Pete Buttigieg looks like a superstar.
The former South Bend mayor is winning over audiences from "The Daily Show" to "Fox News Sunday," where he went into enemy territory last weekend and turned a firm, yet polite, case against Trump into gripping television.
"Pete Buttigieg on Fox is like watching a snake charmer," one viral social media post said. "He just does not let them guide the conversation at all."
Buttigieg is getting in front of older audiences up and down the TV lineup and then finding younger audiences when those clips spread across social media.
I don't think Democrats, most notably Vice President Kamala Harris, appreciate what he is doing. Harris reportedly has narrowed the top tier of her running mate search to three people. Buttigieg is not among them. The Harris campaign might need to watch a little more TV.
Buttigieg is not just captivating audiences. He's delivering a kind, optimistic vision for America through quick wit and mastery of issues and history. He's making policy substance more entertaining than any Democrat has since Bill Clinton.
That is a rare and precious skill set. If Harris is overlooking Buttigieg, then she is missing an opportunity to strengthen her campaign and set Democrats up for the future.
Briggs: By dropping Biden, Democrats showed the integrity Rep. Jim Banks lacks
Buttigieg doesn't have a home team
I was hesitant to write this column because it's an obvious take for an Indiana-based pundit to write. There's a certain amount of homerism inherent to promoting a home-state candidate (er, former home-state candidate in Buttigieg's case) for national office.
But, while I am an Indiana-based journalist, I have never spoken to Buttigieg and I don't have any special interest in his career trajectory. I don't have much value to add to Buttigieg discussions, so I've only written about him sparingly — most notably to argue that he should drop out of the 2020 presidential campaign (which he did ).
In this case, though, I think my lack of connection to Buttigieg is indicative of one reason he's being discounted relative to weaker vice presidential candidates. Buttigieg lacks a robust home team that could be making and amplifying a case for why Harris should pick him as a running mate.
Buttigieg came from South Bend, a small city well outside the Indianapolis and Chicago media markets, and he's moved to Traverse City , Michigan, a resort town four hours away from Detroit.
It's not like Buttigieg is having trouble getting attention. He's President Biden's transportation secretary and he operates in the Washington, D.C., ecosystem. He's been a ubiquitous presence lately, as Politico reports.
Still, because of Buttigieg's unusual path to national politics, he's a political nomad jockeying for a position that traditionally goes to candidates anchored in communities whose votes are presumed to be up for grabs. Those communities don't necessarily have to be geographic. Former President Donald Trump didn't need then-Gov. Mike Pence to deliver Indiana, for example, but he picked him anyway to deliver evangelical voters.
An army of Republicans advocated for Pence's selection until Trump felt compelled to go along with it, just as John McCain once got talked into choosing Sarah Palin to appeal to grassroots conservatives. The unproven theory of balancing the ticket often outweighs all other considerations.
Unfortunately for Buttigieg, Notre Dame progressives don't amount to a large constituency. Buttigieg doesn't hold sway over any subgroup or region that could even theoretically swing the Electoral College in November, which has made his story hard to tell and left fewer people positioned to tell it than other candidates have.
Veep candidates barely matter
Meanwhile, the hype machines are humming behind Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and others, producing endless stories about how each person might help Harris gain strength with a particular demographic or region or, in a best-case scenario, put Harris over the top in an all-important swing state.
These stories are all wrong.
Let's take the cherished swing-state narrative, which comes into play every time a presidential candidate goes looking for a running mate. Election forecaster Nate Silver's model showed that, if Biden had kept running and replaced Harris with Shapiro, that would have given Biden a 1% greater chance of winning the Electoral College based on Shapiro's strength in Pennsylvania. Kelly would have given Biden's chances a 0.2% boost based on his Arizona popularity.
That's not nothing . But it's too marginal to justify endless chatter about which external considerations might give Harris the best chance of beating Trump.
Harris should look for the best vice presidential candidate, period. It's Buttigieg.
Buttigieg is the overachiever Harris needs
If you reject the idea that a vice presidential nominee can produce electoral magic, as you should, then there are two criteria for choosing a candidate: campaign skills and capacity to perform as president some day.
Buttigieg by every measure is a successful, overachieving campaigner. Harris should know that as well as anyone.
More than 20 Democrats ran for president in the last cycle. When the 2020 campaign began in earnest, Harris was considered a frontrunner and Buttigieg was near the bottom of the list. Yet, Harris' campaign faltered before the end of 2019 and Buttigieg finished second in New Hampshire before dropping out in late February 2020. On paper, that should have been impossible.
It took extraordinary organizational and fundraising skills for Buttigieg to go from South Bend mayor to legitimate candidate for U.S. president. Buttigieg would serve Harris well in the ways that actually matter, even if he doesn't cater to a particular voting bloc. He would bring money and energy to the campaign, while making the most persuasive case for defeating Trump and taking it to conservative platforms, where he is the best performer in the Democratic Party.
Buttigieg probably will do those things for Harris regardless of whether he serves as her running mate. But, by passing on him, Harris would miss a chance to elevate an obvious successor and eventual flagbearer for the Democratic Party.
Buttigieg is a former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves who deployed to Afghanistan. He's led a city. He's served as a cabinet secretary. A stint as Harris' running mate and possible vice president would give Buttigieg and the Democratic Party a substantial head start in a future cycle.
There are concerns over whether Buttigieg, a gay man, would be too challenging to voters' prejudices on the same ticket as Harris, a Black woman. These concerns fall into the same-old tired veepstakes conversations , particularly on the Democratic side, about finding ideological, geographical, racial and gender balances between presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Democrats get too far inside their own heads with identity politics. Former President Barack Obama won two terms while running as a Black man with a name that evoked both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He didn't overcome those challenges because he put Biden on the ticket to smooth things out. He got there through his own sheer talent. Obama campaigned with charisma and appealed to Americans' hopes and dreams. Voters responded.
Buttigieg is on TV and social media demonstrating those same skills that have won elections before. There's no candidate who could run a better campaign for vice president than Buttigieg. Harris shouldn't pass up dynamism for the sake of adding generic balance.
Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or james.briggs@indystar.com . Follow him on X and Threads at @JamesEBriggs.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Briggs: Pete Buttigieg is Kamala Harris' best VP option
Local News
