DES MOINES, Iowa — 2020 Democrat Pete Buttigieg called for generational change as his campaign surges in Iowa, evoking the image of another candidate once considered too inexperienced for the White House: former President Barack Obama.
“I will not waiver from my commitment to our values or back down from the boldness or our ideas. But I also will not tire from the effort to include everyone in the future we are trying to build,” the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said. “We will fight when we must fight. But I will never allow us to get so wrapped up in the fighting that we start to think fighting is the point. The point is what lies on the other side of the fight.”
While taking shots at President Trump’s “divider in chief” rhetoric, Buttigieg, 37, told the Iowa Democratic Party’s fall fundraiser, the Liberty and Justice Celebration, the first time he visited the state was to campaign for Obama in 2008.
In another reference to Obama, Buttigieg dismissed critics of the 44th president’s “hope and change” message.
“And talking about hope and belonging, if it sounds optimistic for a time like this, call it optimistic, but do not call it naïve, because I believe these things not based on my age but my experience,” he said.
Buttigieg, a Harvard and Oxford graduate who was a McKinsey consultant before serving in Afghanistan as a Navy reserve officer, would be the first millennial and openly gay president should he win the Democratic nomination and a general election against President Trump.
The mayor shrugged off criticism he would struggle against a combative incumbent next year.
“We know that he’s going to do everything he can to hold onto power. But if you nominate me, his playbook isn’t going to work this time around,” he said. “I did not just come here to end the era of Donald Trump. I am here to launch the era that must come next.”
Buttigieg rose in a new New York Times/Siena College Iowa poll released Friday, with 18% support. His share of the vote puts him behind Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont but ahead of longtime front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden.
