No matter who you're behind, vote blue, for Pete's sake. (Image via video still)
Adding to a historically diverse field among Democratic hopefuls, out gay Mayor Pete Buttigieg [say: BUDDHA-jedge], who has served South Bend, Indiana, for eight years, has announced he has formed an exploratory committe to run for president in 2020.
Buttigieg could win the Democratic nomination, Five Thirty Eight argues, so don't write him off as too gay to nab it. Five Thirty Eight goes on to address Buttigieg's actual positions, noting that he is harder to pin down than someone who has been more broadly in public life, such as Sen. Kamala Harris, who was a prosector and A.G., and therefore has more of an ideological trail. Five Thirty Eight writes:
At this point, it’s hard to pinpoint where Buttigieg falls on an ideological spectrum, but we do know he’s pushed to raise minimum wages and supports Medicare for All. If the Sanders campaign were to fail to launch or falter, Buttigieg could find an opening. Just as Sanders ran on a platform focused on economic populism and working-class revival, Buttigieg can and will point to the role he played in leading South Bend’s Rust Belt transformation (you can already see the theme in his announcement video).
Buttigieg wrote a prize-winning essay at age 18 about Bernie Sanders (guy's been around a long time!). Now, Buttigieg — at 37 — would be an appealingly youthful figure in the rapidly ballooning Democratic field.
