Why Pete Buttigieg could be the Democrats’ pick for the US presidency
Pete Buttigieg has emerged from obscurity to become a serious contender for the US presidency - and experts say he has a winning factor that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump had.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Observing the last mad dash the Democrat candidates for president made through Iowa ahead of last Monday’s caucuses, two things stood out.
The first was the obvious weakness of Joe Biden. At 77, the former Vice-President isn’t the oldest candidate in the field – Senator Bernie Sanders is still feisty at 78 – but Biden suddenly seems much older.
As he spoke to about 300 supporters gathered at a firefighter union event on Sunday, Biden was so shaky it seemed like he might not finish his sentences.
It was his last public appearance ahead of Monday’s vote and there was so much preamble and delay that by the time he started speaking, the energy had been sucked out of the room.
“He seems so old, so shaky, I don’t see how he can physically cope with the election campaign, let alone the presidency,” said Betty Schumer of Des Moines as she left, echoing the concerns of many.
Just two hours earlier, Pete Buttigieg had torn the roof off at a high school gym in suburban Lincoln High School, which was literally packed to the rafters.
The next night at the same school, more voters who caucused in the gym and nearby cafeteria came out for Buttigieg than any other candidate.
The result in Iowa remains disputed – both Sanders and Buttigieg have claimed victory – but the latter’s performance was a highlight in a nightmare week for the Democrats, given the technology botches that plagued the caucuses, Donald Trump’s acquittal by the Senate, and the blowback to Nancy Pelosi ripping up of Trump’s State of the Union address.
Buttigieg presents as a compelling candidate in a number of ways, and given he’s a born and bred “Hoosier” (a native of Indiana), he can’t be sneeringly dismissed as a member of the so-called coastal elites or a product of the Washington beltway.
He’s a former mayor, a military veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes scholar, a multilinguist, with moderate leanings that differentiate him from the likes of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. (In a 2019 poll, 63 per cent of people in Iowa said his views were “about right”.)
The Iowa Democratic Caucus has a firm track record of selecting the candidate who eventually goes on to clinch the nomination. They’ve backed the eventual winner on every occasion since 2000, and the last time they voted for someone else was way back in 1992, when Iowan Senator Tom Harkin claimed more than three-quarters of the vote, and an aspiring small-state governor called Bill Clinton managed just 3 per cent.
(Interestingly, the Republican Iowan Caucuses are far less predictive of who will eventually get the GOP nomination, picking Mike Huckabee over John McCain in 2008, Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney in 2012, and Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in 2016.)
At just 38, Buttigieg would also be the youngest Democrat ever to score the party’s nomination.
Even though the Democrats usually skew much more junior than the Republicans in terms of who they put up for president, “Mayor Pete” is almost 10 years younger than Barack Obama was when he won the nomination in 2008, and more than three decades younger than Hillary Clinton was when she got the nod in 2016 (Obama was 47; Clinton was 69).
Buttigieg’s political experience is slight compared to some of the other Democratic contenders, but the days when that would have automatically be considered a negative are gone, said Tim Lynch, Associate Professor in American Politics at the University of Melbourne.
“Most presidents before Obama and Trump came along had been governors of huge southern states. But both Obama and Trump erased this notion that presidents have to be an established politician, with long service and long records of legislative accomplishments,” Assoc Prof Lynch said.
“Neither Obama or Trump had much of those. Their whole appeal was based on the idea of ‘my life story is why you should vote for me’ … and Mayor Pete I think is more a part of that tradition.”
Buttigieg’s life story has some threads common to many politicians – churchgoing and military service – but since coming out publicly in 2015 and marrying Chasten Glezman in 2018, his narrative is one never seen before for any candidate aspiring to the White House.
Questions arise. Would Buttigieg’s gayness have a galvanising effect on voters one way or another? And would Donald Trump use it in some way during campaigning?
“Trump is capable of being deeply politically incorrect, that is part of his authenticity, but I don’t know that you can pin a charge on him that he’s in any way homophobic,” Assoc Prof Lynch said.
Buttigieg’s sexuality has been offered as an explanation for his poor polling among black communities, especially in the south.
Critics have been quick to paint that analysis as lazy and racist, but the first indication of how he’ll play in the south will come this week, with the opening of voting in the North Carolina primary.
To date, Buttigieg has played the question of his sexuality with a straight bat, so to speak, but he made an oblique reference to it after the Iowa caucuses, describing his victory (if indeed it is that), as a boost “for a kid somewhere in a community wondering if he belongs, or she belongs or they belong in their own family”.
“Whether (Buttigieg) is able to use his sexuality to the same advantage that Obama was able to use race is an open question, and it’s not clear that he could,” said Assoc Prof Lynch.
“But if he’s clever in how he uses it, in the way that Obama used race, then it could be a net advantage to him.”
As it stands, sexuality may not be as much of a hurdle for Buttigieg as his age. While it enables him to present himself as a candidate with vitality – especially compared to Trump, who will be 74 in November when Americans go to the polls – it could also just as easily feed into an idea that his time is not now. This in turn suggests another theory, that Buttigieg’s “shoot for the moon” candidacy is actually about placing him as the party’s presumptive frontrunner nominee for 2024, or a possible Vice-Presidential pick on another candidate’s ticket.
What is remarkable about the 2020 line-up of Democratic contenders, Assoc Prof Lynch said, is the lack of a clear winner.
“It’s remarkable, given the hatred and the adulation which Trump inspires, that he’s not being met by a realistic viable candidate from the Democrats,” he said.
“You’d figure a big personality like Trump would trigger the rise of a similarly strong powerful, charismatic Democratic challenger, and that has not happened.
“He’s been blessed by poor opposition, and it’s not an unusual pattern – Reagan, Thatcher, Obama, they get lucky because the other side can’t mobilise behind a man or woman capable of matching them, and that’s what we see on the Democratic side. Buttigieg represents potential but he’s otherwise very untried and untested.”
Like all the candidates, Buttigieg immediately headed to New Hampshire after Iowa. Here he will face stiffer competition from Sanders and Warren, given they are both prominent senators from neighbouring north eastern states.
Assoc Prof Lynch predicted that Buttigieg would not triumph in the next few primaries.
“When he gets to New Hampshire and North Carolina he’s not going to resonate quite as much. The most important thing you get from Iowa is not delegates or votes, it’s momentum, but that momentum can quickly dissipate when you hit New Hampshire, as it’s quite a different environment and different demographic, and even more so when you get to North Carolina.”
It is here that Buttigieg’s team will really have to work hard to counter the perception that he is not supported by African-American communities.
It was no accident, Assoc Prof Lynch said, that the visuals of Buttigieg’s Iowa victory speech contained a preponderance of African-American supporters in the background.
But further on from that, could Buttigieg really snatch the nomination from higher-profile opponents such as Biden, Sanders and Warren?
It’s certainly possible, Assoc Prof Lynch said.
“I think they’re all compromised and they’re all kind of mid-placed but (Buttigieg’s) got enough of a story and enough charisma that he could be a guy that goes further.
“The next few contests are going to be key. I think it’s not Biden’s any longer … I don’t think Biden wants it and that does open the field. I also think the Democratic Party knows that Warren can’t win and knows that Sanders can’t win; it doesn’t know that Pete can’t win. So for that reason, I don’t see a better candidate to beat Trump at the ballot box than Mayor Pete.”
Originally published as Why Pete Buttigieg could be the Democrats’ pick for the US presidency