Buttigieg joins Dem frontrunners

What do you know? Mayor Pete is a top-tier candidate in Iowa.

The latest Iowa poll shows a three-way race between former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The telephone poll, taken last Wednesday through Friday following the October Democratic presidential debate by Suffolk University and USA Today, found Biden in the lead with 18 percent support, Warren second with 17 percent, and Buttigieg third with 13 percent. The polling has a 4.4 percentage point margin of error, with 500 likely Democratic caucus-goers surveyed.

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum doesn’t get it.

Buttigieg is not a flavor-of-the-month candidate who enjoys a brief surge in the polls and then crashes. We see a few of those every election cycle. Rather, he’s been plodding along, waiting for his chance, while people shovel enormous sums of money his way.

I don’t get it. I have nothing against him, but it makes no sense that someone with his background could remain a serious contender for so long, even if he does talk a good schtick.

I don’t understand Drum’s perplexity. Buttigieg all but glows with brains and character, is center-left rather than fringe-left, and captures the novelty of being a married gay man.

W-a-a-a-y back in 2004, I watched Barack Obama’s “Star is Born” keynote speech at the Democratic Convention — a great address. It’s an inspiring, uplifting, American speech that just leaves you wanting to cheer. I told a friend that, if Obama weren’t black, it was a speech that would put him on the Presidential track. I recall that because I misjudged then badly — but I have the same sort of reservations about Warren and Buttigieg. There are a lot of Americans who are never going to vote for Elizabeth Warren because she is a woman and a former Harvard professor. Similarly, there are a lot of people who will never vote for Buttigieg because he is a married gay man; I live in the Southern Baptist south and know people who will never vote for either candidate.

But Buttigieg, like Warren, has much to commend him, and his strong showing in Iowa ought to be counted good news; even if he is unable to claim the prize, it means a lot of the old barriers are going down and America is growing closer to its professed ideals.

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