US election: Joe Biden gets a lift as Buttigieg exits Democrat race

Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden.

The Democratic presidential race will be much the poorer without Pete Buttigieg, a smart, appealing, path-breaking moderate candidate who promised a sensible and electable platform – and who wasn’t more than 70 years old.

But the truth is that the 38-year-old has also done Joe Biden and moderate Democrats a great favour by quitting the race at this stage before democrat socialist Bernie Sanders gets a stronghold on the party’s presidential nomination.

After his disappointing fourth place in the South Carolina primary, Buttigieg knew his path to his party’s nomination was closed because he could not diversify his support base beyond white voters after his early wins in Iowa and a close second in New Hampshire.

Unlike several other candidates whose ego appears to have kept them in the race despite having next-to-zero chance — think Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren — Buttigieg has done the decent thing and pulled out despite the temptation of waiting to test his nationwide support in this week’s Super Tuesday primary contests.

Buttigieg was surely calling out to his fellow moderate in Klobuchar, who is polling worse that Buttigieg, when he said “We have a responsibility to concede the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for our values.”

The departure of the former mayor starts the overdue process of weaning the crowded field of moderate Democrats who have divided the vote of moderate voters, giving their ideological opponent Senator Sanders a clear run to the nomination.

Buttigieg’s supporters in the Super Tuesday contests — which include 14 states — are likely to now gravitate to the two leading moderates left in the race, Biden or the billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Biden, with his thumping win in South Carolina, increasingly looks like the likely moderate candidate to challenge Sanders but Bloomberg is untested in an actual primary contest so far and could still surprise.

But Buttigieg’s campaign has been a remarkable one, rising from virtual obscurity as the mayor of a 100,000 person city in the midwest, to capture national attention and become a such a serious player than he won the pivotal Iowa caucus.

The fact that he was the first gay candidate to achieve any success in a presidential race made his rise even more remarkable. He preached a message of unity rather than division and was the most vocal of the moderate candidates to point out what he believed to be the dangers of supporting the far-left agenda of the 78 year old Sanders.

Given the surprising success of his unlikely campaign it is likely that Buttigieg will set his sights of running again in 2024 and by then he could prove to be a far more formidable opponent.

But for now, in this crowded Democrat race, Buttigieg has done the right thing for the party and for himself. It’s a decision that will only win him more fans, none more than Joe Biden.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia