Pete Buttigieg, insurgent Democrat presidential candidate acknowledged at the town hall held in Claremont, New Hampshire on Sunday evening that he now needs to do more to appeal to “black and brown” voters, even as he very confidently parried a series of policy questions — and, on several occasions, went directly after US President Donald Trump.
Buttigieg argued that minority voters are very “sceptical of people who seem to come out of nowhere,” after Chris Wallace, the moderator recounted that he was polling at one-per cent support among nonwhite primary voters according to a recent Fox News poll.
Buttigieg pushed for four distinct tax hikes on fiscal policy, when asked about the deficit, clearly stating that he favoured a “fairer, which means higher” marginal income tax, a “reasonable” wealth tax “or something like that,” a financial transactions tax, and closing “corporate tax loopholes.”
“You don’t blow a hole in the budget with an unnecessary and unaffordable tax cut for the very wealthiest,” Buttigieg consequently told Wallace, as he clearly referred to US President Donald Trump’s tax legislation.
With little equivocating, Buttigieg largely stuck by reminding voters of his core campaign vows, and the lessons he had learned from his six-month deployment to Afghanistan in 2014: “We do not send young men and women to war when there’s an alternative,” he emphasized.
And throughout the meeting, Buttigieg, on countless occasions, drew applause — even when he defended his calls to abolish the Electoral College, a daring move that would gut New Hampshire’s influence in selecting the next president.
“States don’t vote, people vote,” Buttigieg said. He added that “if we’re going to call ourselves a democracy,” the U.S. should move to a popular vote system.
And replying to the newly passed pro-life legislation that has been passed in Alabama, as well as very similar bills making their way through other state legislatures, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana told Wallace that “abortion is a national right.”