While I rarely post anything re;lating to HRC, Last night gay Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg spoke at the Human Rights Campaign annual gay-la in Las Vegas, warning Democrats and special social interest groups to stay away from “identity politics”  in the 2020 election.

Buttigieg said that the country is “being buffeted by tectonic change” and said the focus needs to be on “winning an era… we are preparing our country for a better life.”

Buttigieg talked about “identity politics,” saying that it was used “usually to wave away our attention from some of the things that make our lived experiences different, and the political implications of those differences.” Adding that the Trump administration has “mastered the practice of the most divisive form of such politics, peak White identity politics, designed to drive apart people with common interests.”

Said Buttigieg:

I may be part of the LGBTQ community. But being a gay man doesn’t even tell me what it’s like to be a trans woman of color in that same community, let alone an undocumented mother of four or a disabled veteran or a displaced autoworker. But being gay just like every other fact about me means that I have a story and if I look to that story I can find the building blocks not only for empathy but for the impetus to action. Because the more you know about exclusion, the more you know about belonging, and we have a crisis of belonging in this country.

The wall I worry about most isn’t the president’s fantasy wall on the Mexican border that’s never gonna built anyway. What I worry about are the very real walls being put up between us as we get divided and carved up. … And what every gay person has in common with every excluded person of any kind is knowing what it’s like to see a wall between you and the rest of the world and wonder what it’s like on the other side. … Yes, I am gay. And I am the son of an immigrant and an Army brat. And I am a husband. And I am a musician. And I am an Episcopalian, and I am a Democrat.”