Hey all,
Here’s our next edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we are right now:
- T-3: Pete Buttigieg
- T-5: Amy Klobuchar
- T-5: Tom Steyer
- 7: Joe Biden
- 8: Michael Bennett
- 9: Deval Patrick
- T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
- T-10: Mike Bloomberg
- 12: John Delaney
Arguments For:
Sam — #3 — The only candidate in 2020 to generate as much energy and enthusiasm for their campaign as Bernie or Trump has been Mayor Pete Buttigieg. His natural charisma and total confidence in being able to provide full, complete, concise answers has been one of the most important and impressive parts of the 2020 campaign. Honestly, this is partially due to the total lack of proper sentence structure, proper English, and a vocabulary beyond using the phrase “very, very” once a paragraph. Though in fairness Trump doesn’t really do paragraphs either.
There are a few qualifications that make Mayor Pete so compelling, either in qualifications or in drawing attention. First, he’s the youngest candidate in the field, and yet speaks with a charisma and understanding of issues of someone in their 60s whose been working on the issues for decades. Second, Mayor Pete is the first (openly) gay major candidate to run for president. While support for LGBTQIA people and rights are at an all-time high, with a recent Gallup poll at 73% support of gay marriage today compared to 32% in 1987. Third, Pete has executive experience at the local level. Being a mayor in a moderate sized city of 100,000, Pete had to be able to administer the local government. Fourth, Pete has excellent experience and qualifications. Not only did he attend Harvard and Oxford, he has served in the Navy Reserve since 2009, serving a tour in Afghanistan in 2014. If he were to win the primary and the election, Pete would be the first democratic president to serve in the armed forces since JFK and first president to serve in a combat zone since George HW Bush. This not only speaks to his experience in serving the country, but also to his much more real understanding the need for excellent foreign policy, that must include the use of the State Department, and the consequences on the human level when the US needs to utilized the military.
Pete’s exerpeicnce, academically, militarily, and professionally, along with his pretty-darn progressive policies but still emphasizing that some amount of bipartisan support is needed to pass any legislature make Pete’s campaign very appeal in Iowa.
Josh — #4 — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, offers the most charisma of any politician I have seen since Obama. His intellect and eloquence soar through his speeches and his answers to questions, and you can tell that he is a really, really smart guy. You have to be smart if you went to Harvard and were a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. (Side story: apparently Pete also self-studied Norwegian in order to read more books by a favorite Norwegian author, as only a few of the author’s books were translated into English. I mean, who does that??)
Also the first major openly LGBTQIA candidate running for president, Pete’s campaign is breaking down barriers and providing a role model and example for young LGBTQIA kids (and, for that matter, older members of the community as well who fought so hard for the expansion of rights we have seen in the past ten years). Of course, the work isn’t done on LGBTQIA rights; there are serious threats to transgender people in particular that deserve our attention and support.
Pete’s rhetoric and speaking skills make him an attractive candidate to take on Trump, but he has a few other things going for him as well. At his age (38 years old) he offers a distinct generational argument to take on Trump, and he’s also the most prominent Democrat I’ve seen (outside of Iowa’s own Rob Sand) talk about his faith and Christianity in a manner that refuses to concede religion to the Republicans. His outlook on Christianity truly highlights compassion, empathy, and helping one another instead of using the Bible to discriminate against others or to justify military intervention. Further, while Mayor of South Bend he decided to serve in the military and he deployed to Afghanistan for seven months with the Navy Reserves, giving him credibility on foreign policy and a chance to directly contrast himself with Trump. He’s an impressive young man, and his ambition is palpable as he has managed to gain traction in this field even though he’s never held a major political office before. Lastly, his focus on the day after the election and needing to bring together a bitterly divided country is compelling and is exactly what a lot of voters like to hear.
Arguments Against:
Sam — As for the not so great parts of Pete, there are a few. First, Pete has seemed to still be searching for how progressive his policies are. During the campaign, he slowly made his policies more progressive until Elizabeth Warren hit the top of the Iowa and New Hampshire polls and began being attacked from every side. When Warren started to fall, Pete seemed to hedge back to make his policies less progressive, with the biggest policies being Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It (public option, universal healthcare) to supporting tuition-free college for everyone but the upper class.
I don’t buy the argument that “Pete has been on this well planned trajectory and has cleverly crafted his rise in politics by going to Harvard then joining the Navy then moving back to South Bend to run for mayor! Its the perfect crime!” First off, to think any person who didn’t have some kind of greater ambitions and plans is being a little naive. I believe that when Mayor Pete ran for DNC Chair and saw that he greatly exceeded expectations that he should continue to push his expectations. He did not expect the surge he saw in popularity and the polls last summer, as they went from little to no staff to going on a hiring spree. I think he hoped to run for president, increase his name recognition, and run for Congress or governor down the road. Having said that, his struggles with the African American community in South Bend are real and a problem. Additionally, his inability to garner support amongst minorities, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are a major issue and concern. Pete has to be able to connect and get support outside of white progressives and white working class voters.
Last, his comments that he won’t back away from fundraising and appealing to the upper class of the left are probably necessary in order for Pete to have a successful campaign, but he has to live with the consequences. Yes, Obama raised money from that group of donors in 2012, but the need to raise from small donors and have an army of grassroots donors, field staff, and volunteers are the structure that are necessary to win in Iowa, New Hampshire, and through Super Tuesday. Oh and that thing called the general election. Without support from minorities, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party, and without the grassroots army, its hard to see how Pete makes into Super Tuesday, let along as see him as the right candidate to represent the Democratic Party of 2020.
Josh — My largest problem with Pete Buttigieg stems from his ideological evolution during this primary. At the first debate, when Pete was taking every interview he could and was eager to make an impression, he argued that it didn’t matter what policies Democrats say they support because Republicans will call them all socialist anyway, so why not swing for the fences and fight for progressive victories. But, somewhere in the fall of last year, he seemed to intentionally rebrand himself as the moderates’ next great hope. Likely seeing that Bernie and Warren had an insurmountable lead on the progressive wing, he saw a potentially weak Biden as a target in the moderate lane and made the leap. All of the sudden, at the next debates he was chastising Warren for Medicare-for-All and was espousing his new Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It plan, offering a new-and-improved moderate version of Pete Buttigieg.
Further, his ambition gets smelly. Whether true or not, his whole career path seems manufactured to give him a perfect resume for political office and indeed the presidency. Harvard, Oxford, working for McKinsey, signing up for the Navy Reserves in 2009 and deploying in 2014, and running for DNC chair in 2017, Pete seems to have put a lot of time and effort into calibrating his image and his profile to optimize his chances in a campaign like this. On the McKinsey point, I think he’s probably surprised at the blow back he’s received since that has come to light. A ‘prestigious’ consulting company, it’s supposed to have the reputation of being where smart people work, but the issue is that places like McKinsey contract with some of the worst companies and governments in the world to manage and execute projects that end up furthering inequalities and harming people.
Lastly, I think he has a fundamental issue with his candidacy, and that concerns his campaign’s inability to attract support from people of color. This story first seemed to break a few months ago during the Pete surge (around the time of the Liberty and Justice dinner), but since then they have not improved their numbers with people of color. He legitimately has gotten 0% in black support in some polls, according to the NY Times. And now, just days before the caucus, the NY Times again published a story reminiscent of the Kamala Harris piece that doomed her campaign, as Pete campaign staffers of color came forward and shared their stories of not being heard on the campaign trail and not being given a chance to help fix this critical issue. No Democrat can win the White House without the support of people of color, and the black community in particular. If Pete isn’t able to connect with people of color, they will stay home and we will lose to Trump again.
Purple State Progressive 