{"id":23710,"date":"2019-07-02T12:02:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T16:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=23710"},"modified":"2019-07-01T23:01:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T03:01:28","slug":"why-isnt-pete-buttigieg-the-front-runner-among-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/02\/why-isnt-pete-buttigieg-the-front-runner-among-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"Why isn&#8217;t Pete Buttigieg the front-runner among Democrats?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Readers: Please take a look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.egconf.com\/videos\/pete-buttigieg-mayor-south-bend-eg11\">this video of Pete Buttigieg speaking in April 2017<\/a> and tell me why this guy isn&#8217;t the front runner among Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like Barack Obama (<a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/12\/election-2008-prediction-obama-wins-by-5-percent-we-will-all-be-dep\/\">whose victory I predicted in December 2007<\/a>), he makes the challenges that face Americans seem trivial and inexpensive to address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He&#8217;s obviously intelligent. He didn&#8217;t sue his spouse and split up his children&#8217;s family the way that <a href=\"https:\/\/cowgernation.com\/2016\/06\/29\/elizabeth-warren-was-with-her-second-husband-before-she-left-her-first-married-6-months-after-divorce\/\">former divorce plaintiff Elizabeth Warren<\/a> did. He didn&#8217;t have sex with a married 30-years-older politician in order to get ahead (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/onpolitics\/2019\/01\/27\/willie-brown-kamala-harris-san-francisco-chronicle-letter\/2695143002\/\">Kamala Harris<\/a>). Since he currently claims to identify as a gay man, he isn&#8217;t likely to be accused of touching women (<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2019\/03\/30\/a-history-of-joe-bidens-most-touchy-feely-moments\/\">Joe Biden<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t express as much contempt for Republican voters as the rest of the hopefuls, does he? (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2019\/06\/pete-buttigieg-religion\/592897\/\">Atlantic <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2019\/06\/pete-buttigieg-religion\/592897\/\">says that he attacks Christians<\/a>, but actual Christian believers are now rare in the U.S.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He does claim credit for the success of South Bend, something much more likely attributable to (a) the trend toward urbanization, (b) population growth in the U.S. (all of the immigrants and their kids don&#8217;t tend to settle in rural areas), and (c) South Bend being home to a university. But success has many fathers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.egconf.com\/videos\/pete-buttigieg-mayor-south-bend-eg11\">the above-cited video<\/a>, I would be happy to vote for this guy from a purely emotional point of view. For how many other Democratic candidates can one say that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Separately, what is the risk that people will start referring to this candidate as &#8220;Pete Butthead&#8221;?]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readers: Please take a look at this video of Pete Buttigieg speaking in April 2017 and tell me why this guy isn&#8217;t the front runner among Democrats. Like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why isn&#039;t Pete Buttigieg the front-runner among Democrats? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/02\/why-isnt-pete-buttigieg-the-front-runner-among-democrats\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why isn&#039;t Pete Buttigieg the front-runner among Democrats? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Readers: Please take a look at this video of Pete Buttigieg speaking in April 2017 and tell me why this guy isn&#8217;t the front runner among Democrats. 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