The Rule of Jane

In a July 2019 essay for The New Republic, the gay American novelist and rabble-­rouser Dale Peck referred to Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay man to make a major bid for the White House, as a “neoliberal,” a “Jeffersonian meritocrat,” a “gay teenager,” a reluctant bottom (in so many words), and, most frequently, as “Mary Pete.” The last one was a “gay equivalent of Uncle Tom” that the writer claims to have crowdsourced on Facebook, drawing on gay slang to riff on the one-time Democratic candidate’s more popular nickname, Mayor Pete. The hat tip to social media seems appropriate given that the latter half of Peck’s essay reads like a string of snarky tweets masquerading as a cogent political critique.

Many progressives would agree with Peck on Buttigieg’s shortcomings, such as his vacillation on public health care, his disavowal of 1960s social activism, and his seeming lack of decisive empathy in cases of racialized injustice. Yet many liberals...