In his last major national television appearance before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, Pete Buttigieg’s closing arguments presented distinctions between himself and his two biggest competitors in the Democratic presidential field: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
“I’ve heard some folks saying this is no time to take a risk. And I agree. But I think the biggest risk that we could take right now would be to try to go up against this president with the same old playbook that we’ve been relying on that helps explain how we got here in the first place. I think it’s time for something completely different,” the 38-year-old former South Bend, Indiana, mayor said in a Fox News town hall on Sunday.
With Democratic voters anxious about picking the best candidate to beat President Trump in 2020, Buttigieg’s comments aimed to soothe voter hesitations about backing a candidate with no national political experience who, if elected, would be president.
But they were also a direct rebuke of Joe Biden’s electability pitch.
“This is no time to take a risk,” a Biden ad released Friday said. “We need our strongest candidate. So let’s nominate the Democrat Trump fears the most.”
Buttigieg is in third place in the RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls with 19.3% support, trailing Biden and Sanders tied at 23.3%, while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is at 14.3%. The stakes are high. Many analysts believe Buttigieg needs to place first or second in Iowa on Feb. 3 in order to have a viable path to the Democratic presidential nomination.
[Read more: ‘Didn’t answer the second part of my question’: Buttigieg grilled by anti-abortion Democrat]
While Biden campaigns on his nearly half-century of experience in elected office and the idea that he can win swing-state voters, Warren and Sanders pitch that Trump will be defeated by a wave of voters energized by their left-wing policies.
Buttigieg toes the line between two arguments in part by rejecting the idea that a radical, transformative agenda that includes a single-payer “Medicare for all” and free college tuition for everyone is the ticket to winning the White House.
His own plans, Buttigieg argued, cost “a fraction of what some of my competitors in this primary are proposing. I figured out a way to do that that is affordable.”
“We don’t have to choose between being bold and being unifying,” Buttigieg said. “Some folks are saying you got to pick one or the other. Or that you got to measure boldness by how many people you can turn off or turn away. I think that actually, these bold ideas about how to make American life better are a part of how we’re going to unify the country. And we have got to unify this country because it has become dangerously divided and frighteningly polarized.”
The act of appearing in an hourlong Fox News town hall was itself a statement and point of distinction, true to the roots of a campaign that launched Buttigieg from national obscurity to a top-tier presidential candidate in one year due in part to a “go everywhere” media strategy. The Democratic National Committee did not allow the network to host a presidential primary debate, and some Democrats, such as Warren, refuse to appear on the channel.
Buttigieg said that his decision to go on Fox demonstrated how he will win over those in the opposite party in a general election.
“We are doing it right now,” Buttigieg said when asked how he would appeal to Republicans. “This network is known for having a lot of more conservative viewers. But I don’t think that you have to be a Democrat to see what is wrong with this president and this presidency.”
