"Impossible" candidate Pete Buttigieg

Possibly Democrats want to sell "normalcy." Normalcy is pushing Reset on Trump. There is a big choice of "normal" Democratic candidates.

Click: The surprise factor.

But maybe someone could catch fire and come out of nowhere. 

From "out of nowhere" is a thing.  

Susan Boyle was a frumpy 47 year old contestant on Britain's Got Talent. And then she started to sing. The fact that she was startlingly talented, coming from a completely unexpected package, meant she got noticed. Frumpy awkwardness was part of her schtick.

People on social media sent links.  You won't believe this, they said. Amazing, they said. You have to see this, they said.

Pow!

Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere. He was a celebrity, a TV and tabloid star as of September 2015, with a reputation as a decisive executive bully, and he had an act people wanted to see. I was in Rochester, New Hampshire, on a warm summer evening in when the campaign was brand new, and 3,000 people overwhelmed the high school parking lots eager to catch the act. 

It was a show, and it was free.  Trump was an event. Trump started with that. Trump had an audience and he worked it, honed his message, learned what worked, and got himself elected president. 

That is the normal way. Start with a national profile, most typically from political office. Become a known brand.

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg starts with nothing. Readers of this blog know his name, probably, but most Americans do not. Eventually about half of Americans will vote, in a primary, but they aren't all that interested. There is only so much mental shelf-space, and Buttigieg is not a brand.

Pete Buttigieg is doing what Jimmy Carter did in 1976: surprising people, meeting them in small groups. It can be done in Iowa and New Hampshire because the environment is small enough and the activists few enough that retail politics happens. Buttigieg can stand in a room and talk, and even at 25 and 50 at a time it makes a difference.

He gets a buzz. 

Of course, he is impossible.  Let's start with a certain, undeniable premise. There is no way on heaven or earth that Democrats are going to nominate a 37 year old gay small-city mayor, with an unpronounceable last name, to be their nominee. 

But here's what is happening: people are startled. People who are mentally "shopping" for the right candidate--and that is most people, because there are so many choices-- find themselves impressed, against their own better judgement. He is impossible--and yet, listen to him. 

Part of his appeal is that he presses "Reset." He is not part of the Hillary, Bernie trench warfare. He was a non-combattant, just a mayor, not a senator choosing sides. He articulates with body language what candidates in their 60s and 70s say with words: it is about the future. 

The future is a powerful message. Democratic activists believe it. It is an article of faith that a climate crisis is impending, but it is not fully here now. It is for Pete Buttigieg's generation to deal with. So let him get to it.

Trump talks about returning to past greatness. Buttigieg represents the future. It's a nice contrast.

What does Buttigieg do that surprises people? He articulates the Democratic message, sounding serenely self confident, sounding comfortable with being midwestern and Christian, comfortable with being himself. He sounds like he had heard every nasty snipe and criticism, and was inured to them.

He is secure in the face of enemies. It is a tone he projects.

He contrasts with Trump physically, looking physically small and boyish, but he comes across as comfortable standing up to Trump. It clicks into a familiar trope. We like the formulas: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The hare and the tortoise. And this one: Big bully meets brave young warrior. Goliath meets David.

He is impossible, of course. Get real. 

That impossibility is what gives him the potential of going viral and coming out of nowhere.