The “holiday season,” better known to Americans as Christmas and Hanukkah but now known as Impeachment Season to cosmopolite liberals, might be thought of as half-time in the presidential primary process. And the 4th quarter fundraising numbers for the Democratic field are starting to dribble out. News out this morning is that Bernie Sanders raked in $34.5 million in the 4th quarter (up from $25 million in the 3rd quarter), ahead of Pete Buttigieg, who raised $27.4 million (up from $19 million in the 3rd quarter). By comparison, Trump raised $46 million, though other GOP campaign instruments raised another $100 million.
The other major candidates have not yet reported their 4th quarter numbers, but it is thought that Elizabeth Warren, after a strong 3rd quarter in the money race ($24.6 million), has slipped badly in the 4th quarter along with every new lunatic policy plan she rolled out, while Joe Biden keeps telling Democratic insiders that his fundraising has stepped up considerably since his mediocre 3rd quarter numbers. One small surprise is that Andrew Yang raised $16.5 million.
UPDATE, @12.30 Pacific time: Biden’s 4th quarter fundraising haul is in: $22.7 million. That is a comparatively weak number, putting him far behind Sanders and below Mayor Pete. Yang’s $16.5 million is either a sign of how impressive he is, or how feeble Biden is (or maybe both). Warren still hasn’t released her numbers, but she might be in Yang’s neighborhood. It’s a disaster for Warren if she comes in below Yang. If I’m an establishment Democrat swamp-dweller, I’m worried.
I have thought for a while that Bernie is surging (this is showing up in some polls), and now he has the resources for the early primary states. Meanwhile, Buttigieg continues to attract significant hostility from the left, even though is a undoubtedly further to the left than Joe Biden. Politico reported a few days ago:
“Mayor Pete” has been perpetually dogged by a major issue: the youngest and most activated voters in his party all seem to—how to put this delicately?—hate his guts. . . Why is the enmity from young, left-wing activists toward Buttigieg so visceral? It’s true that they favor Bernie Sanders, but Buttigieg comes in for a type of loathing that surpasses even that they hold for Sanders’ older rivals, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. . .
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 other words, the hatred of Mayor Pete is yet another millennial temper tantrum, combined with the rising opposition on the left to the idea meritocracy itself, a successor to and product of liberal guilt. (This the the largest unacknowledged trend of the moment, and another ticking time bomb for liberal politics.) Politico more or less makes this clear in a sequel:
Buttigieg is a young professional with an elite pedigree who’s chosen to buy into the system as a reformer instead of attacking it as a revolutionary. To a certain class of left-wing thought leaders, he’s an unwelcome reminder of the squeaky-clean moderates with whom they once rubbed elbows. And quite possibly, his elite credentials may also be an unwelcome reminder of their own. The editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, for instance, isn’t just a random antagonist: He’s also a fellow Harvard alumnus. . .
The educated young people leading the left have worked closely with these overachievers throughout their careers—often at the same elite institutions they deride, rightfully or not, as venal consensus factories. . .
Buttigieg does not enjoy considerable support among young people. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll of Iowa voters, he placed a distant third among 18-to-29-year-olds, behind Sanders and Warren. But he does appeal to a certain kind of young person, as now represented in the cultural imagination by the “High Hopes” dancers. And to the self-renouncing meritocrats who act as thought leaders to the young left, those people represent both a personal frustration and a political fear—that the institutions of tomorrow may yet be built by those with faith in yesterday’s ideals.
I’m ordering extra popcorn for the early primaries, but right now I could easily see the nomination race coming down to Bernie and Mayor Pete if Biden collapses in Iowa and New Hampshire (eminently possible), and no one else emerges as a “better-than-expected” surprise in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Chaser: The Washington Post on the Democratic Party’s “rightward drift.” Rightward. Yeah, right.
Buttigieg shifts to center, embodying the Democratic primary’s rightward drift
The shifts reflect in part the broader trajectory of the Democratic primary, which initially appeared to herald a dramatic leftward surge. The center of gravity is settling in a less revolutionary place. Many liberals — at first excited by Buttigieg and the change he promised — now see him as embodying a dynamic they find deeply frustrating.
I think I can figure this out: A “less revolutionary place” means Democrats merely want to replicate Mao’s cultural revolution rather than Lenin’s liquidation of the kulaks. Maybe they’ll hold that for President Pete’s second term.
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