Monday, April 15, 2019

Now is not the time to risk Buttigieg as Democrats' presidential candidate

Pete Buttigieg may well be the "voice of millennials", as he claims, but he is only the voice of Democrat millennials, and unfortunately millennials are just a small sub-set of the voting public anyway. Furthermore, most millennials don't even bother voting, having the lowest voter turnout of any age group.
Mr. Buttigieg - in case you were wondering, his name is Maltese, and is pronounced something like "BOOT-edge-edge" - has been mayor of South Bend, Indiana since 2012, and has no national political experience. He is, neverthless, the man with the momentum at the moment, polling in third place in the latest polls, albeit with only 9%, way behind Joe Biden (who has still not even officially announced his candidacy yet), who is polling 27%, and Bernie Sanders on 16%, and barely ahead of the pack of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, etc. And who really believes in polls these days anyway?
Whether you like the fact or not, America is really not ready for a young, openly gay, left-wing president. He might have flown in Canada - hell, I might well have voted for him - but America is not Canada.
The US Democrats owe it to the country (and to the world) to field a candidate who is able to defeat Donald Trump, not just to stroke their own progressive egos. That means they need to wrest the middle ground away from Trump, not merely to satisfy and mollify existing died-in-the-wool Democrats. Mr. BOOT-edge-edge is not that person.
But, you may say, if not Mayor Pete, then who? And that's a very good question. Bernie Sanders is too old, and probably also too radical to gather the country behind him. Creepy septuagenarian Joe Biden? Well, I hate to say it but probably so. In terms of spring to the wishy-washy middle ground, he may well be the Democrats' best bet.

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