Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left

But those explanations are still too general to explain the fury inspired by a fourth-place presidential contender and Midwestern college-town mayor. And it’s not his ideology: The resentment he inspires runs much deeper than that earned by the Amy Klobuchars and Michael Bennets of the world—both of whom have more politically moderate tendencies than Buttigieg, who has, among other positions, argued for raising the minimum wage to $15, introducing a public health care option, expanding the size of the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. (Asked for comment for this article, a representative from the Buttigieg campaign told Politico that staffers are occasionally vexed by the cold reception to a platform that’s well to the left of any recent Democratic presidential nominee.)

The unspoken truth about the furor Buttigieg arouses is that his success threatens a core belief of young progressives: that their ideology owns the future, and that the rise of millennials into Democratic politics is going to bring an inevitable demographic triumph for the party’s far left wing.

The left believes the youth are on its side—and as shown by Bernie Sanders’ popularity among the under-30 set, as shown in a recent Quinnipiac poll, they’re apparently right. In a primary debate with the incumbent former Rep. Joe Crowley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “I represent not just my campaign, but a movement.” Mobilized young Democratic Socialists of America members have raved to the New York Times about how the DSA is “what the Democratic Party should be.” Waleed Shahid, spokesman for the Ocasio-Cortez-aligned Justice Democrats, has dramatized the generational struggle by interpolating a famous Gramsci quote with his pinned tweet: “The old America is dying. A new America is struggling to be born. Now is a time of monsters.”

So it’s especially galling that the first millennial to take a serious run at the presidency is nothing like the left’s imagined savior. Buttigieg is a veteran, an outspoken Christian, a former McKinsey consultant, and, frankly, closer to Mitt Romney than Sanders or generational peer AOC in his aw shucks personal affect. In the eyes of radicalized young leftists, Buttigieg isn’t just an ideological foe, he’s worse than that: He’s a square.

Consider the reaction to a recent viral video showing Buttigieg supporters in Iowa performing a painfully earnest, undeniably corny dance routine to 2000s emo survivors Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes.” As the New York Times’ Astead Herndon pointed out, cutesy pump-up efforts are hardly native to Mayor Pete’s campaign; recall the merchandising and sloganeering fervor that ensued when a bird alighted on Bernie Sanders’ podium in 2016, or the uncanny-valley quality of various pro-MAGA YouTube anthems. The dance in question, however, was taken by Buttigieg’s critics as proof positive of his platform’s corporate soullessness. “Mayor Pete does the high hopes dance after every home demolition, elect him president so he can do it after every drone strike,” tweeted the official account of the niche-but-influential lefty magazine Current Affairs.



https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/01/pete-buttigieg-enrages-left-liberals-2020-091479