Pete Buttigieg\u2026 more than anything he seems unseasoned. Which is the criticism! He’s a 38-year-old who mayored a third-tier city, there are more steps on the cursus honorum yet to go. An intermediate elected position would broaden his horizons \u2013 the types and scale of constituencies to service, the allies to articulate with, his donor and support base\u2026
But is there any intermediate position open to him? Mid-century the best out-party talent in Indiana would have a shot at governor or senate but partisanship is too firm now and it’s a red state. Should he use his run as an “audition” for cabinet or VP? If he’d spent 4 years building up chits he could maybe get Veterans Affairs. Julian Castro made sense as a ticket-balancer but who would Pete balance, a coastal minority straight woman? Stacey Abrams isn’t even running, and he’d have to be more established labor-y to balance Harris.
People like “why didn’t Cory Booker get a look this cycle” and it’s cause people know who Cory Booker is, he’s been in the mix a while, nothing new, and they know national level that’s not enough. But that’s cause Cory Booker is close to the limits of how crossover you can get as an elected official in a blue state - he’s cool with urban neoliberalism! He’d be a good committee head someday but the Gingrich reforms weakened the impact of that.
But maybe it’s not a Dem thing but a post-Boomer thing. JFK was elected youngest at 43, but that was with a dynastic machine behind him, blood a more direct form of inheritance than neo-establishmentarians Humphrey and Nixon, who still had to devote energy to holding things together.
Oldest elected was Donald Trump. In California, with one governor, two senators, and a term-limited “up or out” legislature for 40 million people, it’s a traffic jam at the top and increasingly the middle as the Boomers just refuse to relinquish power.
Maybe that’s the thing, not so much that Pete’s a red state Dem as a post-Boomer, experiencing the same thing as us all in bumping up against an entrenched leadership that petulantly refuses to die like proper olds.
Maybe we’re experiencing a shift from a 3-simultaneous-generation to a 4-simultaneous world. Maybe that will require either patience or parricidical initiative or both.
Anyway to repeat, this is part of why I endorse Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination
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