The Buttigieg Money Pit

[brooklynite]

Politico

With great fanfare last month, Pete Buttigieg has announced “Phase Three” of his presidential campaign. Campaign adviser Lis Smith described the first two phases as teaching people how to pronounce his name and then raising gobs of money. For this new phase, the Buttigieg team plans to “blow them out of the water with our organization.” To that end, 20 new field offices in Iowa are opening this month, plus another 12 in New Hampshire.

Here’s a more accurate description. In Phase One, Buttigieg milked $32 million from 390,000 donors, most of whom knew next to nothing about his record, but were bowled over by a guy under 40 who can speak in complete paragraphs, sometimes in Norwegian. Phase Two was learning that Buttigieg has no strong and unique governing vision. We also learned his South Bend record on race relations as mayor, however well intentioned, is checkered. Phase Three, which so far has been a series of boasts about the campaign’s field operation, does nothing to solve the problems of Phase Two.

But his campaign will keep going for months thanks to those swooning donors, who don’t reflect actual voters. You may have seen Democratic presidential candidates categorized as “wine track” and “beer track.” Political analyst Ron Brownstein popularized those labels, observing that the “brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform” on the wine track tend to lose in Democratic presidential primaries to candidates with support “rooted in the blue-collar and minority communities” on the beer track. But six months after Buttigieg wowed the Democratic donor class in a CNN town hall, and four months after he peaked at 8 percent in the RealClearPolitics poll average, Buttigieg can’t even crack the wine track. Instead, he seems to be pioneering a new campaign lane: the “craft beer” track.

With his national polling average down to a paltry 4.5 percent, Buttigieg’s support is narrow and idiosyncratic. He’s the IPA of Campaign 2020, a hipster nerd flavor.

[HerbChestnut]

1. That's what happens when you focus on attracting large donors at the expense of everyone else.

People caught on quick.

[Recursion]

8. IDK, it's how Trump won his primary in 2016

It's not necessarily a losing idea, it just brings a lot of risks.

[mahina]

2. Well-written but I wonder if it's another divide and conquer article.

[brooklynite]

4. OR (just spitballing here),,,

A political blog wrote a story about campaign's political strategy and how well it's doing.

Keep in mind, the average voter doesn't read Politico. The people who do read it aren't going to have their candidate choices skewed by "biased" articles.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Snarky and nasty. What's Bill Scher's agenda?

[brooklynite]

7. No doubt the same agenda that led to the revealing Jerry Falwell Jr. story....

Write about politics.

[bluewater]

5. "Buttigieg milked $32 million from 390,000 donors" WTF!

Wow, that sure sounds like a right wing talking point attack on a Democratic candidate to me.

MILKED? Give us a f-ing break... this OP is trying to make Pete Buttigieg into some sort of conman.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. I reject this abysmal POV in its entirety. Period.

This could not be more wrong.

I am disgusted.

I am NOT a swooning donor. I've lived long enough to recognize a quality candidate, and Pete Buttigieg is all that.