The Other McCain

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Saturday Scenes from South Carolina

Posted on | March 24, 2019 | Comments Off on Saturday Scenes from South Carolina

Marianne Williamson talks to a supporter Saturday in Columbia, S.C.

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina
The National Affairs Desk is located at a McDonald’s on Kings Highway today because the wifi at the hotel was down, and I’ve got about an hour to put this together before I head down to Bethel AME Church in Georgetown, where Marianne Williamson has a 10 a.m. appearance.

Saturday’s events were about as “retail politics” as it gets. First, there was the state Democratic Party’s executive committee meeting, held in an auditorium on the campus of Midlands Technical College. There were about 100 people in the auditorium, the most influential members of the Democratic Party in South Carolina. This is a deep “red” state, with Republicans controlling all statewide offices, both chambers of the legislature, and five of seven congressional seats. However, one of the metrics by which the Democratic National Committee has said it will determine candidates’ eligibility for the televised debates is the presidential candidates’ poll numbers in the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) to hold caucuses or primaries. Therefore, the 2020 candidates are working to build their presences in South Carolina. While I attended the executive committee meeting to see Marianne Williamson, when I arrived, Peter Buttigieg was speaking.

 

“Mayor Pete” is what people call him, because that way they can avoid attempting to pronounce “Buttigieg,” which I’m told is supposed to sound something like “Booty Judge,” and this is just . . . unfortunate.

The guy is a Harvard alumnus, a Rhodes scholar and an Afghanistan war veteran, but I’m sorry, America will not elect President Buttigieg. And this would be true even if he weren’t gay, but he is. A few months after being re-elected as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg announced he was gay and married Chasten Glezman two years later. My hunch is that his presidential campaign is either (a) actually a bid for the vice-presidential nomination or (b) a warm-up for a future run at statewide office — senator or governor — in Indiana. So, if the governor of Colorado gets the presidential nomination, maybe your Democrat neighbors will have “Hickenlooper-Buttigieg” bumper stickers on their Volvos.

 

Buttigieg can talk, man. You can click and watch that video, where he’s talking about “white nationalism” as a national security issue, to get an idea. As crazy as his ideas may be, he expresses them cogently and the Democrat audience gave him a standing ovation at the end. There was hearty applause when Marianne Williamson made her entrance at the executive committee meeting, as you can see from the video:

 

That’s just the first four minutes. She talked for about 15 minutes. She seemed a bit nervous at the start, talking too fast, but she made her points, finished strong and did much better, I thought, in her shorter speech from the stage at the Cornbread Festival in downtown Columbia.

 

Some diligent reader could do me a big favor and transcribe those videos in the comments, because I know I’m going to be sweating it on deadline tonight here at McDonald’s, trying to file my American Spectator column before they close the lobby. And I’ve got about five minutes now to wrap this up and hit the road for Georgetown. So there’s only time to just dump a bunch of photos from Saturday’s events in Columbia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You see there a picture of the drum line of the Benedict College marching band, whose performance at the Cornbread Festival followed Williamson’s speech, and buddy, they rocked it. Speaking of which, I’d better get rocking down the highway, if I’m going to be in Georgetown in time for that event at Bethel Church. Ciao, baby.



 

Category: Democrats, Election, South Carolina

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