Here's a link for the New Yorker's excellent article on Pete's High Hopes:

[MBS]

5. OK reading it now - here's my live reaction-

This made me love his father right away – as much as, maybe even more than, his son! Their obviously close bond is so touching. I wish I could have had the chance to meet Prof. Buttigieg – I could so easily see how and why he was a beloved teacher. (I also so easily could see my dad having a great, long, and lively conversation with him about Republicans and Notre Dame football )

. . . Buttigieg told me that his father had left a subtler imprint on him. “He was somebody who was impatient with some of the self-indulgence that had happened in the humanities as it drifted away from a connection to reality,” he said. “One of the books he loved was Edmund Wilson’s ‘To the Finland Station,’ right? Where you start off with, I think it’s Herder figuring out Vico”—the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico—“and by the end you’ve got Lenin showing up. The point is that you see how something that starts out really esoteric and academic ends up changing history.” He thought about it a little more. “But, also, there were times where I would push off from it, too, because he was so furious with what the right has done that you could—you could spoil the taste of a wine for him by telling him it came from a right-wing vineyard.” Buttigieg smiled. “He was so deep in it.”

This also caught my attention. I've been so impatient lately, but try to remind myself of the perception (who said this? it was a good essay, but I can't remember the author) that the race would stay frozen through December and the holidays, and only start to move again in January- a perception that Pete seems to share:

Buttigieg’s Democratic opponents sometimes accuse him of overcalculation. “He’s going by the old playbook of following the focus groups, going by what political consultants tell you,” the candidate Julián Castro told the Times. But consultants, who have been the popular villains of politics for a generation, have less influence on this Presidential campaign than they have had in decades. Trump does not listen to his, and Warren does not even have a pollster. Buttigieg’s strategist only joined the campaign in May, when its character was already established. The language of strategy and messaging has shifted to the voters, who show up at events talking about grassroots donor strength and margins in purple counties. It now seems as if every informed voter has a position on what other people want.

Buttigieg’s increasing strength is not yet the story of the Democratic primary, but it has been an unexpected element, and it suggests that the calculations of the amateurs, in a time of stress, may not be so different from those of the pros: they favor a candidate with appeal to white swing voters over one who can draw out the African-American base, and for polish over populist fervor. And yet, as Buttigieg fairly noted, the race has hardly begun. “I suspect January will be its own, whole other level,” he said. We were riding in a black S.U.V. headed west through Iowa at dusk, on the Monday before Thanksgiving. “I think that those voters who still haven’t really dialled in will start paying attention. The folks who are just too busy, too overwhelmed with the sheer number of candidates, will get into this,” he said.