Public sector Pete Buttigieg disagrees with private sector Pete Buttigieg on the USPS

Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg did not always fear efforts to reform the United States Postal Service.

But I suppose anyone can flip on a dime depending on the politics of the situation.

The money-hemorrhaging USPS announced significant structural changes recently, including the elimination of “overtime for hundreds of thousands of post office employees” and a mandate that says mail should be “kept until the next day if distribution centers are running behind.” These changes have led to frenzied cries from Democrats and their allies in the press, many of whom allege President Trump is attempting to steal the 2020 election by slowing or blocking mail-in ballots. On Monday, Buttigieg got in on the USPS conspiracy theory action, claiming the recent changes at the Postal Service represent a grave threat to our core democracy.

It is funny because it was not too long ago that as a member of the private sector, Buttigieg was part of the team of private consultants who advised the USPS in 2010 to implement significant structural changes, including dialing back its operations, reducing hours, switching to non-unionized labor, and closing more than 130 processing plants.

But now that it is the official Democratic line that the Postal Service is beyond reproach, Buttigieg is shocked — shocked! — at the recent attempts to reform it.

“Democrats believe in America,” the former mayor and failed 2020 Democratic primary candidate said Monday during an appearance on MSNBC. “We believe in American democracy, and we believe that our institutions should always be improved, always be reformed, but never be dismantled like what’s happening right now.”

Remember, Buttigieg is talking about the elimination of overtime for postal workers. If he considers that “dismantling” the USPS, then that team of private consultants, of which he was a member, positively sought to annihilate it altogether when they were brought on to help it find new ways to avoid posting billion-dollar losses.

“When we look at other countries, developing countries around the world, or if you were sizing up the state of the U.S., let’s say 200 years ago. What are some of the basic things you’d look at? Can they run an election? How do they do it, handling disease? Do they have a functioning Postal Service? These are the basic yardsticks of civilization, and we are falling back on all of them,” Buttigieg said.

He added, “[Trump] seems to have a project of undermining the confidence of the American people in our own institutions in a way that undercuts democracy itself. … We the public need to be prepared for the president to attack the democratic system itself after the fact to attack the legitimacy of the election that will have unseated him.”

Elsewhere on social media, Buttigieg sought to affirm the greatness and necessity of the Postal Service in a tweet directed at the Acting Director of the United States National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

“The Postal Service isn’t a business. It’s a service,” the former mayor wrote on Twitter. “That’s why they call it …”

When news of Buttigieg’s efforts to reform the Postal Service in 2010 first appeared during the 2020 Democratic primary, his campaign defended him by asserting that he never worked on the cost-cutting side of things. Rather, they said, Buttigieg was involved in efforts to find new ways for the USPS to generate profits. But whether Buttigieg was involved in profits or budget-slashing is not the point. The point is that he worked on behalf of efforts to reform the USPS, but claims now that similar actions represent a direct assault on “American democracy.”

If that is the case, then the private and public sector versions of Pete Buttigieg apparently have a lot to talk about.