I’m almost on the Pete Buttigieg bandwagon after New Hampshire, although not quite. While I was a Bernie supporter four years ago — as I’ve said repeatedly, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to vote for a septuagenarian socialist Jew as a serious candidate for President — this year those are also the same qualities that have me voting off.
My fear is that — no matter how remarkably Bernie has been able to excite the youth vote — he has too many liabilities in a year where it’s absolutely critical that we get a candidate who can beat back Donald Trump.
This year I’m voting for Elizabeth Warren in the Super Tuesday primary here in Massachusetts, because I believe that Liz is the best qualified candidate out there. She’s just as progressive as Bernie, but in a different way.
But Liz seems to be losing steam. She should have done much better in New Hampshire.
Amy Klobuchar is interesting, but I still have doubts about her character after all those reports about how horrible she was to work for. That is never a good sign. And she is not particularly charismatic.
Biden seems to be going down like a lead balloon.
Bloomberg has all the money in the world, but hasn’t yet shown that he can get any votes. It also doesn’t help that Bloomberg, like Tom Steyer and Bernie, is Jewish.
And that leaves Buttigieg.
Buttigieg is too young and too unqualified.
Which was also exactly true for Barack Obama in 2008.
- People may forget that when Obama made his famous speech for John Kerry at the Democratic convention in Boston, he had not yet even been elected Senator in Illinois. Although he looked promising.
- Then, when he decided to run in 2006, he had only been in office as the Junior Senator from Illinois for two years.
- But one thing Obama had right from the start was character. I remember when he made his campaign-saving speech after the Reverend Wright controversy, that Jon Obama said on the Daily Show that Obama had “talked to us about race as if we were adults.”
That’s the moment I began to get on the Obama bandwagon.
Now, my mother thinks that it’s a problem that Buttigieg is gay. But if we can elect a black man (technically a bi-racial man) as President of the United States, and then re-elect him as well, then we can definitely elect a gay guy. The next generation doesn’t care about gayness at all, and the ones who do wouldn’t vote for Buttigieg even if he was straight. Being gay is probably less of a handicap than being Jewish. But we’ll see.
So, I’m with Liz Warren, but I could get on the Buttigieg bandwagon.