Do Buttigieg and Klobuchar Deserve Each Other?

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Pete Buttigieg apparently went into last night’s debate with a clear strategy: Attack Bernie Sanders, attack Mike Bloomberg, and point out that many—as he saw it, most—Democrats didn’t want to vote for either. Those Democrats needed a third option, which, Mayor Pete understandably suggested, should be him. 

Then, he sidetracked himself because he also had a secondary strategy: Make clear that he, not Amy Klobuchar, was that third option. To that end, however, he went after Klobuchar so angrily, and, as Elizabeth Warren pointed out, not on policy but on Amy’s inability to remember a name, that he all but eclipsed his attacks on Bernie and Mike. What viewers and news-clip watchers will remember from Pete’s performance is his war on Amy, and Amy’s war on him, and the palpable loathing that each evokes in the other—not his case for a middle-of-the-spectrum Democrat.

Seldom has a battle for a fourth- or fifth-place finish, for the mantle of small-ball (when compared to Sanders and Warren) champion, been so viciously fought. If Dante were covering the debate (if Dante were covering American politics—what a thought!), he’d place them next to each other on some hellacious circle, tormenting each other for all eternity for the right to a dubious distinction.  

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