By Michael McCarthy and Catherine Lin
Note: the ideas and opinions in these pieces do not necessarily reflect the stance of the editorial board at the Bi-College News.
“The Pro,” by Michael McCarthy, Staff Writer
Now that the Democratic candidates have been winnowed to a still-large but manageable lot of ten—because why not let Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, and Andrew Yang think they’re going to be president for just a little bit longer—it’s come time to select who will be the heavy-hitters and featherweights in the primaries. Some of them are obvious—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and perhaps Cory Booker—but one remains anomalous: Pete Buttigieg. The well-spoken, clean-cut mayor from South Bend, Indiana lacks the experience and fame of many other candidates, but nevertheless, the anomaly continues. Buttigieg continually bests the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, the congressman from El Paso, and the Senator from New Jersey. Can he carry this momentum all the way to the White House?
First off, he has managed a massive fundraising campaign impressive not just in the amount of capital raised, but in the variety of donors attracted. Whereas Biden has depended on the Democratic Party’s wealthy donors and Sanders and Warren have focused on grass-roots approaches, Buttigieg has done both, putting him in the top-tier of candidates in terms of fundraising. Buttigieg appealed to 294,000 donors of varying income levels in the second fundraising quarter. He has hosted fundraising events where tickets cost $2,800 per person, the maximum donation allowed under federal law, and others where tickets cost $15. This led to a total sum of $24.8 million in the second quarter, $6.4 million more than Sanders’ campaign. As far as fundraising goes, he is second only to Biden, placing him further ahead than many candidates widely deemed more likely to win the presidency.
Much of this support comes from him being an openly gay candidate; LGBTQ+ groups were his first major donors. In addition to being gay, he has many other descriptions that play well in Democratic elections: he is a Harvard grad, Rhodes scholar, veteran, and is progressively religious.
None of this should diminish, however, the adversity he has overcome. Buttigieg was elected mayor as an openly gay candidate in a conservative town in a conservative state (Vice President Mike Pence was Indiana’s governor at the time). His military service and scholarly reputation should not be discounted on account of his youth. Rather, his intellect and “pragmatic progressivism” should be welcomed in an age when the president has not fully grasped English.
When it comes to his bona fides as a candidate, Mayor Pete is faced with his most repeated criticism: that he is just that, a mayor. How can the mayor of a sleepy college town possibly imagine himself as president, and why should the American people ever trust such a man with the enormous responsibilities of the office? To begin, South Bend is far from sleepy. It has a population of over 100,000 and is the fourth largest city in Indiana. It has also felt the full brunt of the same economic trends that motivate blue-collar workers to vote for Donald Trump: the closing of factories, population decline, and economic stagnation. As mayor, Buttigieg transformed South Bend from a dilapidated post-industrial city to a nascent technological hub through the promotion of small business and the destruction of thousands of unoccupied, decrepit houses across the city. One could argue that he presided over a Rust-Belt revival that many wish for in “Trump Country.”
Of course, Buttigieg is not without his faults. He failed to diversify the police force as mayor and faced criticism after a black man, Eric Logan, was shot and killed by a white police officer. This tragic event highlighted his inability to appeal to black voters, seen clearly in a CNN poll this month showing his African-American support at just 2%. To compensate for this, Buttigieg has proposed the Douglass Plan, an agenda that would direct 25% of federal spending to businesses owned by marginalized groups to support these communities economically. By contrast, Warren postponed her campaign for months until she finished her apology tour with Native American groups, but not once has she put forth a plan to address the needs of that community. Harris, despite having pushed for innocent prisoners to remain in jail during her tenure as a prosecutor, has not deemed a reckoning with race a necessary part of her campaign. Far more than any other candidate’s efforts, the Douglass Plan is as honest an apology for Buttigieg’s record on race as can be made.
None of this guarantees that Buttigieg will win, but it does prove that he has as good a chance as any other candidate at snatching the nomination, followed by the presidency. His measured charisma, logically thorough policies, and honest reckoning with his faults make him an unusual candidate and thus an unpredictable one. When he first entered the race, few anticipated that he would come this far. Perhaps, in a little over a year, we will again be marveling at how far he has managed to go.
“The Con,” by Catherine Lin, Staff Editor
He learned Norwegian on the toilet. He isolated himself on a cargo ship while studying for exams at Oxford. Since the start of his campaign in January, Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has captivated the media with his near-mythical erudition and earned a place among the top five in the Democratic primaries. As a result, the media frenzy has created an illusion of seriousness for a candidate that is unlikely to reach the Oval Office, and a distraction for a party looking not just for victory against President Donald Trump, but also for a direction for the future.
Unlike the true Democratic frontrunners, Buttigieg is extremely inexperienced. Even former president Barack Obama, a relatively unknown first-term senator in 2008, had experience in the national arena and in state government before he became president. Yet, Buttigieg believes himself the best person to run America—a country of more than 300 million people—with no political experience beyond serving as mayor of South Bend, a city of just over 100,000 and only the fourth-largest in his state.
While Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential run in 2016 did show that a lengthy résumé does not a viable candidate make, President Donald Trump’s election was anomalous and will hopefully remain so. Buttigieg also does not match Trump in his willingness to subvert and disregard established conventions. Rather, his polished campaign paints him as a James Joyce-reading anti-Trump, making the comparison even more specious.
Buttigieg’s record in Indiana, which voted for a Republican candidate in six of the last seven presidential elections, along with his positive reputation among right-wing pundits (conservative commentator Brit Hume called him an “impressive candidate”), lend credence to his electability despite his lack of experience. But before his centrist appeal has any chance to matter, he has to first win the primaries. Buttigieg’s impressive fundraising numbers obscure the actual shakiness of his base, as he appeals to a narrow (white, highly educated) slice of the Democratic electorate. A May Post and Courier survey showed him polling at zero percent among African-Americans in South Carolina, a crucial early state. Though he has released his flamboyantly named Douglass Plan to tackle racial injustice in an effort to mitigate his unpopularity, his bold promises lack currency when his checkered record on race has already been highlighted on the national stage after police in his home city shot and killed a black man.
Another distinction between Buttigieg and the Democratic primary’s actual frontrunners is his lack of a consistent roadmap for the country. Joe Biden markets a nostalgia for, as he is fond of saying, the “Obama-Biden” era. Bernie Sanders, the perennial progressive firebrand, brings an authentic commitment to democratic socialism dating back to the ‘70s. Elizabeth Warren, with her “I have a plan for that” motto, has set the pace of the primaries with her detailed policy proposals.
Without any coherent vision of the future to articulate, Buttigieg runs on who he is, not what he believes. Yet, his intellectual qualifications are hardly unique within the presidential field—his fellow candidate Cory Booker is also a young Ivy League graduate and Rhodes scholar, not to mention a former mayor known for his telegenic qualities and social media savvy. Of course, Buttigieg’s candidacy is unique in that he would be the United States’ first openly gay president. But after his May speech to the LGBTQ+ rights group Human Rights Campaign repudiating identity politics, basing the value of his candidacy on his identity would be the height of hypocrisy.
Buttigieg is undeniably a skilled politician, having outlasted far more experienced candidates and captured national attention with his youth, charisma, and eloquence. But given his inexperience and vacuousness, he has little to add to the primaries and to the conversation about the future of the Democratic Party.
Image credit: Politico
