Mayor Pete has unquestionably emerged as the leading Biden replacement candidate. He’s ahead in the most recent Iowa poll. As a result, it is widely anticipated that he will be taking a disproportionate amount of fire on his qualifications and identity issues during tonight’s debate. I think most of it will be from the other Biden replacement wannabes–Klobuchar, Harris, and Booker–because they have the most to gain by toppling him. The two progressives will engage with him on policy issues, but they have no reason to make it personal, and Biden probably won’t attack him at all, since he is a useful and articulate ally against the left.
Can Mayor Pete actually win? In Iowa, possibly. In the country as a whole, no. His sexual orientation is an issue with many older voters, of course, but the bigger problems are his lack of relevant experience and his bloodless approach to what most people view as moral issues. He comes across as a short, unprepossessing, brainy technocrat–a Michael Dukakis for the 21st century. That makes him about as different from Trump as you can get, to be sure, but I just don’t think a technocratic personality is in tune with an electorate which increasingly sees politics in apocalyptic terms.