South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Billionaires backing Buttigieg. “Forty billionaires and their spouses have donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, according to an analysis of federal election filings, making the South Bend, Indiana mayor a favorite among America’s richest people.” That includes a surprisingly high number of hedge fund managers, as well as Google founder Eric Schmidt’s wife, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom’s wife, Square founder Jim McKelvey’s wife, David Geffen, Barry Diller, Netflix’ Reed Hastings, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, the wife of casino video game mogul Jon Yarbrough, members of the Ziff family, the Pritzker family, the NFL Giant’s Tisch family, etc. etc. etc. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left.”
As the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries draw near and South Bend’s boy wonder, Pete Buttigieg, seems buoyant in the all-important early-state polls, “Mayor Pete” has been perpetually dogged by a major issue: the youngest and most activated voters in his party all seem to—how to put this delicately?—hate his guts.
Normally the first candidate of a generation can expect to ride a wave of youth enthusiasm, as John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton once did. For the 37-year-old Buttigieg, it’s been quite the opposite. The newly radicalized Teen Vogue invoked a cringeworthy class-warfare pun to declare his campaign a “Lesson in ‘Petey’ Bourgeois Politics.” Jacobin, tribune of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, has developed seemingly an entire vertical focused on slamming Mayor Pete. A writer for Out magazine, putting it in starker terms, tweeted that if he “had balls he’d run as the republican he is against trump in the primary.”
Why is the enmity from young, left-wing activists toward Buttigieg so visceral? It’s true that they favor Bernie Sanders, but Buttigieg comes in for a type of loathing that surpasses even that they hold for Sanders’ older rivals, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
But those explanations are still too general to explain the fury inspired by a fourth-place presidential contender and Midwestern college-town mayor. And it’s not his ideology: The resentment he inspires runs much deeper than that earned by the Amy Klobuchars and Michael Bennets of the world—both of whom have more politically moderate tendencies than Buttigieg, who has, among other positions, argued for raising the minimum wage to $15, introducing a public health care option, expanding the size of the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. (Asked for comment for this article, a representative from the Buttigieg campaign told Politico that staffers are occasionally vexed by the cold reception to a platform that’s well to the left of any recent Democratic presidential nominee.)
The unspoken truth about the furor Buttigieg arouses is that his success threatens a core belief of young progressives: that their ideology owns the future, and that the rise of millennials into Democratic politics is going to bring an inevitable demographic triumph for the party’s far left wing.
Snip.
It’s especially galling that the first millennial to take a serious run at the presidency is nothing like the left’s imagined savior. Buttigieg is a veteran, an outspoken Christian, a former McKinsey consultant, and, frankly, closer to Mitt Romney than Sanders or generational peer AOC in his aw shucks personal affect. In the eyes of radicalized young leftists, Buttigieg isn’t just an ideological foe, he’s worse than that: He’s a square.
Snip.
Buttigieg is a young professional with an elite pedigree who’s chosen to buy into the system as a reformer instead of attacking it as a revolutionary. To a certain class of left-wing thought leaders, he’s an unwelcome reminder of the squeaky-clean moderates with whom they once rubbed elbows. And quite possibly, his elite credentials may also be an unwelcome reminder of their own. The editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, for instance, isn’t just a random antagonist: He’s also a fellow Harvard alumnus.
The educated young people leading the left have worked closely with these overachievers throughout their careers—often at the same elite institutions they deride, rightfully or not, as venal consensus factories. Such activists are baffled by their counterparts’ optimism and adherence to tradition in the face of the Trump era’s grimness and vulgarity.
And, again, it seems many of their peers agree. Buttigieg does not enjoy considerable support among young people. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll of Iowa voters, he placed a distant third among 18-to-29-year-olds, behind Sanders and Warren. But he does appeal to a certain kind of young person, as now represented in the cultural imagination by the “High Hopes” dancers. And to the self-renouncing meritocrats who act as thought leaders to the young left, those people represent both a personal frustration and a political fear—that the institutions of tomorrow may yet be built by those with faith in yesterday’s ideals.
The path to Washington may be clearer for them than their radical counterparts, even as more millennials age into political life. The youngest Democratic member of Congress is, of course, the 30-year-old AOC, who seems all but inevitable to succeed Sanders as the standard-bearer for democratic socialism in America. But if you look at the next 10 youngest Democrats in Congress, they include mostly moderates: the venture capitalist Josh Harder, the military veteran and Blue Dog Max Rose, and Conor Lamb, whose district lies deep in Pennsylvania’s Trump country.
When it comes down to it, the hard left would rather seize control of the Democratic Party than win elections, and Buttigieg refuses to immanentize the eschaton. Another look inside those high dollar fundraisers:
At an annual charity fund-raiser in October, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, shared a table with the designer Michael Kors and Pete Buttigieg, then the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who wore one of his trademark navy suits.
The event was a benefit for God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit that began delivering meals to New Yorkers with AIDS in 1986 and has since expanded to serve other homebound people. On the second floor of Cipriani’s South Street location, guests bid for meals with the actor Neil Patrick Harris, watched the model Iman receive an award for her philanthropic efforts and heard a short speech from Mr. Buttigieg, who was also honored that evening. He said volunteers for the organization had offered sustenance “in substance and in soul.”
Sitting at a table near the stage was the theater producer Jordan Roth, who back in April held an event for Mr. Buttigieg’s presidential campaign at his home in the West Village, at up to $2,800 per head. Nearby was the board chairman of God’s Love, Terrence Meck, who had co-hosted an event for Mr. Buttigieg in Provincetown, Mass., just after the July 4 holiday. (Tickets for that ran upward of $1,000 per person.)
Snip.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr. Buttigieg’s dinners and fund-raisers — complete with cozy pictures on Instagram of Mr. Buttigieg standing beside high-net-worth bundlers — have turned into grist for his critics.
Guests at a December fund-raiser for Mr. Buttigieg held at the New York home of Kevin Ryan, an internet entrepreneur behind Gilt Groupe and Business Insider, were greeted outside by protesters who banged pots and pans and called Mr. Buttigieg “Wall Street Pete.”
The police arrived when a protester got inside. By that point, Mr. Buttigieg had left for Ms. Wintour’s West Village townhouse, where a campaign dinner was being held. Tickets cost up to $2,800 each and the actress Sienna Miller was among the attendees.
Days later, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at a fund-raiser held inside a Napa Valley wine cave. Afterward, progressive activists reached deep into political crisis history to note that one of the hosts, Craig Hall, who is now the owner of Hall Wines in Rutherford, Calif., was a real estate developer involved in the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. Mr. Hall went to Jim Wright, then speaker of the House, for help when he was facing bankruptcy — and the cascade of events led to a bailout for Mr. Hall, a congressional ethics investigation and, ultimately, Mr. Wright’s resignation as speaker.
Mr. Hall’s wife, Kathryn Walt Hall, co-hosted the Napa benefit. She was a prolific donor to President Bill Clinton and served as ambassador to Austria from 1997 to 2001.
Snip.
Prominent donors in Los Angeles argue that Mr. Buttigieg is also approaching celebrity fund-raising differently than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.
While her campaign publicized the appearances of Katy Perry and Lena Dunham at events, he’s kept a lid on similar associations.
The fund-raiser that Gwyneth Paltrow held on his behalf last May? The campaign declined to publicize it. Instead, Mr. Buttigieg spoke in front of cameras that evening during a $25 (and up) appearance at the Abbey — sort of a gay, West Hollywood equivalent of dining at Sylvia’s in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“He wasn’t doing a song and dance with Gwyneth on national television,” said Simon Halls, a prominent entertainment industry publicist who in July was scheduled to co-host a reception at the television producer Ryan Murphy’s home. (That event was canceled after a white police officer fatally shot a black man in South Bend; the reception has not been rescheduled.)
An offer by the designer Tom Ford to dress Mr. Buttigieg during the course of the campaign? Declined.
In July, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at the Provincetown fund-raiser Mr. Meck hosted with Bryan Rafanelli, an event planner whose clients have included the Clintons. Although tickets cost a minimum of $1,000, Mr. Meck said the event took place after a free, packed and publicized town hall event. As Mr. Meck told it, Mr. Buttigieg told him that he wanted to spend his time in Provincetown actually meeting people. Later in the summer, he hit the Hamptons to collect more money.
Interesting approach. “I don’t want your star power, just your money.”
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: Dropped out January 2, 2020. “Castro failed to make the last two debates or even achieve 2% in the polls despite promising government handouts for basically everything. Along with Sen. Cory Booker, he whined to the DNC about unfair qualifications for the January primary debate. More than likely he would not have participated in that debate.” “Dropout Julian Castro’s insufferably woke presidential campaign won’t be missed“:
Give Julian Castro some credit: In a crowded 2020 Democratic field originally featuring cringeworthy candidates such as Beto O’Rourke and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the former housing and urban development secretary still managed to run the most insufferably woke presidential campaign of this cycle.
Thursday morning brought the official end of Castro’s campaign. But it never really got off the ground, and the candidate failed to qualify for the November debate, getting under 2% of the vote in polling averages. Outside of a few fringe Marxist professors and woke liberal activists, Castro’s campaign was so radical that even Democratic primary voters weren’t buying it.
It’s not hard to see why. Castro’s only memorable contributions to the 2020 race are viral moments where he embarrassed himself.
For one, there was his cringey decision to randomly pronounce certain words with a Spanish accent during Democratic debates, despite not actually being a native Spanish speaker. Then there was his call for completely decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and attacks on other, slightly less terrible Democrats who declined to endorse his radical proposal.
Don’t forget the countless shudder-worthy instances where Castro pandered to the woke crowd with fact-free rants about “transgender women of color” being gunned down in the street in a supposed epidemic of anti-transgender hate crimes. Castro ignored the complete lack of evidence for this narrative, instead choosing to stir up bogus outrage for votes. His pandering even included a bizarre call for expanding abortion access to transgender women (aka biological males). Castro was also the first candidate to honor “International Pronouns Day” by putting his preferred pronouns, he and him, in his Twitter profile. This was, of course, a pure virtue-signal: Everyone already knew he was a man.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Esquire writer has a case of the sadz over his withdrawal. “Castro should have been viable all the way to the convention. (This is also true of Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris.) But the merciless criteria of polls and money worked against all three of them.” No, all three are out because all of them sucked in various ways, and all of them were terrible, inauthentic candidates spouting far-left bromides. Ace of Spades HQ: “He never stopped talking about giving trans women pap smears and abortions. Weird that he never connected with his presumptive Latino base.” 538’s postmortem talks about debate missteps but paints a picture of general suckage.
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Everything’s coming up Bernie, who leads fundraising, tops New Hampshire polls and is tied in Iowa. How Bernie hangs in:
Whereas Joe Biden seems permanently diminished by his own verbal and intellectual confusion and by his son’s self-dealing, Bernie is getting stronger.
He has raised the most money of all the Democratic candidates, by far — some $95 million in 2019 from 5 million donations — though the average contribution to Bernie is $18. He raised $34.5 million in the last quarter alone. He got 40,000 new donors on the last day of the year.
When Mr. Sanders renounced bundlers and PACs it was said that he had unilaterally disarmed himself in the money race. Instead he is killing it.
Mr. Sanders is also raising money in the 200 “pivot” counties Barack Obama carried in 2012 and Democrats lost to Donald Trump in the swing states in 2016.
And he is not only acceptable to but well thought of by an astounding 75 percent of his party.
Those are singular metrics.
He is also the only candidate in a position to take either first or second in the first contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.
He polls as well as Mr. Biden in a direct matchup against Mr. Trump, though surely, as Mr. Sanders says, Donald Trump could eat Mr. Biden’s lunch on his votes in favor of NAFTA and the endless and futile Iraq War.
The money race and the size of his crowds show that Bernie Sanders is connecting, just as they show Joe Biden is not. His resilience is no fluke.
The people who “know” did not see this coming.
Hey Bernie, where are your medical records? You know, the ones you promised to release? Comes out against vaping, then walks it back.
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Flush with cash, Yang wrestles with where to spend it.”
Andrew Yang has more money than his campaign knows what to do with.
He still can’t quite get accustomed to his surprising fundraising haul — Yang collected $16.5 million in the fourth quarter — or how to allocate it in the run-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.
“We’re going to buy gold coins, and then put them in a vault, and then I’m going to go on top of the pile of gold coins and then wave my arms and legs up and down,” he joked in an interview.
The reality is that his newfound campaign riches are creating internal tension about whether to beef up the Iowa operation or bet it all in New Hampshire.
Yang’s strong focus has always been on New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state where he has spent more time than any of the top-tier candidates. The campaign sees it as ripe ground for him — Democratic voters relish their independent-streak and showed they were open to non-traditional candidates in the past, delivering Sen. Bernie Sanders a decisive win in the 2016 primary.
Their goal, to date, has been to finish at the top of the second-tier in order to stay relevant after the early-voting states. Suddenly though, with money to play in Iowa as well, there is a vigorous debate about where to spend the cash and Yang’s other precious commodity — his time.
“I think if we overperform expectations will have a very powerful narrative coming out of New Hampshire that people don’t expect us to be at the top four here,” Yang said after wrapping up the final of 14 events during a four-day trip here. “If we break the top four, I think people will see that we have a ton of energy behind us.”
Yang’s $16.5 million — 65 percent more than the previous quarter — placed him fifth in terms of fundraising for the Democratic presidential candidates, about $4.7 million less than Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who came in fourth. He raised almost five times more than Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, another second-tier candidate who has invested so heavily in New Hampshire that she has all but moved here.
Honestly, instead of Iowa, he should probably look to Super Tuesday and build out an organization in California and either North Carolina or Texas, all of which have significant concentrations of high tech industries, where workers seem somewhat more attuned to his issues. Texas has a bigger population, and thus is more delegate rich, and a bigger concentration of Asians, but the diverse markets are brutal for ad campaigns. On the other hand, a $5 million direct mail/TV/radio push in the Research Triangle in North Carolina might well make an impression. Ohio is going to screw him out of a place on the ballot due to a technical filing issue. Yang has pretty much the same reaction to Biden’s “Coal miners should learn to code” suggestion:
Whatever he’s doing after the primaries, he’s not working as a bookie:
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
