Dear Commons Community,

NBC News and other media are reporting that Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the race for the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nomination.   The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana was supposed to travel to Texas but will instead return to Indiana, where he planned to make an announcement later tonight.  As reported by NBC.

“Buttigieg won just 2 percent of black voters in South Carolina on Saturday, likely reinforcing doubts about his ability to win votes from one of the party’s most important constituencies.

NBC News exit polls found that the state’s electorate was 57 percent African American, the first majority-black primary this election cycle.

It isn’t clear who Buttigieg’s supporters will now back. Recent polling by Morning Consult found that they split between various other candidates as their second choice with no clear alternative: 21 percent picked Sanders, 19 percent picked Biden, 19 percent picked Warren and 17 percent picked Bloomberg.

Buttigieg, an Afghan War veteran and first openly gay nominee of a major political party, initially rose to the top of the Democratic primary with strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire. He placed third in Nevada and fourth in South Carolina.

Buttigieg will end his campaign having won 26 delegates.

At just 38, he is widely seen to have a bright future and may be better served by quitting now instead of continuing to compete with rivals, one of whom he will likely end up supporting in the general election.

Buttigieg’s message seemed like a better fit for the Democratic nomination of 2004 than 2020. He poked fun at elite condescension of “flyover country” and the “American Heartland” of the Midwest. He called for deficit reduction and denounced the “revolutionary politics of the 1960s.” His surrogates fondly reminisced about the TV show “The West Wing.”

Ironically for a millennial, Buttigieg ran a throwback campaign that appealed to older and white voters in a party becoming younger and more racially diverse. He was an AIM candidate in a TikTok world, with supporters more familiar with Billy Joel than Billie Eilish.

Whatever comes next for Buttigieg, he’ll always be able to say he was the first ever millennial or openly gay candidate to win a state in a major party presidential primary. It’s a boast that’s likely to come in handy.”

We wish Mr. Buttigieg the best.  He ran a good, clean race!

Tony

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