What's up with this Pete Buttigieg boom?
It is utterly improbable. He is too young and looks young. He hasn't won significant office. He is gay and married to a guy.
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| Buttigieg |
Get real, right? Buttigieg??
He is real, and it means he looks like he knows what to do in a fight with Trump.
That is the most important thing.
By now most readers have seen snippets of Buttigieg talking. He did a Town Hall on Fox. He did a one hour Town Hall with the Washington Post.
I posted snippets of my own in an earlier blog post, when I saw him live and up close: http://peterwsage.blogspot.com/2019/04/pete-buttigieg-really.html
There is something about him Democratic voters like.
Some of it is that he is gay. There is a constituency of gay-friendly people, a politically active cohort. It isn't as big as the always-Bernie cohort, nor the black or Latino or vote-female cohort, but it is big enough to put him in the first tier.
Some of it is the Rhodes Scholar seven language savant meme. There are lots of Rhodes Scholars (Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark, a US Senator, and fellow candidate is one.) But add the learnNorwegian so-he-could-read-a-book story, and you have a fact people can latch onto. It sets him apart.
But mostly it is his composure. Buttigieg positions well against Trump in the political environment dominated by Trump.
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| Tonight Show, with Jimmy Fallon |
A longer clip: Buttigieg on the Tonight Show:
Click. Nine minutes. Funny. Watch how he deals with the Alfred E. Neuman tweet one minute in.
Trump has just dragged Nancy Pelosi into the mud, with her saying he needs an intervention and him (with the help from Fox) hitting back with altered videos of slurred-speech demented Pelosi. Trump has littered the landscape with people he has damaged with name-calling and insults.
Responding in kind doesn't work.
Trump exemplifies the famous advice "never wrestle with a pig in the mud, because you both get dirty and the pig likes it." The wrestling match empowers the Trump brand and it tarnishes the brand of anyone else.
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| No win. |
"I don't care," he said about Trump's tweets mocking him.
His manner of speaking reinforces the message that he is self-assured, and personally invincible. He wants change for the country but he, himself, is complete and OK.
The contrast with Beto O'Rourke is the most dramatic. Beto is "selling." It reads as passionate to audiences, but it also reads as someone who wants others to believe what he believes, which desire reveals neediness. He wants something.
Elizabeth Warren, too, reveals passion, an awareness and message that the world is rigged, that our democratic system is corrupted by money, that things can be better and she is battling for that. It is a good posture and message, but imbedded in it is, again, desire and therefore neediness. Trump pounces on vulnerability.
Buttigieg doesn't sell, he describes. He doesn't project neediness.
It could well be that the Democratic electorate on the whole will prefer a candidate with needy discontent over a flawed status quo. That was central to the Bernie Sanders message. Bernie, like Buttigieg, seems OK with himself, unapologetic. He dominates the left lane.
Democratic voters may reward a message of need and shared vulnerabiithy--indeed, will demand it. Elizabeth Warren may crowd the left lane with Bernie and take it over. Or not. It is early, still.
There is a more moderate lane, held by Biden. Buttigieg is criticized for being too general, for not yet having specific proposals, for making the focus on character and personality, not policy. It is fair criticism. Buttigieg may crowd and take over this lane.
In the back of mind of Democratic voters is the question of who can defeat Trump in the inevitable head-to head matchup. A Buttigieg-Trump matchup is completely asymmetric on personal grounds. Trump is the powerful but needy one, the blowhard narcissist, the one who demands adoration. Buttigieg is at equilibrium, content with himself, able to focus on America's problems.
That makes Buttigieg look strong in comparison.
There are almost certainly Democratic candidates with a better resume for victory than Buttigieg, and those candidates would do well to study Buttigieg's demeanor, but this is the kind of temperament and composure that is either there or it isn't. You cannot fake this.
Buttigieg has it.
4 comments:
"Buttigieg is Fluent in Nonsense"
Trump is a master of BS, but Mayor Pete is the unrivaled 2020 prodigy of nonsense. BS denotes lies or exaggeration about facts. Nonsense means saying almost nothing but sounding real. My gut reaction to Buttigieg is that he conjures up the pathological inauthenticity of the young Donald Trump at the same age, or the telegenic gogetter Michael Avanati. You know what I mean, these self-promoters who you just know are fake but whose celebrity the media is, for now, promoting for profit.
For Mayor Pete it may all unravel in a linguistics test, like the DNA downfall for Warren or kleptomania plague for Avanati . See "Pete Buttigieg: How Many Languages Does He Actually Speak?", The Atlantic (April 2019) ("Pete Buttigieg’s language magic is textbook polyglot mythmaking".) The author doesn't say Pete's seven languages claim is fake, just that his campaign is very evasive about the myth busting inquiry.
So if you're a Mayor Pete, Avanati or Warren fan, maybe you better enjoy the high while the babel, striptease and pow-wow chow last.
Thad's comment is ridiculous. Pete Buttigieg is a highly intelligent and can competently answer any question thrown his way. When Trump was Buttigieg's age, he was calling reporters under a fake name and saying Madonna wants to date him, but he wasn't interested in her.
He is admirable for his desire to serve. However, it's quite a leap from small town mayor to president, maybe we could call that a tad bit needy.
For me his demeanor is noteworthy only in that it's actually kind of normal. I take your point that he probably feels like he has nothing to lose so why not just be authentic and see if it sticks. If he wasn't openly gay I'm not sure he would be getting the attention, and it's kind of sad that it's probably because he doesn't fit the stereotype. I also agree that there's quite a bit of nice but inconsequential phrase making.
Is America ready for a gay president? Probably just as ready as it was for a lunatic.
probably he is another manifestation of a zionist candidate supported by the 1% military security complex. They don't care if he is gay, just as they didn't care that Obama was black - just as long as he does their bidding. Peter, don't go down that road again. Look where it got you the last 2 times - a warmongering murderer who bailed out Goldman Sachs and an unelectable rageaholic who probably would have invaded Iran by now if she had won. Oh, and impeach Trump so we can get Pence? now that's smart.
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