Pete Buttigieg Isn't Just Winning Over People on the Internet

[babylonsister]

Pete Buttigieg Isn’t Just Winning Over People on the Internet
“We belong in this conversation,” says the South Bend mayor, insisting that he’s not a 2020 long shot anymore.
Edward-Isaac Dovere
6:00 AM ET

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This can all seem like flavor-of-the-month political coverage. But his event on Friday night in Manchester got so many RSVPs that it had to move from a bar to an art museum down the road. And even then there were more people chanting outside than most of the candidates are getting.

The next morning, here at a bookstore on the main stretch of the state capital, Buttigieg had to have security clear a path as he made his way through a crowd with Representative Ann Kuster at his side, visibly surprised by the turnout.

Yes, many of the people at both events told me, they can actually see this 37-year-old who probably couldn’t win his local House seat being the president. Of the United States. Like, giving the State of the Union and Oval Office addresses. Picking a Cabinet, responding to foreign terrorist attacks, negotiating with foreign leaders, introducing a budget. Or as Lucas Harrington, a 22-year-old student who got the mayor to sign his autobiography, put it to me, “I would imagine President Pete, because his name is going to be just as hard to pronounce if he wins.”

snip//

By the time Buttigieg arrived at the bookstore, he’d spent close to an hour shaking hands and taking photos. At least 100 of the people who’d come hadn’t been able to see him around the obstacle of the bookshelves, but they’d stayed for the whole stump speech nonetheless. At one point on the street in Concord, what was supposed to be a quick photo to go with yet another profile became an almost paparazzi-level crush of cameras. He and his staff are just as surprised that his campaign has taken off like this, and that he got booked for Ellen before he finished hiring Iowa or New Hampshire directors. The plan was to build slowly, get articles written about him as an intriguing curiosity, hope for a breakout line in the first primary debate at the end of June, and then try to get a turn in the spotlight like this maybe at the end of the summer.

Instead, he’s spent the past few weeks already fielding questions about whether he is gay enough, whether he stands by the opioid-related consulting that McKinsey did while he worked in a completely different part of the business, and whether he should be made to answer for some of the things his late father, Joseph A. Buttigieg, an English professor at Notre Dame, wrote about Marxism.

“All of the little potshots are evidence that people are taking us seriously,” Buttigieg told me. “It’s a good sign.”

more...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/buttigieg-media-sensation-presidential-campaign/586858/

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. I could see him stealing from Bernie's base nt

[WeekiWater]

2. You might be correct.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/128764001

Look at the ideology numbers.

[Politicub]

3. This makes me very happy!

Mayor Peter is in my top 3 (which is why I haven't declared my choice, even though I'm itching to participate in the Democrats 2020 forums :-/)