How Buttigieg missed a chance to show black citizens "I feel your pain"

To his credit, the mayor showed up, promised specific actions and responded to a litany of shouted, angry citizen complaints. He also was shown facing the kind of real-life crisis and accountability to which chief executives are subject and legislators generally are not.

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Yet what he did not do was emote. There was no Clintonian “I feel your pain” moment or Obama-esque discussion of the larger legacy of racial injustice that has laid open a gulf of mistrust.

Those who know him — and I do — could see the anguish etched in his furrowed brow. But his answers were delivered in a factual, almost clinical, manner, more in keeping with his prior life as an analyst for McKinsey & Co. than the ministerial role called for by an episode in which a life was lost.

For Buttigieg, the episode underscored what may be his greatest political obstacle for the nomination of a party in which African-Americans represent a quarter of the vote. It is almost impossible to win the nomination without substantial black support. This episode was a blow, but it also highlighted what may be a greater barrier.

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