(phone typing)
- Watching March Madness reminds me:
Zion Williamson and I are similarly athletic.
What's so funny?
He's a skinny guy with a funny name,
and he's the hottest name in Democratic politics.
Sounds like I'm describing this guy, right?
It's actually this guy.
That guy is Pete Buttigieg.
That's B-U-T-T-I-G-I-E-G.
Boom, nailed it; ding! (bell dinging)
Boot-edge-edge: That's how you say it, except fast,
like it says on the t-shirts his campaign sells.
They really do, look!
Honestly, just call him "Mayor Pete."
It's a lot easier, rolls off the tongue.
When Mayor Pete started running for president in early-2019,
people, they weren't calling him much of anything
because, well, they had no idea who he was.
Unlike boldfaced names like Beto O'Rourke
or Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden,
Mayor Pete was considered a very minor player
in the very crowded 2020 sweepstakes.
After all, he is young, 37 years old,
relatively inexperienced politically,
his highest office is his current one,
mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and has a last name
that is harder to pronounce than Cillizza.
Cillizza.
Except that politics is an unpredictable business
and voters have a tendency of sometimes surprising you.
The Buttigieg bump, (bell dinging)
again, began around early-March
when Mayor Pete did a town hall that was hosted by CNN.
I know, self-serving, but accurate,
at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
The mayor got the sort of exposure
he hadn't been able to generate to that point,
and he honestly nailed it.
- I have more years of government experience under my belt
than the president.
(audience laughing)
(audience applauding)
That's a low bar, I know that.
(audience laughing)
I also got more years of executive government experience
under my belt than the vice president
and more military experience than anybody
to walk into that office on day one since George H.W. Bush.
So, I get that I'm the young guy in the conversation,
but I would say experience is what qualifies me
to have a seat at this table.
- He was funny, smart, and above all
spoke and seemed like a normal person.
Suddenly, Buttigieg was everywhere.
- Where are you on the ideological spectrum?
- I consider myself a pretty strong progressive,
but I also don't consider the left-center spectrum
to be the most useful way to look at our politics right now
because I think it's gotten jumbled up,
both by the current president and by the pace of change.
- And after that appearance, Joe Scarborough said
that there hadn't been so much reaction
to a guest on his show since, well, this guy.
A clip of Buttigieg speaking Norwegian,
he's conversant, because of course he is,
with a reporter from Norway then went viral.
- (speaking foreign language)
- Buttigieg's campaign announced
that he had already secured the 65,000 donors that he needed
to qualify for the first Democratic presidential debate
in June in Miami.
He announced in late-March
that he was trying to raise $500,000 more for his campaign
in the week or so before the end
of that fundraising quarter.
He raised that amount in 24 hours.
All told, Buttigieg announced he had raised $7 million
in roughly two months as a candidate,
a total that, yes, is going to put him
behind the likes of Sanders and O'Rourke,
but will put him way in front of where he
and everyone else thought he would be
at this point in the race.
This right now is Mayor Pete's moment.
Every candidate running for president wants one.
Not all get one.
The question going forward is whether Buttigieg's moment
is like that time when Herman Cain led the 2020 GOP field,
nine-nine-nine, baby,
or more like when that other skinny guy with the funny name
started surging in the 2008 Democratic race
and really never stopped.
There's reason to believe
Buttigieg will last beyond this current 15 minutes of fame,
and the biggest reason for that is, well, the mayor himself.
- Why are you only showing us
the positive things about Pete Buttigieg?
Because that's all we could find,
all right?! (audience laughing)
No, I'm being serious.
There's no dirt on this guy, like nothing.
- Remember that presidential races, especially in primaries,
are as much about personality and backstory
as they are about policy.
That's mostly because the candidates
running for a party's presidential nomination
tend to agree about the broad policy solutions
needed to address things like immigration
or health care or the economy.
The way that you stand out in a field
where everyone has very similar policy plans
is by the force of your life story
and the way in which you tell that life story.
And Buttigieg, though he's only 37 years old,
has a hell of a story to tell.
He's a Harvard grad, a Rhodes scholar,
he was deployed in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014,
and was a Naval Reservist until 2017.
He was elected mayor of his hometown at age 29.
He is both gay and married.
In short, there's lots of there there
when it comes to Mayor Pete.
His surge has been fueled less by some catchy slogan
than by a genuine excitement among Democratic primary voters
about his personal story and candidacy.
Plus, the momentum and money
Buttigieg is gathering right now
will help him in real tangible ways.
His campaign says it plans to double his staff
in the coming weeks
and they are working on building bigger organizations
in places like Iowa and New Hampshire,
where Mayor Pete will have to show well
to have any chance at winning the nomination.
Now, before we get too far ahead of ourselves,
and I just said, "Any chance of winning the nomination,"
it is worth remembering this: No one, absolutely no one,
will be voting until late-January or early-February 2020,
which is still a very long time from now.
Mayor Pete may be the flavor of this month,
but he's unlikely to be the only lesser-known candidate
who experiences a bit of a boom between now and next year.
Still, an early Buttigieg bump
is better than no bump at all.
And lots of Mayor Pete's fellow 2020 candidates
would love to have the sort of run he's been on recently.
Campaigns for president are about creating opportunities,
seizing them, and never letting go.
Pete Buttigieg has already accomplished
the first two parts of that equation
in just two months as a candidate.
It's the never-letting-go bit that he's still got to master.
And that is The Po!nt.
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