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David Kaufman: Pete Buttigieg is the Democrats' best hope (don't be surprised if they squander it)

Despite being gay, his white skin and centrist views may be too much for the progressive left to handle

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The all-important New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary may still be two years away, but things already appear worrisome for the more extreme members of the party. According to a newly released University of New Hampshire poll, former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg leads an expansive crop of potential Democratic presidential front-runners.

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According to the survey, a full 20 per cent of potential New Hampshire voters support Buttigieg, with 15 per cent vying for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s tied with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Former vice-president (and two-time presidential loser) Kamala Harris and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly round out the group with 10 per cent support.

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Although still early — very early — and hardly representative of the United States as a whole, the data stands as a stark rebuke to the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, which has long insisted that only a candidate who’s not white and ideally not male should be allowed to run against the Republicans in 2028.

As evidenced by three of the four past presidential cycles, the problem with such identity-led thinking is that it has failed to lead to the White House. Twice under Hillary Clinton and most recently under Harris, women and ethnic minorities have failed to charm voters quite like they have party overlords.

In Harris’ case, a rudderless 11th-hour campaign coupled with an Ozempic-slim resume led to her trouncing by Donald Trump in both the popular vote, as well as all seven crucial “battleground states” in 2024. As for Clinton, her defeat in 2016 suggests that even the most experienced candidate with the most optimized campaign machine still cannot count on her “first-ever” status to do much more than make for nifty headlines.

Which leads to the Democrats in 2028. Although white men like Buttigieg and Newsom have emerged as the New Hampshire front-runners, it’s still Harris and AOC snagging all of the early campaign chatter — which is increasingly making little sense.

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In AOC’s case, despite the buzz generated by her “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Bernie Sanders last year, she has yet to fully articulate herself as a serious leader beyond her progressive, urban base. She also failed to deliver last week at the all-important Munich Security Conference, where her jumbled responses to questions about Venezuela and Taiwan derailed her first major foreign policy testing ground.

Harris, meanwhile, recently revealed a social-media re-brand on the tail end of her sweep through the southern U.S. to promote her 2024 campaign memoir “107 Days” and shore up support among her all-important African-American base. Both efforts felt gimmicky and performative, and did little to provide the sense of legitimacy and gravitas that eluded her last time around.

Recent revelations that she failed to choose Buttigieg as her vice-presidential candidate two years back because she feared his gayness would deter voters have only added to her image as an opportunist. As did news that her team subjected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to invasive and offensive questions about his Jewishness during his own vetting process.

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In other words, despite still mattering deeply to Blacks and women, Harris is likely past her expiration date, while AOC is flaming out even before she makes her first serious campaign strikes. This is why the data coming in from New Hampshire is so noteworthy. And why Democratic decision makers should be paying more attention to Buttigieg.

In many ways, he’s an obvious, if not the obvious, choice for 2028 — at least for vice-president. Buttigieg may be white and male, but his gayness shores up his minority bona fides. He’s also the “right kind” of gay — at least for middle America: married, a father, centrist and a military veteran.

He’s crowd-pleasing and palatable to all but the most homophobic. His background as a mayor and three-year stint at McKinsey & Company deliver much-needed managerial chops, and his time on the presidential campaign trail in 2020 proved that he’s among the smart candidates on the debate stage.

It’s true that his term as transport secretary saw a series of major train disasters and he — like AOC — lacks meaningful foreign policy experience. But he’s clearly a quick study, and is no less qualified than Barack Obama was when he first ran for president back in 2008.

Despite his obvious appeal, Buttigieg will remain a tough party sell. Back in 2020, Buttigieg was already pilloried by the progressive left for being the “wrong kind” of minority — too white, too male, too corporate.

Why Is the Young Left Out to Get Buttigieg?, read a headline in the Atlantic in December 2019. More than six years on, today’s “young left” — raging against ICE and Israel and buoyed by Zohran Mamdani’s New York City win — has drifted even further toward progressive extremism and against the rationalism and accommodation that Buttigieg represents.

Ever willing to destroy their party prospects to indulge their irrational, intersectional folly, the Democratic fringe has now enacted even more extreme and impossible ideological litmus tests — from the fake Gaza “genocide” libel to blanket denouncements of Trump.

Desperate for clout and relevance, Harris and AOC are certain to fall in line; Buttigieg, not so much. Same with Newsom, another white male who’s also — gasp! — heterosexual. Unable to alter their race or gender — well, maybe the latter, according to progressive lore — both will find it hard to rise above identity demands that neither can possibly fulfill. Which is why Buttigieg and Newsom may be shut out from the 2028 ticket, despite being among their party’s best shots at success.

David Christopher Kaufman is a New York-based journalist and former New York Post editor and columnist. Sign up for his Substack newsletter, Counterintuitive.

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