Biden Confronts a Growing Threat: Pete Buttigieg

Like many former Republicans who have become Democrats by default - being an Independent leaves one with no ability to influence party politics and/or candidate selection - to me the most important aspect of 2020 is seeing Trump removed from office either through impeachment (not likely give the morally bankrupt Senate Republicans) or electoral defeat.  Thus, the overriding concern becomes one of which Democrat primary candidate can inspire voters and get them to turn out and vote Democrat.  Some friends want Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to be the standard bearer, while I fear they are too liberal and could cause another Electoral College victory for Trump even as they won the popular vote. Others want Joe Biden who is seemingly popular with black voters but but totally uninspiring to younger voters. Then there's Pete Buttigieg, the other somewhat moderate Democrat who has a message of the need for generational change in leadership yet has in the view of some the albatross of being gay hanging over him - polls show 36% would never vote for him, yet this is probably the same 36% that would vote for Trump even if he molested a woman on video. Yet, in Iowa, Buttigieg seems to be rising.  Here are excepts from a piece in Politico: 

Joe Biden dropped to fourth place in Iowa, according to a new poll released Friday, his worst showing to date in the pivotal early state.  A few hours later, at the largest gathering to date for any 2020 event, it was clear why.

While Biden delivered a solid performance on stage before a crowd of 13,500 Democrats at the state party’s Liberty & Justice dinner, he was overshadowed and outshined by the candidate who just passed him in the polls — Pete Buttigieg.

At the massive state party event known for its catalytic effect on campaigns — it’s widely remembered as a turning point for Barack Obama’s Iowa fortunes in 2007 — Buttigieg captured the audience’s imagination, articulating a case for generational change.

“I didn’t just come here to end the era of Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said to a roaring crowd of supporters. “I’m here to launch the era that must come next.”

The South Bend, Ind., mayor’s speech offered an insight into his recent surge here, and why he is threatening to eclipse the former vice president in a state where Biden has been steadily losing ground since summer.

Ann Selzer, who heads the respected Iowa Poll, said her most recent poll showed 75 percent of those surveyed wanted a nominee who could inspire new voters to show up.

“Something I think is rather telling is those who want someone who represents a new generation of leadership,” Selzer said, noting that 57 percent of potential caucus-goers wanted new leadership versus 28 percent who wanted someone who had a long history of serving in government. “Who is that if it’s not Joe Biden?”

According to the New York Times/Siena College poll that placed Biden in fourth place in Iowa, the former vice president was showing little appeal among younger voters — only 2 percent of those under 45 years old said they planned to caucus for him.

Buttigieg, by contrast, has muscled his way into contention in the first-in-the-nation caucus state by steadily building crowds and rapidly expanding his presence in the state. In the last month alone, Buttigieg has doubled his staff presence while opening 20 offices across Iowa.

[T]he Indiana mayor is also swamping his opponents in digital advertising, something that’s been hard to miss in Iowa.

“I cannot overstate how many Buttigieg ads I see,” said Sinovic, pointing to data showing Buttigieg’s national digital spending numbers surpassing Biden almost five-to-one. “It’s just a massive outspending right now.”

Through his spending and organizing efforts, Buttigieg has managed to reshape the top tier into a 4-way contest that also includes Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

“You might expect that a frontrunner is going to lose some ground as other candidates become more visible,” said Selzer. “It’s not just that there’s not enough numbers to go around. It’s that he’s not wearing well. It’s the trend, it’s the decline.”

For her part, Warren, who had perhaps the largest display of support in the Wells Fargo Arena, seemed to take a swipe at Biden, with whom she had tangled earlier Friday after he criticized her plans to fund Medicare for All. “If the most we can promise is business as usual after Donald Trump then Democrats will lose,” Warren said. “Fear and complacency does not win elections. Hope and courage wins elections.”

Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor and ex-Dept. of Agriculture secretary, shrugged off Warren and Buttigieg’s rising poll numbers in the state, saying neither have truly been tested just yet.

“She hasn’t had a worst day yet — none of these campaigns have except for Vice President Biden,” said Vilsack, who served with Biden in the Obama administration and hosted a house party for him in July. “And the thing about Biden is he’s still standing. The question is will the rest of them still be standing after they’ve taken a punch? We’ll see.”

I continue to have a bad gut feeling that Biden is not the strongest candidate that some would have one believe. 

Pete Buttigieg and Husband Make History on Cover of TIME

Even as the Trump/Pence regime announces yet another attack on LGBT Americans through a regulation that would allow "Christian" healthcare workers - perhaps even ambulance drivers - to refuse to treat LGBT patients and others who offend their religious sensibilities, something remarkable has happened.  Pete Buttigieg and his husband (to the abject horror and character assassination attempts of Christofascists and those who prostitute themselves to them politically) have made the cover of Time Magazine with a caption  "First Family."  Where Buttigieg's campaign will go is anyone's guess as more and more Democrats, many totally unknown to the general public, throw their hats in the nomination ring.    Here are some excerpts from a very lengthy story:  

As Pete Buttigieg addressed supporters off a back porch in Marshalltown, Iowa, the Devil was whispering his name. “Pete,” the Devil hissed into a microphone. “You’re sooo smart, Pete.”

Buttigieg ignored the heckler, plowing forward with his stump speech about American decency as his husband ­Chasten looked on. “Pete,” the Devil whispered. “I want the heartland, Pete.”

The man in the devil costume was Randall Terry, an antiabortion activist. He had traveled to Iowa to torment the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., the early breakout star of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his right to marry, Buttigieg has become the first openly gay person to make a serious bid for the presidency. And Terry is hardly the only right-winger worried about the rise of “Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg’s saying that “God doesn’t have a political party” prompted evangelical leader Franklin Graham to tweet that being gay is “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.” Concerned by the campaign’s rise, right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl was recently caught trying to fabricate sexual-­assault allegations against Buttigieg to slow him down.

But to some Americans, Buttigieg may just be the man to vanquish America’s demons. In a field of more than 20 ­candidates­—including six Senators, four Congressmen, two governors and a former Vice ­President—Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-edge-edge) has vaulted from near total obscurity toward the front of the Democratic pack, running ahead of or even with more established candidates and behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.

But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump. The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend. “One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

His platform is “Freedom, Security and Democracy,” which wouldn’t sound out of place coming from a Bush-era Republican yet actually harks back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But in order to maintain his momentum, Buttigieg will have to do more to flesh out those ideas. Unlike many of his opponents, he hasn’t posted any detailed policy proposals on his website. He’ll also have to convince Democratic voters that his experience running South Bend (pop. 102,245) is adequate preparation for running the world’s most powerful country. And he’ll have to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters who have so far appeared unimpressed with his campaign.

Buttigieg likes to say he has more government experience than Trump, and more military ­experience than any ­President in 25 years. And Trump’s victory in 2016 proved that many Americans were willing to elect a President without a traditional Washington résumé. But some voters long for stability after three years of chaos, and it’s not clear whether the Trump presidency has made it easier or harder for outsiders.

In many ways, Buttigieg is Trump’s polar opposite: younger, dorkier, shorter, calmer and married to a man. His success may depend on whether Democrats want a fighter to match Trump, or whether Americans want to “change the channel,” as Buttigieg puts it. “People already have a leader who screams and yells,” he says. “How do you think that’s working out for us?”

Buttigieg met Chasten Glezman, then a Chicago grad student, on the dating app Hinge in 2015. They talked over FaceTime for a few weeks before Chasten drove to South Bend for their first real date, at an Irish bar famous for its Scotch eggs. Less than three years later, Pete proposed in gate B5 of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the exact spot where Chasten had first noticed his dating profile.

Both men grew up closeted in conservative Midwestern communities. “Being gay was not culturally acceptable where I grew up, mostly for a lack of understanding,” Chasten says. “And so my family and I were just at a crossroads, and we didn’t really know how to talk to one another.” When he came out after his senior year of high school, tensions at home forced him to spend months crashing on friends’ couches and sleeping in his car. His parents ultimately changed their minds, welcomed him back home and now fully support their son and his marriage.

It was a sign of how rapidly public opinion on LGBTQ issues has changed. In 1996, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage; today 67% do, including 44% of Republicans. Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”

All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide. “We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says. He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness. “This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”

Other black leaders in South Bend say Buttigieg listened to the concerns of the community and adjusted when he was wrong. “I trust him,” says Stacey Odom, founder of a local organization that helps families on the West Side repair their homes. “I asked him for five different things, and he gave them all to me.” Buttigieg created an office of Engagement and Economic Empowerment to help address the wealth gap, and issued an executive order on diversity and inclusion in response to local demands, Williams-Preston said. When local leaders asked for $3.5 million to renovate the Charles Black community center, Buttigieg came up with $4.5 million, according to ­Cynthia Taylor, the center’s director. “You’re gonna have to invite him in, you’re gonna have to sit him down, you’re gonna have to show him the issue,” she says. “Because he definitely will listen.”

Buttigieg’s sexuality has imbued his campaign with a sense of historical promise. After the valedictorian at Brigham Young University, a conservative Mormon school, came out as gay in his commencement speech in April, he cited Buttigieg as his inspiration. (“I know that kid is going to make it easier for somebody else,” Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News.) Buttigieg’s campaign has also gotten a boost from a network of wealthy LGBT donors.

The millennial mayor’s call for generational change could also prove to be a powerful one. Even as young voters stay enamored with Sanders, older voters seem attracted to Buttigieg’s youth: according to an April 29 Morning Consult survey, his highest polling numbers come from baby boomers. “I like the idea of a millennial,” says Alice Mayer, 62, who voted for Sanders in 2016, as she waited for Buttigieg’s speech in South Bend. “He’s looking at the future, while Bernie’s been there, done that.”

Biden is Running as Obama’s Heir. The Problem: He’s Not Obama

Joe Biden has now formerly thrown his hat into the crowded Democrat nomination race. Personally, like Bernie Sanders, I believe that Biden's time has passed and that it's time for a younger Democrat standard bearer who can lead the party and the country into the future rather than have the 2020 presidential election between two near geriatric candidates.  In Trump we already have an aging, out of touch (and in my view, mentally ill) candidate who frankly only bonds with white supremacists, religious extremists, and vulture capitalists who are driven by hatred and/or greed. Democrats need a counterpoint to that and Biden, is too old and too tide to the past to be an effective counter to Trump despite possible strengths with segments of the black community and union members.  Having seen Obama twice, once at very close range, the other reality is that Biden simply does not have Obama's charisma.  Democrats ran a candidate in 2016 who lacked charisma and we know how that turned out.  Here are highlights from a piece in Politico that looks at Biden's effort to be what he is not:

Joe Biden and Barack Obama got off to a rocky start in 2007, but they found their way to a mutual respect and good working relationship for the next eight years.

Obama showed his appreciation at the end of their second term by rewarding Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award possible.

I'm an Obama-Biden Democrat, man. And I'm proud of it,” Biden told reporters earlier this month.

Yet despite a legitimate claim to be the standard-bearer of President Obama’s legacy, Biden faces a fundamental challenge as he seeks his party’s nomination for the White House: Convincing the diverse and youthful coalition that elected Obama to two terms that a 76-year-old white man is the right person to carry the mantle.

To Biden and his advisers, age and race are inferior to the political realities of his special relationship with Obama. The question is whether primary voters will see it the same way, especially when the former president has indicated he’ll remain neutral in a crowded Democratic field filled with diverse and dynamic candidates.

One thing is certain: Obama’s political apparatus is not united behind Biden, whose campaign announcement comes after more than 20 other candidates launched their bids.
None of Obama’s inner circle of advisers have signed on with any campaign. But other Democratic contenders have snagged top-level Obama campaign talent and tapped its fundraising prowess.

While Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, led Obama’s campaign efforts in swing-state Ohio, Beto O’Rourke hired Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and has enjoyed the support of Paul Tewes, the 2008 Obama campaign’s director in first-in-the-nation Iowa. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren signed Joe Rospars, Obama’s chief digital strategist in 2008 and 2012, and Emily Parcell, political director for Obama’s 2008 Iowa caucus team. Several top former Obama administration officials contributed to Pete Buttigieg.

“I don’t think there’s any one standard bearer for the Obama legacy in this primary. There are multiple candidates who could carry that mantle,” said Ben LaBolt, former spokesman for Obama’s reelection campaign.

“A big question looming over the primary is: is this a moment for the longest record of experience or is this a moment for generational change within the party and a new vision within the party,” LaBolt said, noting that “even President Obama has talked about letting this be a moment for generational change and for others to lead and rise through the party and step up. So I don’t think it will be a completely clean shot if he tries to claim he’s the sole purveyor of his legacy.”

The generational split is clear in a February POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showing Biden is weakest with voters under the age of 30.

An Obama campaign veteran who had discussed working with Biden’s campaign said there’s a divide among former Obama staffers.  “A lot of us don’t want Joe to run. His time has passed and it’s not his moment,” the operative said. “The real Obama legacy is about the future, not the past. And if he runs, it’s going to put that legacy on trial in a Democratic primary where guys like Bernie [Sanders] are going to take shots at it and tarnish that legacy ... We want Joe to ride off into the sunset.”

Looking at the early state calendar, that support from black voters could be a big boost to Biden in South Carolina, where 60 percent of the primary electorate is black. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, has not endorsed any 2020 candidate but is a Biden ally who speaks favorably of him. . . . “There’s some love for Joe Biden,” he said, “and it’s because of Barack Obama and how he stood by him. People remember.”

Time will tell if Biden is delusional or not. Meanwhile, I have decided so far who I do not like and support but not yet found the candidate that has won my allegiance and who I think can successfully take on Trump.