South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been making waves with his long-shot presidential campaign.
And for a brief moment, it looked like it might not be such a long-shot after all.
Buttigieg – darling of the Democrats’ donor class of wealthy “limousine liberals” – is surging to the top of the polls, now leading in the all-important early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
And he was in position to cement his lead if impeachment moves to the Senate, which would take Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., off the campaign trail for weeks, if not months.
The Hill Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack predicted that Buttigieg would “move up even more” in the polls as five rivals pause nearly all rallies and speeches.
But a newly resurfaced video is threatening to END his campaign in a hurry because it has the “tolerant” left screaming mad.
It shows tolerance… for conservatives!
Not just any Republicans, either, but some of the most conservative of all as the footage shows “Mayor Pete” speaking in sympathetic terms to an audience of Tea Party members during his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for Indiana state treasurer.
Critics on the left slammed the move as “disqualifying.”
Here’s @PeteButtigieg speaking at a Tea Party event during Obama’s presidency and praising them for their concerns about the "direction" of the country. The Tea Party is the RACIST movement that rose up after Obama was elected.
This video is disqualifying.pic.twitter.com/THFHD4BRS3
— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) November 19, 2019
Buttigieg’s speech appeared to be a Hail Mary attempt to reach voters in a long-shot campaign – pretty much what he’s doing now as he runs for president – with just a few lines aimed at the Tea Party.
They weren’t critical. But they weren’t exactly supportive, either.
“I have to admit, as a Democrat, many of my friends and supporters looked at me as if I was absolutely nuts when I suggested that I would be coming tonight to speak with a group that’s often identified as the Tea Party,” he joked in the clip from a “Meet the Candidates Night” at a church hosted by conservative groups.
He said some of those Democrat friends warned him the Tea Party was just a “subsidy” of the Republican Party.
But what he did next is an unforgivable sin to the left: He tried to relate to these conservative voters and the concerns of real Americans.
“There are many others who believe that the Tea Party is motivated by real concerns about the direction of our government, and the responsiveness of our government to citizens, and above all the frustration with business as usual,” he said.
Those basic Tea Party values, he said motivated his own campaign.
And he added that while he might have a different perspective, “I believe we might find that we have a lot in common on that front.”
They likely didn’t find much common with him at all; he lost the race, badly.
And now, far-left Democrats say they have nothing in common with him either.
Wow. Just unreal… @PeteButtigieg literally sidling up to racist Tea Partiers. And he's got it wrong: @GOP is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tea Party- #FreedomCaucus-anti-evidence-Benghazi-email-Area 51 nutcases.
Yet another "Dem" who feels a need 2 apologize for Democrats. https://t.co/t5NIKYobmt
— JodiJacobson 🇺🇦 🩸🦷 @[email protected] (@jljacobson) November 19, 2019
He’s done. Absolutely done. Not a single Dem of color gonna vote for a dude who backed the goddamn Tea Party.
Vaya con dios, bro https://t.co/wrFUov1KSM— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) November 19, 2019
As far as the left is concerned, the entire Tea Party movement is “racist” because it sprang up in response to the executive overreach of then-President Barack Obama.
And Democrats say any attempt to relate with them – let alone admit they had a legit reason to show “frustration with business as usual” – makes anyone who even talks to them a racist, too.
The result: the progressive wing of the party… so critical to the Democrats in their primaries… is jumping ship on Buttigieg.
But even if he overcomes the damage from this video and wins back the left… even if he wins the nomination with his largely optimistic rhetoric… there’s still one big hurdle standing between him and the White House: His politics.
Kelly Havens, emcee of the Tea Party event Buttigieg attended, told Buzzfeed that the young candidate came across as smart, friendly and a man of faith.
“But all of that being said, he is thoroughly a socialist which I believe is a huge mistake for our country to pursue any further,” she told the website.