Pete Buttigieg is positioning himself to be the alternative to Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic presidential primary by seizing the centrist lane occupied by the fading Joe Biden.
During last Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary debate, the South Bend, Indiana mayor, 37, pressed the Massachusetts senator on how she plans to pay for a Medicare for All single-payer system after she repeatedly declined to say whether she would raise taxes on middle-class Americans.
“No plan has been laid out to explain how a multitrillion-dollar hole in this Medicare for All plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg took a much different tone toward paying for a new healthcare system during the first debate. “Look, this is a distinction without a difference, whether you’re paying the same money in the form of taxes or premiums,” he said in June.
So far, Buttigieg has presented a vision for “a new era” of Democratic politics that is hard to classify as any specific ideology.
“There’s always that candidate who’s just like, the intellectual,” said Scott Ferson, a Boston-based Democratic strategist. “A big mistake that intellectuals do is that they don’t try to contrast. I mean, elections are about contrast.”
But his debate performance and targeted comments about other candidates indicates that he is trying to broaden his appeal. He recently accused Beto O’Rourke of trying to “pick a fight” over Buttigieg’s opposition to confiscation of military-style rifles “in order to stay relevant.”
Ferson said, “He’s transitioning to that person who’s becoming an actual person that the casual voter, if you will, meaning most of us, are taking a look at.”
Jennifer Holdsworth, a Democratic strategist who supports Buttigieg, told the Washington Examiner, “He’s talking about the details now because we’re, what, five or six debates in at this point. And we can’t just keep saying the same platitudes over and over and over.”
Buttigieg’s presidential bid, though, occurs at a time of division among Democrats about the best messaging strategy, which pits him against Warren by default.
“There’s a very big debate in the party right now, about the progressive mobilization theory versus appealing to swing voters,” Holdsworth said, putting Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the former and Buttigieg, by default, in the latter.
Most recent polls find Buttigieg in fourth place among the Democratic presidential hopefuls, behind Biden — another candidate who aims to appeal to moderate swing state voters rather than a liberal base — Warren and Sanders. But Warren is increasingly becoming the default progressive choice as Sanders’ numbers steadily fall. An Emmerson poll released this week found Buttigieg in third place among Iowa voters, getting 16% support while Biden and Warren had 23%.
Jesse Ferguson, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said a candidate would do best to ignore the competition. “In a multi-candidate primary like this, you don’t know which candidate you help or hurt if you try to drive someone off the road. You don’t win this primary by driving in the best lane, you win it by driving a double-wide trailer and taking up the entire roadway.”
