Column: Buttigieg wants to be the Goldilocks candidate. It just might work.
Not long ago, Pete Buttigieg was unknown outside of South Bend, the fourth-largest city in Indiana, a state so red it voted for Democratic presidents only twice since 1940.on Tuesday, the former mayor of South Bend is a surprisingly good bet to win the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
First-time listeners often come away impressed — although if you’ve heard him more than once, the pitch can also sound bland and generic.But Buttigieg’s policies are more interesting than he makes them sound. Most fall midway between Biden’s nostalgic liberalism and Sanders’ calls for a “political revolution.”
Polls show most Democrats like both ideas. But the Buttigieg version is far more popular among the independents and Republicans who will vote in a general election. A study by Americans for Tax Fairness, a liberal group, found that Sanders’ proposals would raise federal spending by about $50 trillion over 10 years. Buttigieg’s would raise spending by about $8 trillion, and Biden’s would raise spending by about $3 trillion.
Vague or not, Buttigieg appears to have gained a solid foothold in the moderate majority of the Democratic electorate. He’s likely to benefit if Biden continues to flail, as he did in Friday’s debate in Manchester. His claim to electability won’t be convincing unless he begins winning by bigger margins than his hair’s-breadth finish in Iowa.And while he often points out that he has more military and governing experience than Trump did in 2016, if Buttigieg gets the nomination, the president will have a field day mocking the former small-city mayor.
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