The ascension of Pete Buttigieg comes with clues into the nature of the 2020 electorate that might not fit neatly into the progressives-versus-moderates narrative now preoccupying the media
MANCHESTER, N.H.—It was getting dark outside the Currier Museum of Art and the hundreds of people who had come to see Pete Buttigieg were growing restless, maybe even a little testy. They had lined up two hours early, on a Friday night no less, but still they were outside while several hundred luckier fans were inside swilling craft beer and noshing on cheese and crackers.
But he’s also proving adept at picking his targets. In addition to exceeding basement-level expectations for his candidacy, Buttigieg, though, never lost that impatience. Friends and critics agree, he has always been a man in a hurry. “Look, I’ve got more experience in government than the president of the United States,” he said in a January 31 interview on CBS This Morning. “I’ve got more years of executive experience than the vice president. And I have more military experience than anybody behind that desk since George H.W. Bush. It’s not a conventional background, but I don’t think it’s time for a conventional background.”
The next day in Concord, I spoke with Mark and Laurie Brown, both 52, a white married couple from Salem, New Hampshire, who typically vote democratic and own a screen-printing business. Buttigieg had caught Laurie’s attention when she overheard him on television call for abolishing the electoral college—one of his signature proposals . When it comes to experience, she told me, “He’ll talk about how senators don’t have any executive experience. He manages more people than most senate offices.
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