of Trump country: At least a dozen supporters of the president — some wearing MAGA stickers — nodding their heads, at times even clapping, for liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren....

She went full prarie populist, telling people their pain and suffering was caused by predatory pharmaceutical barons.

The 63-year-old fire chief, Wilburn “Tommy” Preece ... said after the event that he voted for Trump and that the president has revitalized the area economically. Bt he gave Warren props for showing up.

“She done good,” he said.

Others agreed.

LeeAnn Blankenship, a 38-year-old coach and supervisor at a home visitation company who grew up in Kermit and wore a sharp pink suit, said she may now support Warren in 2020 after voting for Trump in 2016.

“She’s a good ol’ country girl like anyone else,” she said of Warren, who grew up in Oklahoma. “She’s earned where she is, it wasn’t given to her. I respect that.”

Warren wants significantly more money for addiction treatment. She wants to use money from her proposed wealth tax to pay for it. She also wants to come down harder on pharmaceutical industry executives who profited from the crisis. If you have ideas for solving problems that matter to people outside your base, and you talk about them with those people, you don't have to prattle on about "identity politics."

Warren is a white woman who was a Harvard professor and is now a senator from a state most people think is full of Eastern elitists. She also grew up without a lot of money in Oklahoma, and when she talks about that, people understand -- this group of whites in Trump country now, a group of black female activists at She the People last month.

You want to bring people together? Go outside your comfort zone and show them you have something to offer. Do the outreach instead of scolding other people. Talk is cheap.