During a recent Iowa rally, Pete Buttigieg described his strategy for beating Donald Trump with an unusual analogy. "He's kind of like a Chinese finger trap," observed the South Bend mayor. "The harder you go in, the harder it gets stuck."
As the audience chuckled, the 37-year-old presidential candidate explained: "You've got to get out of playing his game."
More important than trying to match Trump move for move, he suggested, is figuring out how Trump won over voters who had previously voted Democratic. And acknowledging that racism and xenophobia helped carry Trump to victory, Buttigieg said it's important to understand what makes people susceptible to messages like those.
Without elaborating, he said, "We've got to talk more, not about him, but about you."
This seems to be Buttigieg's way of approaching many questions, by looking at the long view, the bigger picture, the one everyone is most likely to agree on, then putting audiences in the driver's seat. He's well capable of such analyses. They also help avoid specifics.
If you'd never heard of Buttigieg a month ago, you're not alone. If you haven't by now, you just might be. A little over a month after the March 10 CNN town hall that brought him 65,000 donors, the first millennial to seek the presidency is still riding high. He placed third in an Emerson Poll of Iowa Democrats — after Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Within four hours of announcing his candidacy April 14, he raised $1 million. And he draws huge crowds; an estimated 1,100 turned out at Franklin Middle School.
"We've cleared the bar. What do you think?" he asked his cheering audience.
Buttigieg is self-confident, smart, youthful, polished and just the right amount of cocky for the task. "He's so many things we need right now," said the chairman of the Polk County Democrats, Sean Bagniewski, who introduced him: A Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar who served with the Navy Reserves in Afghanistan. A former Obama campaign worker who also worked for management consulting company McKinsey & Co.