Progressives Should Welcome Anti-Trump Republicans

Anti-Trump Republican John Kasich.

Often Democrats - especially those on the far left of the spectrum - are often their own worse enemies and put the so-called idealism over practicality and sometimes seem to prefer to see an opponent who is the antithesis of what the claim to support rather that set away from at times ridiculous "purity" tests. They'd rather cut off their nose to spite their face.  With the coming November 2020 election 100 days away, no one is more against the progressive agenda than Donald Trump.  Defeating Trump through any means possible out to be goal number on and anyone who will assist in achieving that goal should be deemed and ally and welcomed into the anti-Trump resistance.  Yet some on the far left remain hostile to the Lincoln Project and other anti-Trump groups filled with former Republicans. It's idiocy of the highest magnitude and ignore the reality comes to defeating Trump and Trumpism, the saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" at least through the presidential election.  NOTHING is more urgent that making Trump a disgraced one term president = and hopefully sending a number of Senate Republicans into forced retirement.  A column in the Washington Post makes the case that progressives should embrace the anti-Trump Republicans.  Here are excerpts: 

Those who genuinely embrace a creed or hold passionately to a point of view are, in principle, always looking for converts. Yet the old believers are often suspicious of the new arrivals.

Sometimes, the converts are annoyingly rigid and sectarian. This can bother those who are long comfortable in their faith and thus at ease with pluralism. But there is also the opposite fear: that the new allies haven’t really changed their thinking and are only trying to sow heretical notions among the orthodox.

It is the second anxiety that animates an unease among some progressives about anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives. This has fostered a limited but vocal backlash against the idea that John Kasich, the Republican former Ohio governor, might address the scaled-back Democratic National Convention on behalf of presumptive nominee Joe Biden.

The easy answer to this apprehension is to say that if you believe (as I certainly do) that defeating President Trump is the prerequisite for anything good happening again in American politics, you should welcome everyone willing to help get the job done. And in light of Trump’s threats to challenge the results if he loses, the health of our democracy may depend on Biden’s winning by a landslide that would leave not a smidgen of doubt about what the voters were saying. This is an all-hands-on-deck proposition.

If the race tightens, the Republican converts could be essential to getting Biden over the line.

Finally, for a progressive program to have any chance in Congress, the Democrats will have to take over the Senate. The bigger Biden’s margin, the better the chances of this happening.

To these progressives, I’d argue that the point of this election, besides defeating Trump, is to shift the country’s political dynamic as decisively in their direction as Ronald Reagan did toward conservatives in 1980. And doing so requires not only welcoming new partners, but also nurturing their second thoughts about a conservative project to which many of them dedicated their lives.

[H]e [Reagan] pulled politics and the intellectual center of gravity to the right by splitting the old New Deal alignment. . . . . . Now, a similar opportunity beckons the left and center-left.

Yes, some Biden Republicans just want to beat Trump and then get back to business as usual. (I still welcome their votes and appreciate their moral revulsion over what my Post colleague George F. Will recently called a “gangster regime.”)

But others are angry at the entire GOP. They are willing to acknowledge, in the wake of the Trump follies and the pandemic, that endless rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy and knee-jerk deregulation have damaged our society. Many of them accept that we need a new and far more equitable social contract That Trump and Trumpism create a national emergency is reason enough to pitch a very big tent. But this election could also open the way for a durable shift in the nation’s dominant public philosophy toward social decency and greater equality. A transformation of that sort requires the witness of converts.

Donald Trump Is Our National Catastrophe

Some likely think I write too much about Donald Trump, but in my view, the man represents an existential threat to constitutional government, the civil rights of many - blacks, gays, and minorities in general - and common decency.  The man is a depraved, malignant narcissist who has fanned the worse prejudices of Americans and who strives daily to divide the country and pander to the ugliest elements of his base: white supremacists/right wing "Christians" (the two are largely synonymous if one follows the "family values" organizations).   Ridding the nation of Trump is nothing less than a battle for America's soul and determining if it will be a nation I want my grandchildren to live in. What I find most frightening is that some otherwise good people refuse to open their eyes to the reality that throughout history there are figures who are pure evil and that Trump is one of them.  He is devoid of any redeeming elements (except in the eyes of racists/religious extremists).  A column in the New York Times looks at the catastrophe which is the Trump/Pence regime.  Here are highlights:

This spring I taught a seminar (via Zoom, of course) at the University of Chicago on the art of political persuasion. We read Lincoln, Pericles, King, Orwell, Havel and Churchill, among other great practitioners of the art. We ended with a study of Donald Trump’s tweets, as part of a class on demagogy. If the closing subject was depressing, at least the timing was appropriate.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities. These are all too precedented. What’s unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

With malice toward all; with charity for none: eight words that encapsulate everything [Trump] this president is, does and stands for.

Political writing doesn’t just provide meaning and purpose. It also offers determination, hope and instruction.

In “The Power of the Powerless,” written at one of the grimmer moments of Communist tyranny, Václav Havel laid out why the system was so much weaker, and the individual so much stronger, than either side knew. In his “Fight on the beaches” speech after Dunkirk, Winston Churchill told Britons of “a victory inside this deliverance” — a reason, however remote, for resolve and optimism. In “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr., explained why patience was no answer to injustice: “When you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity … then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

In a word, great political writing aims to elevate. What, by contrast, does one learn by studying Trump’s utterances?

The purpose of Trump’s presidency is to debase, first by debasing the currency of speech. It’s why he refuses to hire reasonably competent speechwriters to craft reasonably competent speeches. It’s why his communication team has been filled by people like Dan Scavino and Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Sanders.

And it’s why Twitter is his preferred medium of communication. It is speech designed for provocations and put-downs; for making supporters feel smug; for making opponents seethe; for reducing national discourse to the level of grunts and counter-grunts.

Anyone who studies Trump’s tweets carefully must come away impressed by the way he has mastered the demagogic arts. He doesn’t lead his base, as most politicians do. He personifies it. He speaks to his followers as if he were them. He cultivates their resentments, demonizes their opponents, validates their hatreds. He glorifies himself so they may bask in the reflection.

Whatever this has achieved for him, or them, it’s a calamity for us. At a moment when disease has left more than 100,000 American families bereft, we have a president incapable of expressing the nation’s heartbreak. At a moment of the most bitter racial grief since the 1960s, we have a president who has bankrupted the moral capital of the office he holds.

[W]e have a president who wants to replace rule of law with rule by the gun. If Trump now faces a revolt by the Pentagon’s civilian and military leadership (both current and former) against his desire to deploy active-duty troops in American cities, it’s because his words continue to drain whatever is left of his credibility as commander in chief.

[T]he point here isn’t that Trump is responsible for the nation’s wounds. It’s that he is the reason some of those wounds have festered and why none of them can heal, at least for as long as he remains in office. Until we have a president who can say, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural, “We are not enemies, but friends” — and be believed in the bargain — our national agony will only grow worse.

‘Never Trump’ Republicans Endorse Biden

With Bernie Sanders ending his presidential campaign - the Green Party which by default elected Donald Trump is seeking to woe his followers despite Sanders' pledge to support Joe Biden - has set the stage for a full focus on ending America's other national emergency: ending the presidency of Donald Trump.  While Biden was never my ideal candidate, he must become the vehicle by which Trump is sent into retirement (and hopefully, criminal prosecution down the road) and it is urgent that anyone who cares for the rule of law and the progressive policies Sanders endorses get behind Biden.  Even many former Republicans see this truth, so one can only hope that Sanders supporters smell the coffee and get on board to defeat the worse and most dangerous occupant of the White in the nation's history.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at endorsements Biden is receiving.  Here are highlights: 

Former vice president Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, amassed a diverse slate of new endorsements Wednesday from former primary challengers to friends-turned-foes of President Trump.

The list includes Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who was a contender in the Democratic primary; Anthony Scaramucci, onetime Trump champion and short-lived White House communications director; and the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans led by George Conway.

Bennet announced that he was endorsing the former vice president hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped out of the race.

“Americans are asking two questions in this election: Who can beat Donald Trump, and who can get anything done? That candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden, and I am proud to endorse him for President of the United States,” Bennet said in a statement.
 The Lincoln Project is an organization made up of Republicans that cites its mission as defeating “President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.” The most high-profile member is George Conway, husband to White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and frequent Trump critic.

“We are proud to endorse @JoeBiden for President,” the group tweeted. “As America contends with unprecedented loss, we need a leader who can steady the ship, heal our common wounds, and lead us into our next national chapter. Joe Biden has the humanity, empathy and steadiness we need in a leader.”

Sanders Gets More Trump-Like as Never Trump Republicans Back Biden

As Democrats appear to be strongly shifting to support Joe Biden and to be rejecting Bernie Sanders form of populism, Sanders is becoming more Trump-like as he blames "the establishment" and others of conspiring against him rather than admit that just maybe people do not like what Sanders is peddling politically. At the same time, Never Trump Republicans are demonstrating that they are willing to vote for Biden even as they continue to find Sanders toxic and hostile to anyone with differing views and opinions.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Sanders' Trump like behavior.  Here are excerpts:

Populist leaders present themselves as the only authentic voice of the “people.” Therefore, critics in the media are enemies of the people, for to take on the leader is to attack the people. When the leader is rejected at the polls, it cannot be an authentic expression of the people. The system must be rigged; the establishment must be out to get the candidates and, by extension, the people.

We have seen this for the three years President Trump has been in office, and previously in his 2016 campaign. The deep state, the fake news and the elites (not “real” Americans) are out to get him, he says. He insists that all these forces do not respect the people, his followers and the only real Americans.

We are reminded in watching Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as his presidential campaign fizzles, this mind-set is not limited to the right. Sanders had this exchange on ABC’s “This Week”:

SANDERS: Well, one of the things that I was kind of not surprised by is the power of establishment to force Amy Klobuchar, who had worked so hard, Pete Buttigieg, who, you know, really worked extremely hard as well, out of the race. . . . . We’re taking on the political establishment. And what you are seeing now just in the last few weeks is Wall Street, the health-care industry, the billionaire class putting a lot of money into Joe’s campaign.

This is bonkers. Other Democrats got out of the race because voters across the country did not vote for them. Sanders sneers at them as if they are puppets on a string, yanked out of the race by nefarious forces. They actually looked at the facts, saw they could not win and decided Biden had a better chance to unify the country and beat Trump than did a self-proclaimed socialist who cannot resist the urge to pick fights with his own party.

Sanders’s complaint about billionaires giving to Biden’s campaign (they would be limited to $2,800 per person like all other donors) is part of the fixation with attributing opponents’ success to something other than popular opinion.

Sanders keeps insisting he is “winning the support of grass-roots America.” That simply is not so. Biden won 10 of 14 states, driving turnout sky-high in states he won, like Virginia. Sanders’s promised onslaught of new voters has never shown up.

Perhaps he and his snarling online supporters should confront an unpleasant truth: Sanders’s problem is not the establishment or corporate Democrats or billionaires. It is the voters.

Meanwhile, Biden is showing that he can pull in support of independents and Never Trump Republicans - something that might tip the scales in crucial Mid-West states where Sanders' mythical wave of new voters will likely fizzle as it has in state after state.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon.  Here are article highlights:

As more data emerge to explain former Vice President Joe Biden’s stunning victory on Super Tuesday, there are two clear demographics that propelled him: African-American voters and suburban voters with college degrees.

It’s a coalition that helped moderate Democrats flip seven governorships, two Senate seats and about 40 House districts (the newly Democratic suburbs alone would have secured a House majority) from red to blue in 2018. African-Americans have long made up a core of the Democratic voting base, but many of Mr. Biden’s college-educated, suburban supporters are right-leaning independents or moderate Republicans who supported candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney. They don’t want to re-elect Donald Trump. And they’re willing to cross over to vote for a Democrat — a moderate and mainstream Democrat.

These voters might not identify with the “Never Trump” group of conservatives who vociferously oppose the president. But in practice, that’s who they are.

These voters can create winning margins for Democrats in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and North Carolina in the general election.

Their numerical strength was on full display on Super Tuesday in the Virginia and Texas suburbs, which saw 74 percent and 87 percent higher voter turnout, respectively, than four years ago.

The responses to our outreach made clear that these voters are looking not for the democratic socialist revolution that Senator Bernie Sanders would offer as the nominee, but simply for a Democrat they could trust to govern responsibly and end the chaos of Mr. Trump’s presidency. For many lapsed and former Republicans, voting for Mr. Biden is the least-bad option. He’s considerably more moderate than Mr. Sanders and doesn’t pose the threats to the rule of law and constitutional norms that Mr. Trump does. He’s a backstop against the political insanity of the right and the left.

College-educated suburban voters often feel politically homeless, trapped between Mr. Trump’s erratic and divisive nature and a fear of Democrats’ leftward march. Mr. Biden may not offer these voters a galvanizing vision for the future. But to those exhausted by the past three years of political upheaval and nastiness, he offers something even better: basic human decency.

Especially in the focus groups in which Trump voters rate his performance as “somewhat bad” or “very bad,” these right-of-center voters are generally open to voting for Mr. Biden — though not for Mr. Sanders.

It has always been a possibility that Mr. Trump could drive a permanent political realignment in which college-educated suburban voters abandon the Republican Party for good. It remains an open question whether that will come to pass in 2020 and beyond, but the warning signs from Super Tuesday are clear.

The goal in 2020 is to defeat Trump - not force a political revolution that a majority of voters do not want.  It's a reality that Sanders seemingly cannot or will not grasp. 

Buttigieg, Klobuchar and O'Rourke Endorse Biden

I continue to worry whether Joe Biden has it in him to defeat Donald Trump if Biden is the Democrat nominee.  Those worries pale, however, compared to my worries of the 2020 presidential results if Bernie Sanders is the Democrat nominee.  While I might well hold my nose and vote for Sanders while gagging on the verge of vomiting, I suspect many voters will not do so - especially in the half dozen key states that will decide the Electoral College results.  From the outset, Pete Buttigieg said his goal was to see Trump defeated and now, he along with Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke  have all endorsed Joe Biden in the hope of stopping Sanders and a catastrophe in November. Indeed, I have already received emails from Buttigieg's impressive online campaign soliciting donations to the Biden campaign.  It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow on Super Tuesday.  Personally, I hope Sanders gets a severe drubbing (I told the Sanders campaign which had been texting me to delete me from all of their lists).  A piece in the New York Times looks at these latest developments: 

In a last-minute bid to unite the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg on Monday threw their support behind a presidential campaign rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., giving him an extraordinary boost ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries that promised to test his strength against the liberal front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Even by the standards of the tumultuous 2020 campaign, the endorsements from Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg — and their plan to join Mr. Biden at a rally in Dallas on Monday night — was remarkable. Rarely, if ever, have opponents joined forces so dramatically, as Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg went from campaigning at full tilt in the South Carolina primary on Saturday to teaming up on a political rescue mission for a former competitor, Mr. Biden, whom they had once regarded as a spent force.

Rather than delivering a traditional concession speech, Ms. Klobuchar told associates she wanted to leverage her exit to help Mr. Biden and headed directly for the joint rally. Mr. Buttigieg, for his part, endorsed Mr. Biden at a pre-rally stop on Monday evening; he said Mr. Biden would “restore the soul” of the nation as president. And Mr. Biden offered Mr. Buttigieg the highest compliment in his personal vocabulary, several times likening the young politician to his own son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. [T]he crucial question hanging over the fast-moving events was whether any of it would make a difference in Tuesday’s primaries across 15 states and territories, including the critical battlegrounds of California and Texas. Mr. Sanders signaled on Monday that he was ready for a fight against Mr. Biden, and perhaps a long one, if neither man can achieve a decisive early advantage in a nomination fight that still includes Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City. As news emerged of the shift of centrist support toward Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders projected confidence and defiance, dismissing it as a phenomenon of “establishment politicians” supporting one another. That Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg decided to align against Mr. Sanders reflected their assessments of him as a general-election candidate: Both have warned he could lose to Mr. Trump, skeptical that his liberal policy agenda would win him broad support in battleground regions like their Midwestern base.

But the one-two punch also involved their own political interests, since leaving the race spared Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar the possibility of a wilting finish on Tuesday.

It is not uncommon for former presidential rivals to endorse each other later in an election season: The vanquished John Edwards helped Barack Obama conquer Hillary Clinton in 2008, for instance, and in the 2016 Republican primaries, Donald J. Trump earned a crucial seal of approval from an adversary he had handily trounced, Chris Christie.

In that 2016 race, some Republican leaders wanted other candidates to drop out early and unite behind one stop-Trump contender; that never happened . . . .

#NeverSanders

The Issue of Race Continues to Haunt American Politics

Donald Trump uses perhaps the most openly racist calls to racial bigotry seen since the days of the segregationists in the late 1950's and 1960's.  He has been aided in his racist propaganda by white supremacists and white evangelical Christians - a group that hates everyone other than themselves - lead by charlatans and scamvangelists who have used racial resentment and manufactured dangers to gain political power for themselves and, just as importantly, to line their own pockets with money.  The question for Democrats and truly moral people is how to counter hate and racism and persuade a large segment of voters that racism and Trump's divide and conquer agenda does not truly further their interests or well-being.  A lengthy column in the New York Times looks at this difficult issue and the difficulty in finding a counter argument that will convince the "presuadables" that toxic racism is bad for America.  Here are highlights:

Stung by the success of Trump’s anti-immigrant, racist campaign themes in 2016, left-of-center advocacy groups — think tanks, unions, progressive academics and Democratic consultants — are developing tools this year to counter the continuing Republican assault on liberal values, based on the optimistic assumption that the reservoir of white animosity is not so deep that Trump is assured re-election.

These efforts on the left challenge the long history of Republican success in exploiting race . . . . That history points to the relentless power of racial resentment in American politics. Despite polling that shows greater acceptance of racial equality, this issue is as potent a source of political strength for Trump today as it was for Nixon a half century ago.

There are myriad studies, as I have noted (along with many others) that show the continuing effectiveness of race and immigration as wedge issues. These studies continue to appear at an alarming rate.

Take “The Trump Effect: An Experimental Investigation of the Emboldening Effect of Racially Inflammatory Elite Communication” published earlier this month by four political scientists:

We find that exposure to racially inflammatory statements by Trump caused those with high levels of prejudice to be more likely to perceive engagement in prejudiced behavior as socially acceptable.

In other words, if the president of the United States denigrates Muslims, or Hispanics, or African-Americans, then anyone can.

A forthcoming paper by Desmond King and Rogers M. Smith, political scientists at Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, “White Protectionism in America,” makes a strong case that Trump, unlike his Republican predecessors in the White House, has gone far beyond rhetoric and token gestures to substantively address the concerns of his anti-immigrant and socially conservative supporters.

Now let’s look at some of the Democratic and liberal thinking focused on undermining Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy.

The authors, Simon Greer, founder of Cambridge Health Ventures, and Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the foundation, note that

Working-class Americans do not want to be lectured about what their motivations are, and ascribing misogyny or racial animus to any group of potential voters is not a winning strategy for building a coalition.

One of the authors’ central arguments is that liberals have ceded to conservatives a monopoly on such themes and values as faith, family, country and law and order. They have done so because Republicans have “added a meanspirited twist to these mainstream values” as a way of attacking women’s and gay rights, blacks, antiwar protesters and single mothers.

[A] paper that was published last year, that voters are less concerned with candidates’ specific policies than with the values they espouse:

We found that a presidential candidate who framed his progressive economic platform to be consistent with more conservative value concerns like patriotism, family, and respect for tradition — as opposed to more liberal value concerns like equality and social justice — was supported significantly more by conservatives and, unexpectedly, by moderates as well.

Voelkel and Willer conclude by citing the “progressive paradox,” that Americans “support many core progressive economic policies at high levels, yet rarely elect progressive candidates, a paradox widely discussed in academic and popular literature.”

The Race-Class project . . . . . according to the report, these middle ground voters “have concerns about ‘reverse racism’ and discrimination against whites;” a sizable majority agree “focusing on race doesn’t fix anything and may even make things worse;” and “persuadable adults believe that people of color who cannot get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.”

In other words, these persuadable voters provide fertile ground for conservative appeals to racial resentment.

The most effective liberal-Democratic message read:

America’s strength comes from our ability to work together — to knit together a landscape of people from different places and of different races into one nation. For this to be a place of freedom for all, we cannot let the greedy few and the politicians they pay for turn what you look like, where you come from or how much money you have into reasons some of us matter and others don’t. It’s time to stand up for each other and come together. It is time for us to pick leaders who reflect the very best of every kind of American. Together, we can make this a place where freedom is for everyone, no exceptions.

For the Democratic Party, race and immigration remain crucially important in terms of both values and policy. The key question is whether the party is structurally capable — under an extraordinary barrage of hostility directed by Republicans at African-Americans and immigrants — of finding politically effective ways of addressing race and immigration. Has the left wing of the party become so discouraged, so defensive — and so embattled — that it now perceives a critical mass of whites as intractably hardened and unswervingly opposed to minority interests? If moderates and progressives are locked in on either side of such a chasm, what will it take to make peace?

Sadly, Bernie Sanders' "my way or the highway" message does not telegraph the most effective liberal messaging. In a different manner, he is almost as divisive as Trump. 

San Diego Union-Tribune Endorses Buttigieg

The animosity of Amy Klobuchar towards Pete Buttigieg on display last night during the Las Vegas debates will likely heighten in the wake of many seeing Buttigieg's performance as "more presidential" than hers and now Buttigieg's endorsement by the San Diego Union Tribune in a lengthy and reasoned editorial. While I remain conflicted in some ways as to which candidate to back - a friend had us to a Bloomberg event on Tuesday yet I have donated to Buttigieg - the Union-Tribune's reasoning makes the case as to why Buttigieg may be the one who can defeat Trump. Yes, the Trump base will never vote for a gay politician, but then again, they will never vote for a Democrat. Any Democrat.  Thus, the question becomes whether Americans of good will (I believe they are still in the majority) will vote for a gay man just as they voted for Barack Obama. We need a generational change in the leadership of this nation.  My generation and the even older one of many of  the Democrat candidates has left America truly damaged. Here are highlights as to why the Union-Tribune sees Buttigieg as the best choice:

Among the biggest questions in the 2020 presidential election are these:

How will liberals, moderates and independents winnow the Democratic field in the primary election on March 3 when California and 14 other states and territories vote on Super Tuesday?

If the economy stays strong through the general election, can any Democrat defeat Donald Trump, who is building that wall, claims to be the most pro-life president in U.S. history and who in three years has already ensured conservative dominance of federal courts for generations?

What would the United States even look like in 2024 if Trump is re-elected on Nov. 3?  It might be unrecognizable.

America is at a crossroads, even if that is of little or less concern to conservatives given their judicial and social gains under Trump. The sad truth is that four more years of President Donald Trump mean the White House will keep alienating allies, ignoring climate change, sabotaging institutions, tolerating cruelty on Twitter and in real life, and vilifying immigrants at the heart of the American story.

The alternative is a nation that rebuilds its good standing globally and restores decency to a presidency bereft of it while also moving toward a more expansive health care system, more comprehensive and humane immigration reform, reduced carbon emissions, increased gun safety, less national debt and an economy that works for everyone.

There are essentially two paths forward for Democrats, but one on the far left may alienate too many Americans to constitute progress. A middle road is more likely to bring Americans together.

Two candidates can lead the nation down that road with success: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 59, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 38. Both are relatively young, have a Midwestern appeal and will try to work across the aisle — Klobuchar has passed more than 100 bipartisan bills in three terms in the U.S. Senate, Buttigieg emphasizes “how it’s being done” is as important as what gets done, and underscores a need to not have “some kind of equal-and-opposite meanness.” Their approaches paid off in the first two states to vote. . . . . They would also be trailblazers, as the first woman president or first gay president.

It’s close, but in the view of The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, Buttigieg is best suited to beat Trump because of his centrist policies, his military experience, his (admittedly small-scale) executive experience and the enthusiasm he’s inspired, with better fundraising and national polling, bigger campaign crowds and more news coverage than Klobuchar. He has shown he can manage a national campaign successfully. And in a nation that only legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, his message of generational change could actually inspire change.

Of the six strong Democratic candidates left, half are 77- or 78-year-old men, two are women, one of whom is 70, and then there is Buttigieg.  He may have only been mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana, but his fresh approach is transformational. He came out in an op-ed in a local newspaper while seeking reelection in 2015, choosing his ability to love openly over his presumed ability to advance more easily in politics.

At this early stage of the 2020 election, what is clear (and what fills us with hope) is that voters seem more eager to choose a moderate candidate than a progressive candidate to beat Trump. The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, which is generally centrist and highly critical of Trump’s harsh rhetoric and evisceration of civic norms, evaluated the field this month and decided that our endorsement would go to either Buttigieg or Klobuchar.

Sanders inspires passion among those who want dramatic changes but in our view is too far to the left and there are lingering concerns about his health after a heart attack. Former Vice President Joe Biden was solid in that role, but he has been an uninspiring candidate every time he’s run for president; in this cycle, he has seemed uneven and out of touch with modern America and its political climate.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg . . . his overdue and ultimately inadequate disavowal of discriminatory stop-and-frisk policies, combined with comments in 2008 about the value of “redlining” and in 2015 about the value of Xeroxing descriptions of “male minorities 15 to 25,” and throwing young men of color “against the wall,” gave us greater pause.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is an intellectual giant with a mountain of policy proposals, displaying a tremendous preparation for the job, but her Medicare for All proposal ultimately proved a bridge too far for us, particularly when she mishandled the rollout of the details of its cost. Sweeping changes make sense, but they must be sold to the public, not imposed.

That led us to Klobuchar and Buttigieg. Importantly, she has something that he lacks: experience in Washington, D.C., and a long record of bipartisanship. But a report in The New York Times that she is a demanding and “often dehumanizing” boss is troubling. And her prior career as an aggressive prosecutor is worrisome in an era when the long-term fallout from the overly harsh punishment of redeemable people has given new momentum to criminal justice reform. . . . Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, told The Washington Post. “Rather than taking steps to help mitigate some of those concerns and issues, during her tenure in office, her policies exacerbated the situation.”

Questions about African American support have also dragged on Buttigieg, whose record as mayor shows his top staff didn’t mirror his city’s diversity and includes a controversy with an African American police chief whom Buttigieg demoted. But the way Buttigieg addressed the fatal shooting of a black man by a white officer in his hometown during this campaign suggests he’ll approach tests directly — that he’ll show up and step up.

Michael Patton, president of the local NAACP chapter, supports him, saying, “Pete is someone who has done significant work in our community.”

Then there’s something progressives should keep in mind: Buttigieg is running as a moderate, but he points out his “Medicare for all who want it” proposal would make him the most progressive president in 50 years. He also points out that when Democrats have been elected to the White House in that span, they have been young, first-time presidential candidates who were new to the national scene and “calling the country to its highest values.” He offers a message of hope and change when the nation needs both.

There’s lots to like about Buttigieg, so let’s look at what may make some voters uncomfortable.

Should his age matter? French President Emmanuel Macron was elected at age 39. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, were 37 when they were elected. So … no, relative youth shouldn’t matter.

Is he inexperienced? While 16 presidents have been senators, three — Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Johnson and Grover Cleveland — have been mayors. Executive experience is executive experience. Buttigieg has it. And like all other presidents, he could choose smart Cabinet members.

Lastly, his sexuality. Buttigieg’s election would be something to celebrate because it would smash a ceiling and inspire a range of people to be themselves, but his sexuality is irrelevant to this job, to any job.

There are some people who will say Americans won’t elect a gay president. As they said of Barack Obama that Americans wouldn’t elect a black president. As they say of Klobuchar and Warren (and said of popular vote winner Hillary Clinton) that Americans won’t elect a woman president.

That is true only until it isn’t. . . . . People who discount Buttigieg because of his sexuality are just behind the times. People who discount him because of his youth or inexperience are just behind another candidate. That can change quickly, too, as votes get counted and campaigns get suspended ahead of a convention.

The New York Times Editorial Board asked Buttigieg how he would balance his devout Episcopalian faith with his duties as commander in chief, and he showed both his wisdom and his eloquence: “I think you have to accept the reality that you are living and working in a broken world just as we are all broken human beings and try to order your steps in a way that brings greater good than harm.”

That resonated with us, for its lofty rhetoric and grounding in humanity and hope: “greater good.”

It’s time for a generational change. It’s time to make America good again.  Vote Pete Buttigieg for president of the United States.

The Reemergence of the Moderate Democrat

Bernie Sanders supporters remind me of Virginia Republicans except for the fact that rather being knuckle dragging Neanderthals who relentlessly said (and continue to say) the only way for the Virginia GOP to win is to run "true conservatives" while Sanders' crowd says only running an extreme liberal - a socialist in fact - will lead to a Democrat victory in November 2020.   Obviously, the 2019 Virginia elections demonstrated that the far right GOP line of reasoning was false as the GOP ran reactionary candidates and suffered a huge defeat.  Similarly, in 2018, outside of liberal strongholds, moderate Democrats fared better than extreme liberals in the 2018 mid-term elections. These objective lessons in reality continue to be lost on both the GOP far right and the Democrat far left. So far, the two Democrat rounds of the 2020 nomination process have similarly shown that the vast majority of voters want a moderate candidate.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this reality and suggests that the media claims that the Democrat Party has moved far left is a media trope.  Here are column highlights:

For all the thunder on the Bernie Sanders left, the most interesting trend in the Democratic campaign this year may be the reemergence of the moderate wing of the party, led by charismatic new voices: former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

In our barbell view of politics, where all the weight seems to be at the two ends, this reality may be obscured: Far more Americans (42 percent) described themselves as independents than as Democrats (27 percent) or Republicans (30 percent) in the most recent Gallup survey of party affiliation. The percentage of people who see themselves in this broad middle has rarely been higher.

The Iowa caucuses fiasco robbed Buttigieg of the impact of his victory there. But it was a startling performance by a young, relatively inexperienced candidate whose strongest message has been the impracticality of social programs proposed by Sanders and other progressives.

While Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, posted a win Tuesday in New Hampshire, the bigger stories there, arguably, were Buttigieg’s strong second-place showing and Klobuchar’s breakout performance in finishing third. The two moderates together carried 44.2 percent of the vote, compared with Sanders’s 25.8 percent. Even if you add Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 9.2 percent to Sanders’s total, the balance is toward the center, not the left.

The more voters have looked at progressives’ expensive programs, the warier they have become. Warren never recovered from her embrace of compulsory Medicare. Voters see former vice president Joe Biden as a spent force, but they still want a pragmatic candidate who can beat President Trump. That yearning for a strong moderate helped Buttigieg and Klobuchar, but the next beneficiary could be former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg in the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries.

Here’s another theme that’s often overlooked: The 2020 successes of moderate Democrats are a continuation of the 2018 midterm election results. The left wing of the Democratic Party, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), got the attention then. But it was the centrist candidates who swung Republican districts into the Democratic column and thus delivered the House for Democrats in 2018.

“Moderate” is one of those limp political descriptors, like “centrist” or “bipartisan,” that suggest a soggy lump in the middle. But the campaign proposals from Buttigieg, Klobuchar and even Bloomberg offer significant change — and in achievable ways. They get that the status quo isn’t working for most Americans. Their proposals for dealing with climate change, wealth inequality and health care share a common virtue: They could actually be implemented without busting the budget or further polarizing the country.

Trump seems to think he can win reelection by dividing the country even more savagely. But for a frazzled, fatigued electorate, maybe this is the season for the “fix it” faction that offers realistic plans for solving problems.

The Democrats can blow this election, for sure. Moderates may have the numbers in the aggregate, but aggregates don’t win elections. Sanders has passion, and unless Democrats can coalesce around a pragmatic rival, the Milwaukee convention could be a bloodbath and the November election a blowout for Trump.

Trump tosses new stink bombs every day. His fans love this carnival of resentment, but polls have shown since the beginning of his presidency that a majority of Americans don’t. Trump World is about raw power, to be sure. But there are some interesting, easily overlooked signs early in this 2020 campaign that maybe the shouters won’t win.

Convincing Sanders' base of this reality may prove as impossible as convincing the GOP far right in Virginia that their extremism is their biggest obstacle to electoral victory. 

Is Joe Biden's Campaign Approaching a Free Fall?

As numerous posts have indicated, I have never seen Joe Biden as the Democrats' best bet for defeating Donald Trump in November.  Indeed, as noted, he reminds me of Bob Dole who lost badly in his presidential contest.  Both men have remarkable resumes and credentials, yet lack that ability to inspire enthusiasm and excitement - something that will be needed to save America from the nightmare of a Trump second term. Bernie Sanders inspires excitement in his cult-like followers but seems to have little ability to push beyond his 25% level of support and inspires dread in the other 75% of Democrats who see his nomination as a guarantee that Trump will be reelected.  The seeming beneficiary of this state of play is Michael Bloomberg as noted in a column in the New York Times here and a piece in Politico that looks at Biden's sinking prospects and the beginning of the flight of black supporters from Biden's sinking ship.  Here are highlights from Politico:  

Moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill have begun to confront a future without Joe Biden — and are scrambling to find a centrist alternative who can topple both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

And a growing number of Capitol Hill Democrats say they’re turning to billionaire Mike Bloomberg, a former New York mayor who became a trusted ally after his personal fortune helped Democrats recapture the House in 2018.

Publicly, moderate Democrats insist there’s plenty of time until Super Tuesday, when Biden or Bloomberg could emerge as the frontrunner. But anxiety is rising on both sides of the Capitol that a Sanders ticket could cost the party not just the race for the White House but also of control of Congress — while exposing raw ideological tensions within the party ahead of November.

The soul-searching within the establishment wing of the Democratic Party comes after Sanders solidified his frontrunner status in Iowa and New Hampshire, which produced a pair of cringeworthy finishes for Biden. The former vice president did so poorly in New Hampshire that he ditched his own election night watch party to head to South Carolina, possibly giving an opening to Bloomberg, who skipped the first four contests.

“I’m feeling a momentum shift to Bloomberg right now,” said Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), who endorsed Biden in the summer and plans to stick with him.

One of the most glaring examples of the change in tide on Capitol Hill is a trio of Bloomberg endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday — a not-so-subtle show of force against Biden, who remains the favored candidate among black voters nationally.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), a senior member of the CBC who endorsed Bloomberg on Wednesday, declined to say whether he thinks Sanders could beat Trump and added he would fully support the eventual nominee. But Meeks — who fought Bloomberg over his stop-and-frisk policies as mayor — said the trajectory of the race is what persuaded him to weigh in now.

“There’s a number of [candidates] who are ideologically where I am. But I also had to add to that electability,” Meeks said. “And that’s a tremendous consideration we’ll have to make because you can have the best ideology but if you’re not electable, then where are we? We’ve got to win.”

When asked whether Biden’s faltering was a factor, Meeks didn’t deny it: “To say that it was zero factor would not be the truth,” he said. “It was one of many factors because you’ve got to be able to pull it together, you’ve got to make sure that one has the ability to win.”

Several other CBC members said privately that they expected other black lawmakers who previously supported Biden to soon come out for Bloomberg.

But there are some concerns that Bloomberg, who has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the race so far, remains untested heading into Super Tuesday on March 3: He hasn’t gone head-to-head at a single debate this cycle, though he is expected to qualify for Nevada next week.

Some Democrats also fear a potential drip-drip of controversies, like a 2015 audio tape that surfaced this week on which Bloomberg defends his stop-and-frisk policies in language that have prompted accusations of racism.

For many Democrats, there is a real fear about Biden’s staying power, especially if Senate Republicans make good on their threat to investigate Hunter Biden’s role at a Ukrainian gas company now that Trump’s impeachment trial is over.

Two self-described moderate Democrats did finish strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, led by former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But Democrats said privately they’re desperate for a candidate with the cash and name recognition to beat Trump — something they don’t know if Buttigieg or Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who finished a strong third in New Hampshire, can deliver — without exposing them to ceaseless GOP attacks on socialism.

"There's a lot of people right now on the fence," said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), a prominent supporter of Klobuchar. Asked about Klobuchar's surge, Phillips said: "She is being elevated in more and more conversations every day. That said, so is Michael Bloomberg."

The most intense fears are among the 30 Democrats sitting in districts that Trump won in 2016, who fear they can’t compete in 2020 if Sanders becomes the nominee and spurs months of “Medicare for All” attacks from GOP groups in their districts.

Some of the most endangered incumbents, like Rep. Anthony Brindisi of New York, have acknowledged they wouldn’t be able to support Sanders if he does become the nominee, hoping at best that voters split their ticket with Trump in November.

[S]ome Senate Democrats have expressed concern about the effect Sanders could have on Democratic challengers in swing-state races. While Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Wednesday Democrats would coalesce around whoever the nominee is, others are not so sure.

“Sen. Sanders’ argument is that his candidacy will inspire and mobilize a whole new sector of our country that doesn’t typically vote,” added Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden backer.

But Coons argued that he has yet to see evidence of that based on voter turnout in Iowa, which was lower than expected. New Hampshire turnout, however, did set a new record on Tuesday. “He may make it harder rather than easier for us to take back the Senate,” Coons said.

“If Biden announced today that he was going to drop out, you’d have an avalanche of African Americans around the country going to Bloomberg,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who endorsed Biden last September and plans to stick with him.

“It would be foolish for anyone to say what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire is not going to have an impact, it will,” Cleaver said of Biden’s performance in the past 10 days. “There’s no question Nevada is extremely important.”

The Democrats’ Circular Firing Squad Only Helps Trump

With the New Hampshire primary tomorrow, some of the would be Democrat 2020 presidential nominees seem to have forgotten a few basic principals: trashing your opponents (i) it invites return fire from your opponents, and (ii) in the long run likely only helps Donald Trump, a many who poses an existential threat to America and its democracy.  Among the worse offenders?  Bernie Sanders, of course, followed by his followers who bear a frightening resemblance to Trump's MAGA followers when it comes to blind zealotry (many refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and, by default, voted for Trump - four years latter, they seemingly have learned NOTHING). Making matters worse, Sanders is not even a Democrat but rather is feigning to be a Democrat based on what's in it for him.  Trump, no doubt is watching and applauding the Democrat's self-inflicted injury.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this disturbing phenomenon (a second piece in the New York Times found here does the same). Here are excerpts from the Post:

A few years ago, I was on a research trip to Belarus, a country known as “the last dictatorship in Europe.” The government is led by Alexander Lukashenko, an autocrat who rules by fear, repression and violence. Minsk — the capital and a living urban museum for the Soviet Union — is still crawling with secret police.

In the shadow of brutalist Soviet-era buildings, I met with several major figures from the Belarusan opposition. From presidential candidates to activists, they had all correctly identified the problem: Change was impossible until Lukashenko was toppled. So long as he was in charge, all was lost. Nevertheless, every time I mentioned one opposition candidate to another opposition figure, the response was similar: “She’s not part of the real opposition” or “He’s basically the same as Lukashenko.” . . . . When election day rolled around, they would stay home rather than vote for their tarnished second or third choice.

Authoritarian regimes teach a crucial lesson: So long as the opposition attacks itself, the ruler survives. Divide and conquer is an effective strategy for incumbents to remain in power — but it works best if the opposition devours itself first.

The United States is obviously not Belarus. We’re still a democracy. But we are facing an unprecedented challenge to our long-standing institutions. If Democrats don’t learn the right lesson, President Trump will win, too.

Yes, it’s important to get the right candidate — and that candidate needs to be battle-tested in a competitive primary. And in ordinary elections, you should vote for any plausible candidate that most matches your ideological and policy preferences. But the 2020 election is no ordinary contest. It’s an emergency. If you’re being driven off a cliff, you don’t need to find your favorite Formula-1 driver. You just need someone to take the wheel and stop the impending carnage.

Trump’s reelection would constitute an existential threat to our republic. He has already tried — repeatedly — to subvert our free and fair elections. He will do so again. When democracy itself is on the ballot, pro-democracy forces don’t have the luxury of just winning the argument. They have to win the election.

In 2016, Trump took a scorched-earth path to the White House. He understood that he could never win over much of the country. But he could try to torch his opponent so much that millions of voters would see him as the lesser evil, vote third party or stay home. It worked — just barely.

In early 2020, Trump’s approval ratings are underwater in eight crucial swing states: Michigan (minus 12 percent), Pennsylvania (minus 6), Wisconsin (minus 6), Arizona (minus 4), Florida (minus 4), Georgia (minus 5), Iowa (minus 5) and North Carolina (minus 7). He’s barely afloat in Texas. Trump will lose to a highly motivated and unified opposition that nominates a candidate who can win in those crucial states. If Democrats let Trump divide and discourage them — or Democratic voters refuse to be ruthlessly pragmatic in picking a candidate — he will stay in power.

To win, Trump needs Democrats to be complicit. They have to turn on each other. They have to administer endless purity tests. And they have to stay mired in petty spats rather than reminding voters of the felonies, the vulgarities, the racism, the sexism, the endless scandals, and the high crimes and misdemeanors of a wannabe despot. Heading into New Hampshire’s potentially decisive primary, Trump has so far found quite a few willing accomplices.

[I]n a recent Emerson poll, just 53 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters and 50 percent of Andrew Yang supporters said that they would vote for a Democratic nominee who wasn’t their favored choice, compared to 90 percent of Warren supporters, 87 percent of Biden supporters, and 86 percent of Buttigieg supporters. I understand that frustration. But if you don’t like the eventual Democrat at the top of the ticket, at least vote for democracy.

We have to keep laser-focused on the big picture: Donald Trump is an unprecedented threat to the republic. Democrats need to lay out a strong and positive vision that contrasts with Trump’s divisiveness and chaos. In the meantime, they cannot afford to blow up their opponents’ blemishes into disqualifying disasters. Democratic voters need to pick someone who can win and then unify behind that person. Unless that happens, we all lose.

Sadly, I remain convinced that Sanders cannot win. He should not even be running as a Democrat. Likewise, some others languishing in the polls and the Iowa vote need to stop the attacks on those who might be able to defeat Trump.

Buttigieg Reluctantly Embraces his Barrier-Breaking Candidacy

Being the first in breaking barriers in any category can be difficult and leave one fighting stereotypes that others will force upon you even though you do not see them as defining you. Being one of the few, if not the first, openly gay attorney in the area where I live fifteen plus years ago was difficult and not something I really chose - I was forced from a firm for being gay as part of a law firm merger and then found myself more or less radioactive because I was gay when I tried to find a position with a new corporate law firm.  Ultimately, I had to launch my own firm and bide my time until minds changed in the region.  My rescuers, if you will, were largely members of the Hindu community who looked to my legal knowledge and my ability to take care of their legal needs rather define me by my sexual orientation (I was perhaps aided by the fact that the same elements in the region who hate gays also were and still are no fiends to Hindus).  

I say all of this because I get where Pete Buttigieg is coming from when he downplays that he is gay - much to the outrage of radical gays - and wants voters instead to focus on his intelligence and reasoned, analytical approach to issues.  Sadly, he faces an uphill task with black voters who, despite protestations to the contrary in survey after survey tend to be prove to be more homophobic than whites (I have black gay friends who continue to live largely in the closet for constant fear or rejection by their homophobic churches and families).  A piece in Politico looks at Buttigieg's balancing act and reluctance at being a barrier breaker.  Here are excerpts:  

[T]he moment when the candidate and his husband knew that Pete had made history was on Tuesday. They were together backstage at an early evening event in Laconia, N.H. Buttigieg was waiting to go on stage when the Iowa Democratic Party released the bulk of the caucus results, which now show Buttigieg with a one-delegate lead over Bernie Sanders.

“I remember him saying,” Buttigieg told me, “just to stop and think about what this would mean to so many kids that are peeking out of the closet door.”

This was not a story that Buttigieg offered up, but one I had to coax out of him. He likes to say that he’s “not running to be the gay president of the United States,” but rather “to be a president for everybody.” Several packed days on the campaign trail in New Hampshire have featured only a few moments when the history-making nature of his Iowa victory has shone through, most notably when he choked up during a town hall on CNN discussing how his candidacy might affect “a kid somewhere in a community wondering if he belongs or she belongs.”

But for the most part, the historical impact of a gay man winning Iowa has been something that has been thrust upon Buttigieg — by the media, by proud gay activists, by Chasten in that moment backstage — rather than something that he has boasted about.

In recent years there have been vastly different approaches to identity politics in the Democratic Party. Some candidates, like Barack Obama in 2008, have played down their race or gender or sexual orientation, knowing the media and voters who cared about it would play it up. Others have run definitionally as rooted in a specific minority community. The pattern has been that the first to have a realistic shot at breaking a barrier is more circumspect.

Buttigieg is in the complicated space of being a barrier breaker: He’s willing to celebrate and ruminate on the history when pressed, but being defined as a gay candidate is not part of his strategy to win.

When I first asked him if he’d thought much about it, he pivoted to familiar talking points about the race. “No, not really,” he said. “You know, we're very focused on the road ahead now and we’re in New Hampshire, it's a state that thinks for itself and doesn't want to be told what to do by Iowa or anyone else. So really we’ve just been keeping our heads down.”

Almost nobody predicted that Buttigieg would win Iowa. He was a distant third in polling averages and the conventional wisdom held that other campaigns, like Elizabeth Warren’s, had superior organizations. In hindsight perhaps it’s on the nose that the McKinsey guy would be the one to master caucus math. His campaign has frequently been compared to Obama’s and he relied on some of the same advisers who steered Obama’s caucus win with a relentless focus on unity and shared values, a gauzy concept that is often mocked by Buttigieg’s online detractors.

“Honestly,” he said, “I think it was mainly the vision that we're putting forward: this idea that we need to turn the page, that the answers are gonna come from outside Washington, that we needed to reach out to everybody who will have to be part of that majority that will defeat Donald Trump, in rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas, and calling everybody into that vision.
 [E]ven if he wins here, Buttigieg is unlikely to be rewarded with the quick consolidation of his party around him in the same way that Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 — two campaigns that knocked out their opponents by winning Iowa and New Hampshire — did. Those candidates had little to prove among non-white constituencies, but Buttigieg still faces deep skepticism.
 If he makes the turn into South Carolina with a pair of victories, or strong showings, he will be facing an unprecedented situation in which the early — overwhelmingly white — states picked the Democratic candidate who is the least popular among black voters, the most important demographic in the primaries.

Joe Biden, who is relying on limping into South Carolina with support from black voters intact, has been pillorying Buttigieg over his record on race. Buttigieg said he had a simple message to overcome the doubts, one that will be buoyed by the results in Iowa and (perhaps) New Hampshire by then: a relentless focus on electability.

“When I'm thinking about black voters in South Carolina,” he said, “I think a lot of that too is about wanting to know that we're putting together a campaign that can win. Nobody's feeling the pain of living under this president more than Americans of color. So many voters I talk to make clear that their top priority is defeating Donald Trump, and I think we have to demonstrate that.

Buttigieg’s rise is absurdly improbable. He has proven a lot of skeptics wrong and his theory of completely changing the psychology of voters in South Carolina by winning Iowa and New Hampshire can’t be dismissed. “We're now in the process of show versus tell,” he said.

At an event late in the day Saturday in Manchester, I ran into Andy Frank, one of Buttigieg’s fellow students at Harvard who was a year behind him (class of 2005). Frank had been in Iowa as an organizer for his old friend and saw the Buttigieg machine spring into action on caucus day and master the convoluted process.

“He always does his homework, Frank said. “He breaks down a problem and solves it.”