If you only went by the media’s coverage of his not-yet-official campaign, you’d think South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg was shooting to the top of the Democratic presidential primary polls.
But he’s not in any national polls. He hasn’t even said whether he’s officially running for the party’s nomination.
Buttigieg is the new Beto.
During former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s run for Senate in Texas, the press turned him into a Kennedy.
The fawning attention apparently led O’Rourke to believe he should run for president, despite having lost his Senate race.
Now the opposite is happening to 37-year-old Buttigieg. There’s no obvious reason he thinks he might run for president, but he’s getting the same gauzy treatment.
Politico on Wednesday found it newsworthy that some conservatives have — whoa! — said nice things about him. A story at the website noted that Buttigieg was “getting rare praise from some unlikely voices,” like Rush Limbaugh, who on his radio show had called the Whoville-esque mayor “personable.”
Rare praise!
Vanity Fair in late March heralded Buttigieg’s “smarts and charisma.”
The New York Times said Buttigieg was “making waves” after “a series of well-received appearances on national TV.” (Well received by who? The media, naturally.)
You can always count on the media to determine who’s up and who’s down in a campaign simply by nature of declaring it so.
Kamala Harris is a serious contender! Cory Booker is a front-runner! Bernie Sanders is a threat!
Yet, to the extent that you can find out Buttigieg’s actual policy positions, you see that he’s a standard pro-higher taxes, pro-open borders, pro-single-payer healthcare Democrat. He just happens to be gay and talk about God in public. But even that attribute is a muddy mess.
In an interview with USA Today last week, he said it was “hard to look at this president’s actions and believe that they’re the actions of somebody who believes in God.” But it was apparently an act of deep faith when Buttigieg prevented a pro-life group from opening near an abortion clinic in his city.
Like Beto O’Rourke before him, Buttigieg is the media’s new plaything. That doesn’t automatically make him a serious candidate.
Say, what ever happened to O’Rourke anyway?
