Footage of African American protesters angrily confronting the mayor went viral. “There’s no doubt that John Kerry has not captured the hearts of African Americans the way Clinton did,” explained a Senate candidate in Illinois named Barack Obama in 2004. A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Jul 8, 2020 at 7:15am PDT Since the campaign, Buttigieg completed a second book. But both shifts constitute progress. Figuring out why Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the presidential race yesterday is easy. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. From 1984 to 1992, every Democratic contender who secured the most support from his party’s big donors went on to win the nomination. This article is more than 6 months old. Buttigieg’s inability to disprove that story line in Nevada (where African Americans constituted 11 percent of Democratic voters) and South Carolina (where they constituted a majority) doomed his campaign. Mon 10 Feb 2020 11.11 GMT Without a doubt, this frame has had some effect on Buttigieg’s ability to gain traction with black voters, although it’s important to note it’s an issue he shares with several of his peers. Bloomberg, like Buttigieg, has a complicated relationship with voters of color. If support for Biden continues to collapse and Buttigieg comes out of New Hampshire as the mainstream faction’s frontrunner, his path to the nomination will be rockier than similar candidates in previous cycles, and not just because of the threat he’ll face from Sanders. Does Pete Buttigieg have a path to become the Democratic nominee? Buttigieg’s calculus is different from Biden’s. What it does mean is that Democratic candidates who want to win black voters must start earlier—and work harder—than in the past. The answer says a lot about how the Democratic Party’s relationship to money and expectations surrounding race have changed over the past 30 years. Available for everyone, funded by readers. All rights reserved. As late as 2004, the race progressed from Iowa and New Hampshire to a multistate primary that included the Palmetto State but also Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma—a sequence that would have made it easier for a candidate with minimal black support, such as Buttigieg, to do well. The mother and child in the photo accompanying the plan on the campaign’s website turned out to be from Kenya. Since then, the Democratic Party’s expectations surrounding race—like its expectations surrounding money—have dramatically changed, at Buttigieg’s expense. Primaries, even the presidential kind, are notoriously low-turnout affairs. It’s not just that fewer African American journalists and activists were shaping coverage of the Democratic campaign back then. And he has all the money in the world to bankroll the effort. Four years later, Michael Dukakis—who “obtained much of his [campaign] money from investment bankers, contractors and lawyers”—“vastly exceeded his rivals in fund-raising.” In 1992, Bill Clinton “greatly surpassed his rivals in attracting money.”. The increased prominence of black voters—and small donors—may have hurt Pete Buttigieg. We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. Until 2008, South Carolina didn’t even stand alone as the fourth contest in the primary calendar. The first occurred over the summer. It’s a thought that Buttigieg, in all likelihood, has already had. He had gotten trounced in South Carolina, appeared likely to get trounced on Super Tuesday, and, according to FiveThirtyEight, had a less than 1 percent chance of winning a plurality of pledged delegates overall. Biden’s weak performance through the primary, both in terms of fundraising and debates, has been buoyed up until Iowa by a heightened risk aversion among voters keen to remove Donald Trump from office. It doesn’t even mean that they can’t overcome past transgressions. You also agree to our Terms of Service. Professor of journalism at the City University of New York, Pete Marovich / The New York Tim​es / Redux, obtained much of his [campaign] money from investment bankers, contractors and lawyers, greatly surpassed his rivals in attracting money, outraise Buttigieg by more than $30 million, $124 million less than Michael Bloomberg and $130 million less than Tom Steyer, largely ceded the black vote to [Jesse] Jackson for most of the primary season, flying back to Arkansas days before the Iowa caucus to approve the execution of a mentally disabled African American man, less than 1 percent to 8 percent in national polls. The $76 million he raised in 2019 wasn’t only $32 million less than Sanders’s haul. But unlike Buttigieg, he has experience and a campaign war chest the likes of which we’ve never seen. Rachel Bitecofer is a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. But voters have begun to see the once-safe Biden as risky and voters seem anxious about Trump’s ability to tarnish Biden via his son Hunter Biden. In a brewery and smokehouse outside Iowa City that Buttigieg packed with some 600 supporters, an 11-year-old girl, Rebecca, took the chance to ask Buttigieg a question: Did he have any advice about dealing with bullying? Despite the chaos, the Buttigieg campaign decided to claim the winner’s cup based on internal results, displaying a strategic shrewdness that probably allowed the campaign to salvage at least some of what would have been a massive momentum effect from his “dark horse” victory. Once they become set, these types of narratives can be all but impossible to escape. To make matters worse, Buttigieg suffered from another campaign-finance innovation: the rise of the self-funding billionaire. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is being taken more seriously after Iowa. But narratives such as this can be powerful, especially when they are echoed in media circles. Although Buttigieg’s youth, sexual orientation, and lack of statewide elected experience made him an unconventional candidate, he raised money in a conventional way. Voters rely heavily on signals by pundits: public opinion generally flows from elites and opinion leaders down to the public. The more interesting question is how Buttigieg—who dazzled the national media, captivated big donors, and came close to winning the first two primary contests—found himself in this unenviable spot. It was $124 million less than Michael Bloomberg and $130 million less than Tom Steyer spent from their own wallets. Pete Buttigieg may struggle to win the Democratic nomination, particularly if he can’t attract minority voters. Although overall turnout in Iowa vastly underperformed the historic turnout analysts expected, youth turnout did increase over 2016, no doubt helping Sanders. Last modified on Tue 18 Feb 2020 17.29 GMT. He raced across the country holding fundraisers with large Democratic donors, many of whom embraced his campaign after his stellar televised performances in the spring. This content is currently not available in your region. But Kerry won the Democratic nomination nonetheless. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. Voters are no longer sure that Joe Biden and his 40+ year Senate record are the safest route back to the White House. But he also pandered to white racists—flying back to Arkansas days before the Iowa caucus to approve the execution of a mentally disabled African American man—in ways that would be almost unthinkable in a Democratic primary today. But if turnout is high, if there is heightened participation due to angst about Trump and more moderates and Independents vote in the Democratic primary because there is no competitive Republican primary, perhaps the mainstream faction will have an edge. So yes, we have another first in the 2020 field — the first openly gay man with a spouse. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. But can he attract votes in other parts of the country, too? From March to May of last year, Buttigieg ascended from less than 1 percent to 8 percent in national polls. The other shift that doomed Buttigieg’s campaign involves race. In South Carolina, Biden did both. Perhaps there are external factors that keep his emotions in check. The days after the Iowa caucus, as the state’s Democratic party struggled to determine the winner, Pete Buttigieg surged in New Hampshire polls and his fellow Democratic primary competitors treated him with a newfound respect at Saturday’s debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, training their sights on the new frontrunner. Then, in June, he left the campaign trail to respond to a police shooting of an African American man in South Bend. Sometimes, as in the case of Sanders, that requires running twice. With the final results still missing, it’s as if the Iowa caucus never happened, largely nullifying what has been for decades the most important contest in the presidential nomination system. The people who do tend to turn out in primaries care passionately about party politics. At the end of the day, what voters are looking for the most in their nominee is reassurance that their long national nightmare will end and that is the message Bloomberg is selling. Once upon a time, that might have been enough. With Amy Klobuchar earning more than $2.5m the night of the New Hampshire debate and Mike Bloomberg rising in the polls in South Carolina and across the Super Tuesday states, it is looking increasingly likely that a Biden collapse will produce a trifurcated mainstream vote, complicating the pathway for Buttigieg, or any other of the mainstream candidates to secure enough delegates to clinch the party’s nomination. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is … ... And does he have a legitimate chance to win? TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. Up till now, Buttigieg has struggled to win over voters of color, and the Beltway narrative has centered around his problematic record on race relations as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to explain his failure to gain traction. Public opinion data showed that despite a much cleaner Politifact “Truth-O-Meter” scorecard than her opponent, voters overwhelmingly described Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump as a “liar”. All Rights Reserved. Dukakis won the Democratic nomination in 1988 despite having “largely ceded the black vote to [Jesse] Jackson for most of the primary season.” Coming from Arkansas, Clinton in 1992 enjoyed stronger personal ties to African Americans than Dukakis had. The question that remains to be seen, and won’t be answered until states with more representative electorates begin voting, is which faction, the mainstream or the progressives, have more sway this cycle. In July, he announced an ambitious racial-justice agenda, which he called “The Douglass Plan.” And starting in October, as Warren lost support, he began another climb. What he achieved playing by the Democratic Party’s old fundraising rules was remarkable. The Intercept reported that African American leaders who the Buttigieg campaign claimed had endorsed the Douglass Plan actually had not.

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