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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   35282 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Missing Petes - Where are the 30-something liberals?

This write-up was prompted by Zohran Mamdani’s rising popularity in the NYC mayoral race.

Pre-2016, American politics was run by boomers. As the youngest boomer, Obama was expected to pass the baton to the next generation of Democrats. Alas, geriatrics returned with a vengeance, and Gen-X tapped out for good.

Of the dominant American political groups, I'm most sympathetic to neo-libs with a YIMBY flavor. Therefore, I’ve kept an eye out for Millennial newcomers who fit into this mold. 'Left of center with accommodations for changing times' is a tried and tested formula for fresh Democrats. It started off great. Tulsi and Pete had respectable presidential runs for their age.

Then began the woke revolution and the COVID crisis. During this period, I expected radicals to be ascendant, and they were. Progressive Millennial faces were introduced through 'The Squad,' prison abolitionists, and protest movement leaders. All positioned in opposition to the neo-lib incumbents, all terrible policymakers. Thankfully, the progressives haven’t won anything at the national level just yet.

Their mortal enemies, the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi), ran the nation for four years. Most of it was in a post-woke era where the nation was shifting to the right. Yet, we saw no new neo-lib faces during that time. At both the national and local levels, less-progressive democrats like Tulsi and Ann Davidson were pushed out despite their popularity, as proven by their rise in the Republican camp.

Train-man Pete is the obvious exception. But where are the other Petes? If boomer Democrats dislike AOC’s allies, why haven’t they groomed any young leaders of their own? Have boomers reinforced the stereotype by once more pulling up the ladder behind them?

I ask rhetorically, of course. The answer is yes. Boomers crushed the political prospects of an entire generation behind them. Millennials weren't going to have it any easier. The sheer greed of 80-year-old geriatrics is embarrassing. No policy goals left to pursue, just a legacy of corruption and unmet promises.

I dislike Zohran. Among my fellow Indians, he is what we call a 'chutiya' (hard to translate; the closest synonym would be wanker). Yet, I feel dirty saying anything positive about Cuomo. Do the two options have to be a corrupt neo-lib boomer versus a Millennial wanker? As the boomers die off, who will take their place in Democratic power structures? Because from my perspective, all the young leaders are socialist wankers.

So I ask again: Where are the other Petes?

The basic answer is that this is just not a big or influential constituency. No ladder pulling required. Neolibs with a YIMBY flavor don't run for office, and when they do they tend to lose because boring technocratic policymaking isn't just boring, it also tends to slaughter a lot of sacred cows (one of the characteristics of this faction is a disdain for interest groups, which is not a great feature for endearing yourself to interest groups).

There's some hints of this changing, but most of the people who would fit this bill are still working at the state or municipal level. Buttigieg arguably lucked out, leveraging a failed presidential primary run to vault from mayor of a small city to cabinet secretary.

Their mortal enemies, the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi)

None of these people are neolibs (at least assuming that by 'neolib' you mean technocratically inclined center-left, as seems to be implied by earlier remarks) except maybe Blinken, who, rather prominently, is a career functionary rather than a politician. There's no particular reason for anyone of them to care about raising up the next generation of neolibs.

Likewise "less progressive" democrats tend to be almost the polar opposite of neoliberals: moderate to conservative-ish socially, economically populist. Or just normie libs.

Let's say you are the shadow dictator of the Dems. How exactly do you message that you are going back to the "Hey let's be competent technocrats" strategy.

Bring James Carville back in some very visible fashion.

[ Unfortunate given his made-for-radio face, but oh well ]

How to go back to a strategy you never held? Competent technocrat is the Mitt Romney lane. No one else since Eisenhower has even run on that.

Didn't both Romney and Obama stake a claim on the technocrat lane? Wasn't the argument for Hillary supposed to be her competence? Biden's first term was initially supposed to be a return to the technocracy of Obama even though he [by which I mean Biden] turned out to not be that at all.

Have competent technocrats in positions of power? And then have them do competent things publicly

The Canadian liberals just did this pivot, although we'll see if they can follow through

Publicly excommunicate AOC? Put major thumb on the scale in the NYC primary?

The boomers didn't just shaft the whole next generations coming up, they implemented tons of policies meant to rebalance the racial makeup of the party. Because they weren't going to give up their positions the only way for this to work out is to aggressively discriminate against white up and comers. So they mercilessly culled them and made it clear that they wanted the next generation of the democratic party to be anything but straight white men.

This isn't just an internal Dem party thing. This strategy is even prevalent in local government in red states.

The democrats suck as a party. They just don’t seem to understand how anything works in actual politics.

1). They have insanely high standards especially as the minority party. Like Al Franken was reasonably popular. But Alas, he had a picture taken in the early 1990s of him pretending to touch a sleeping woman’s boobs not even actually touching, just hands near the boobs, and it was an obvious joke by a professional comedian. But that’s the end of him because even though the picture was 15 years old when it came to light, it was just too much. And I’m sure this has happened many other times as well.

2). They publicly in-fight and publicly refuse to accept party discipline and therefore cannot get a real coalition going. Kamala lost, in part because she was not pro-Gaza enough for that wing of her party. To the degree that GOP members and voters disagree, they are extremely disciplined in voting. Disagree with your GOP membership’s position, you do so in the primary elections, but in the general, every GOP candidate gets the support of the party and the voters. There’s not even public disagreement. The party wants your support, and you are expected to shut up (at least in public) and vote with the party.

3). They lack media platforms in major markets. If you want to hear conservative news, you have a very large network to choose from. You have podcasts, YouTubers, tv news networks, radio, websites, substacks, etc. and they are generally agreed on what they support, or at least who they support. They have a mutual respect and understanding that you don’t attack other conservatives unless they’re going too far to the left. The Left has individuals with TV, radio, or podcasts, but they really don’t support each other. Raechel Maddow doesn’t tell the same story as Ezra Klein who doesn’t tell the same story as Thom Hartmann.

  1. they seem to lack any sort of clear, coherent vision of what life in a Democratic Party run America would look like. And because they can’t articulate a clear vision, it’s really hard to get people to buy into it. If they had a vision for America as Denmark, but multicultural, or something, sure they could probably get some buy in. If they said “competent leadership” again, I think people would go for it. When your best come-on is “ those other guys are nuts and want to have a white Christian nationalist fascist dictatorship with blackjack and hookers,” it’s hard to get past the question of “okay, but what are YOU going to do for me? Because he promised to make Americans strong and prosperous again, and all you got is he’s lying and a fascist”.

5). They mistake procedure for power. Democrats famously asked the permission of the parliamentarian to add “increase the minimum wage” to a budget bill. This parliamentarian has no power, and can be fired at the whim of Congress. But when the parliamentarian said no, they basically threw up their hands and gave up. When a Supreme Court seat came open during and election, republicans suspecting they’d win, refused to confirm any Obama appointed nominee and thus took a lifetime seat on the SCOTUS for their side. One group chooses procedures as a proxy for power, the other simply uses their power to get power. And the party that chooses power wins, unsurprisingly.

I’m convinced that most younger Americans have generally gone to the GOP if they want power. Theres just no way that a party who couldn’t tell an octogenarian with obvious dementia that he couldn’t run for a second presidential term is going to weird much power. It’s a very weird thing. The democrats want the trappings of power — the fundraisers, the ceremonies, the interviews on legacy media that pretend they’re important. But for anyone who wants actual power, the GOP is the lace to be.

3). They lack media platforms in major markets. If you want to hear conservative news, you have a very large network to choose from. You have podcasts, YouTubers, tv news networks, radio, websites, substacks, etc. and they are generally agreed on what they support, or at least who they support. They have a mutual respect and understanding that you don’t attack other conservatives unless they’re going too far to the left. The Left has individuals with TV, radio, or podcasts, but they really don’t support each other. Raechel Maddow doesn’t tell the same story as Ezra Klein who doesn’t tell the same story as Thom Hartmann.

This is false. Democrats control most major media outlets. Your have to intentionally seek out conservative podcasts or other. If you just watch a football or basketball game, the news that follows will be massively left of center.

The Left has individuals with TV, radio, or podcasts, but they really don’t support each other. Raechel Maddow doesn’t tell the same story as Ezra Klein who doesn’t tell the same story as Thom Hartmann.

No? I recall everyone and their mother calling J.D.Vance, the seemingly most normal guy in politics, ever, weird. There is clear coordination. Back during Trump's first campaign, there was a minor scandal that pretty much every major media sent a high ranking guy to some Clinton event to coordinate campaign messaging.

Also, the TV and newspapers pretty much belongs to the democrats. Not that anyone except those who await death pays attention to legacy media (, but the left has something like 75% of the TV and 90% of the paper market, at least.

JournaList was a thing. They repeat the same message and social media showed how creepy it was. The above post reads as cope.

3) What now? The left has CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, etc. You know, the "mainstream media".

Yeah, one wonders how much of the Democrat's lack of dominance in new media is just cause the new media outlets that'd parrot the party talking points are just...the old media. So you look at a scary chart where the right is routing Democrats but it doesn't account for the people who just still trust the telly.

Left-wing new media has to spec to capture dissatisfaction with the Democratic status quo which is why there's no unanimity. Right wing media can at least be united by being against the left wing culturally.

The fact that they're funding Harry Sisson, of all people, indicates that there's a major hole in this control of the mainstream media. Catturd may be ridiculous but nobody on the left measures up.

The democrats cant seem to stop themselves from attempting to coronate shrieking Karens who can’t take two steps back from sub-20% positions.

‘Why aren’t there millennials there’ is probably downstream from whatever problem causes that.

Acc. to Yougov, the older powerful female politicians are - Hillary, Kamala, Pelosi, Warren. The powerful female democrats are all angry. I'm surprised that no other female archetype has succeeded in US politics.

In India, I've seen other archetypes work out. Indira Gandhi represented the stoic & steeled strongwoman. Jayalalitha went from film star to holy-mother of sorts. Even the shriekers demonstrated excellence in verbal combativeness. Sushma Swaraj & Mamata Banerjee had a sharpness about them that I have not seen from female American leaders. (AOC is growing into it, but she isn't a traditional democrat).

Now that I think about it, the 2 party system seems to have lot to do with it. Indira Gandhi had to win an internal civil-war to rise to power. Jayalalitha & Mamata Banerjee built their own cult-like 3rd parties to ensure internal loyalty. Unconventional candidates need to find the space to build an army of unconventional loyalists to usurp power. In that sense, AOC seems to be doing all the right things. Alas, she supports some of the most braindead policies and politicians.

I don't think they are especially angry, but older liberal women especially seem to have an unfortunate tendency to speak publicly as though they are talking to children and struggling to make themselves understood, rather than struggling to persuade. Maybe this is a factor of mistake theory vs. conflict theory, but I think it really annoys people, like trying to make yourself understood to a foreigner by speaking English, louder and slower.

I think it’s the narrative liberals tend to tell themselves in which the only reason someone disagrees with the liberal position is that they have a defect, either moral, intellectual, or in cases where they feel charitable, educational. You didn’t, according to this narrative, study the issues and come to a different conclusion. You came to that conclusion because you’re stupid or uneducated unless you just somehow get off on hurting people. So when white wine moms talk to you about why you came to the wrong conclusion, they assume that they’re talking to a lesser being not as evolved or educated as they are.

Conservatives don’t have quite the same narrative. They don’t assume that their liberal counterparts never studied the issue, they assume that they’re perhaps sheltered and get their information from biased sources. But that doesn’t make you stupid or uninformed.

I see no shortage of conservatives assuming their opponents are stupid, insane, satanically evil or all three.

I don’t think it’s quite the mainstream position in the right-leaning spaces. They might nod along with “evil” or “ideologically possessed” (which started with JBP, I think) but I don’t think, aside from mocking college students and wine moms that they call liberals stupid.

but older liberal women especially seem to have an unfortunate tendency to speak publicly as though they are talking to children and struggling to make themselves understood, rather than struggling to persuade

It's called "condescension".

Old liberal women are just like that- I think it's a blue tribe cultural thing that just comes off wrong to non-blue tribers(which, coincidentally, all[literally] swung away from Harris).

It's not lost on me that if you actually listen to the humour and derogatory stereotypes blacks tell about whites, it's, uh, not aimed at conservatives(they call us 'rednecks' and the humour is quite a bit more good-natured).

There are non-angry female politicians in the US- they’re just republicans.

This reminds me of a shoop someone made of a screengrab from a news channel featuring “The Squad” (AOC, Omar, etc.) at a press conference. It was edited so the headline read something like: “BREAKING NEWS: HOES MAD.” They did, indeed, look displeased. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it from a brief search.

This one? For some reason I vaguely remembered the same photoshop. It was on the first page of Brave's image search. https://ifunny.co/picture/breaking-news-breaking-hoes-mad-pep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-i-yCRb3GSP7

Now that I think about it, the 2 party system seems to have lot to do with it

I’m not so sure about that. Margaret Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady but I don’t recall her being particularly angry.

I wouldn't consider the UK to be a two party system? I realize they have two major parties but they have lots of minor parties that get at least a few seats.

I have to imagine that the Dems have gotten very good at knifing each other for perceived thought crimes and insufficient demographic achievement. Only those who have been around long enough manage to avoid this through the accumulation of political power manage to survive in this environment.

Too much eating their own.

I do know a lot of young dems who in other times would be stepping up, but they seem to be too white and/or male and therefore stick with the think tanks or party strategist roles (and lead the elders into unpopular decisions).

The differnece between the anglosphere and continental Europe is the first past the post system.

In Germany there are young leftists and rightists. Old right leaning people vote CDU, young right leaning people vote AfD. Old leftists vote social democrat, young leftists vote Green. The first past the post system makes it hard for new parties to form and makes it hard to replace the local established politician. The issue is that boomers and their establishment policies are not exciting young people anywhere. Keir Starmer and whoever is leading the Tories this week don't appeal to the young.

For a system to last young people have to be able out maneuver the old. First past the post makes this hard.

For a system to last young people have to be able out maneuver the old. First past the post makes this hard.

Given the cohort size disparity, no one is ever 'outmaneuvering' boomers in Germany. They'll keep voting CDU till they can't. Clear eyed people I know are saying they can only imagine things changing for the better after the boomers die out as a group.

IIRC the NYC mayors race OP is complaining about uses ranked choice voting.

It does. It's also technically for the Democratic primary rather than the general, although it's tough to imagine NYC electing an (R) mayor anytime soon.

For a system to last young people have to be able out maneuver the old. First past the post makes this hard.

And yet there's several lasting first-past-the-post systems, including the UK parliament which has certainly lasted longer than the German one.

Also first past the post can hypothetically make it easier for upcoming prospects to slowly rise through the ranks over a series of years/governments and develop their governance abilities, on paper at least. Compared to the US system being prone to fairly left field shakeups every so often

The US system is also first past the post.

And as of lately dysfunctional. I think that government systems must rotate every few years to prevent people from learning how to game the system.

I am certain that bringing something else in USA than first past the post will improve the current quality of governing, not because of superiority of the new system but of the shakeup. Same with bringing first past the post 20 years later. For a new shakeup.

The Mamdani craze is because progressives, especially in Manhattan, cannot help themselves when it comes to electing DSA types who want to defund the police.

Amusingly, black people saved NYC by electing Adams who arrested the Floyd crime wave by allowing the NYPD to do their jobs. Now, because memories are short, the libs again forget what it’s like to live in a society without the rule of law. Crime rises, progressives get pragmatic, crime falls, progressives become idealistic, crime rises, etc.

The win state for big American cities is to elect a slightly grizzled, probably somewhat corrupt older black male cop who is technically a democrat but too compromised by big business to pursue dumb ‘justice reform’ policies.

These black mayors then become republicans, though.

Amusingly, black people saved NYC by electing Adams who arrested the Floyd crime wave by allowing the NYPD to do their jobs.

I wouldn't give Adams too much credit here. Pittsburgh crime statistics are as follows:

2018: 58 homicides, 103 non-fatal shootings 2019: 38 homicides, 113 non-fatal shootings 2020: 50 homicides, 147 non-fatal shootings 2021: 56 homicides, 170 non-fatal shootings 2022: 71 homicides, 137 non-fatal shootings 2023: 52 homicides, 118 non-fatal shootings 2024: 42 homicides, 83 non-fatal shootings

So far in 2025, as of May 31 there were 11 homicides and 33 non-fatal shootings. I don't want to project that out since crime usually goes up during the summer, but so far it looks like the downward trend is continuing. Of note is that Ed Gainey became mayor in 2022, and was elected largely as a response to perceived heavy-handed police tactics by Bill Peduto during the 2020 protests. He was supported by all the lefties, though his record from his time in the state house suggests he's more of a mainstream Democrat.

In the meantime, the police department has been in complete disarray. One of Gainey's first moves in office was to replace the retiring police chief with a veteran of the Pittsburgh force who had since moved to Florida, chasing a promotion. This lasted exactly 18 months, at which point the chief retired because he wanted to ref NCAA basketball. Compounding the problem was that it came to light that he had made a deal with Gainey upon being hired that he'd be allowed to ref basketball 18 months on the job. As critics pointed out, it would be ridiculous for a full-time police chief to be on the road 100 days a year, and the mayor should have known that. Worse, the 18 months was calculated because that was the point at which he could retire with a chief's pension. Basically, Gainey got played. A new chief from out of town was soon named, but he withdrew his name from consideration shortly thereafter, presumably because he found out how dysfunctional the administration was. There's zero chance a permanent chief will be named before the new administration takes over next year.

Even before the chief left, things weren't exactly going swimmingly. Officer shortages have led to dramatic reductions in service. Police stopped responding to alarms, and reduced their response time to "within 24 hours" for anything that wasn't an active emergency. Precincts are no longer manned overnight. Foot patrols have been increased Downtown and on the South Side, but this is due more to political pressure than any initiative on Gainey's part (crime aside, Gainey's entire modus operandi was to not do anything until a bad news story or complaints from the politically connected forced his hand). His response to criticism has been to publicly call out local journalists he doesn't like for only focusing on the bad things, citing overall crime reductions, and ham-fisted cheerleading. "Who here doesn't think our police are doing a good job? Don't we have a beautiful city! Why don't you guys ever report on how much Downtown has come back since the pandemic?" In other words, stuff that takes about three minutes and zero effort, all of it in the same MLK tone of voice that he uses ad nauseam, wherein he acts like the new road paving schedule is a monumental achievement in civic governance.

I'm not going to blame Gainey for all of the police department's woes, since most of them are downstream of a nationwide officer shortage over which he has no control. But I'm also not going to give him credit for reducing the crime rate, which seem to have also gone down as part of a nationwide trend over which he has no control. To my knowledge, no one has ever done an analysis on whether "tough on crime" mayors have any statistical advantage over "defund the police" mayors when it comes to lowering the crime rate, and it seems like the biggest argument against the defund mayors is that the crime rate didn't go down as much as in other places. So I'm not giving Adams any credit here, and I wouldn't expect a sharp rise in the crime rate if some lefty gets elected.

My understanding is that Mamdani's rise has basically been achieved mostly by hammering the housing issue. His policies would be unlikely to fix the issue, but that's still there.

Where are the 30-something conservatives? If you look at the US House members in their 30s, there are 21 Democrats and 14 Republicans. There are only two people under 40 in the Senate, one Democrat and one Republican. Considering that of the 435 members of the House, 400 of them are 40 or older, I think the correct answer is that there just aren't that many people in their 30s involved in politics.

Yeah but you'd expect conservatives to trend older inherently as standing for vested interest and conservatism.

A brief search suggests that the average Democrat in the House is two years older than the average Republican. And the last 8 members of Congress to die in office have been Democrats.

Although it's quite possible those numbers are pretty dynamic and shift with major elections though: I couldn't trivially find a time series.

How much of that is the tendency of black seats to atrophy onto a local monarch for 50 years

This is the kind of thing that AI should theoretically be good at, since members of congress and their dates of birth aren't too hard to find. Actual AI, however, seems to have a hard time with this. Gemini is evidently only capable of repeating what was already published as an article, so if there isn't some website that specifically says what the average was in, say, 1995, then it can't figure it out. Deepseek is slightly better in that it actually gives the answer, though it gives contradictory results within the same prompt. Based on the crappy results I did get, it seems like the Democratic average age has consistently been a couple years higher than the Republican average age for some time.

the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi)

I have to quibble with your calling Kamala Harris a Boomer. I think that rather than treating generations as having hard temporal cutoffs (“she was born in 1964, Wikipedia says that’s the final birth year of the Baby Boomer generation, checkmate!”) we should instead consider cultural affinities and, also importantly, the individual’s actual relationship to the American post-war Baby Boom. Kamala Harris’ parents were not Americans. Their happening to conceive her on American soil while in between academic positions doesn’t mean that they should be considered part of the American baby boom. Culturally as well, Harris is extremely Gen-X in her demeanor, her points of reference, and her visible youthfulness relative to the cohort you’re lumping her in with.

Harris is definitely a "Boomer," culturally, even if it might sometimes be more helpful to call her a "cusper." (One of my students this past year referred to Obama as our first "Gen X President" and I was like... uh... no, but I can understand why you might think that.)

Remember that Harris made her childhood participation in the civil rights movement the centerpiece of her political identity, to the shocking degree of actually endorsing race-based busing not only in the past but also in the present. The civil rights movement was a, maybe the signature Boomer movement. GenX is as close to race-blind as an American generation ever got; Millennials manifested the pendulum swinging back toward identitarianism.

GenX is as close to race-blind as an American generation ever got

This is only true of white Gen-Xers. A substantial share of black Americans never stopped caring deeply about race; add in the fact that Harris is the daughter of two leftist academics and her opinions become entirely typical of highly-educated black Americans of pretty much any generation since the 1960’s.

Do the two options have to be a corrupt neo-lib boomer versus a Millennial wanker?

According to Polymarket Eric adams has a slim but present chance of holding his seat.

As the boomers die off, who will take their place in Democratic power structures?

True believer extremist progressives.

According to Polymarket Eric Adams has a slim but present chance of holding his seat.

While in general I think betting markets are a useful(ish) signal. They are ludicrously irrational when it comes to political odds.

I am not a gambler by nature, so I haven't dabbled, but both the Trump v Kamala and the recent Canadian Election had essentially free money bets available during the election hysteria.

At one point very briefly, Pierre Poilievre's odds of winning went from <1% to 5% for ~30 mins around midnight after the voting stations closed and after every major news organization had called the election against him. The reason? "Poilievre bros" were "rallying" and "holding the line against the lib-tards". They were literally throwing money away, I regretted not having an account in that moment.

https://polymarket.com/event/next-prime-minster-of-canada/will-pierre-poilievre-be-the-next-canadian-prime-minister

I don't see it, but maybe that's due to the resolution of the graph. Either way the market was able to correct it in minutes because free money is a great motivator for smart people to take action.

Yeah I went and looked too and couldn't find it, I just remembered I have a screenshot.

https://imgur.com/a/oiQI0wg

It's the resolution of the graph, can't see it.

The Trump vs Kamala odds stayed irrational for a significant chunk of election day. A guy in my office worked out an arbitrage play between one of the sites and Kalshi that worked on the math. Unfortunately he couldn't execute because one of them required you to be a US citizen.

Trumps odds were also inflated vs the polling for a while, driven I think theoretically by a French millionaire (if I remember correctly) who was dumping large sums into Trump bets.

That screenshot doesn't show any spike from 1 to 5 around midnight. It does show a bump on election night which is also reflected in other markets. This kind of bump is very common, as the market updates based on early results such as exit polls and poll reporting, which can sometimes be in the opposite direction of the final outcome. That doesn't mean that such an update is wrong either, as the prediction is all about chances.

Trumps odds were also inflated vs the polling for a while

There's no requirement for the odds to follow movements in the polls, if there are other factors with predictive value. Nate Silver's model also put Trump's odds above his polling numbers for quite a while as well.

No, it shows PP with 4% odds, when he had 1% moments before, and the newspapers had all called the election against him.

This screenshot was sent in a group chat as we talked shit about the election, not saved to specifically document the timeline of odds.

You don't have to believe me if you don't want to.

You could even probably dig into the comment section of the market and find all the people saying "hold the line" if you were so inclined.

Oops you're right. I'm blind

To be fair, it's not exactly a stellar screenshot lol

At one point, Pierre Poilievre's odds of winning went from <1% to 5% for ~30 mins after every major news organization had called the election against him

Was that before or after the tariff spat? There was a point where it seemed like Poilievre had the election in the bag, and it would be weird for his chances to be so low.

Also, even if it was afterwards, it's not necessarily as stupid as you make it out to be. Polls are used to shape opinion as much as they're used to measure it. There's a reason why parties do internal polling.

Edited my comment to be more clear.

This was ~30 mins around midnight after the voting stations closed and after every major news organization had called the election against him.

Like the election was over, he had lost. His odds were <1% because every major newspaper had come out and said "we are calling it, Carney has won". But then the boys rallied and moved the needle for a bit.

Okay, yeah, that's pretty dum.

I doubt anyone young liberal and ambitious who goes through the modern educational apparatus (especially at the high levels) is going to come out the other side as a middle of the road neo-liberal. The factory that produces that model doesn’t exist anymore.

I agree with this. Climbing the ladder within the organized Democratic Party these days requires one to play the woke/SJW game. Anyone ambitious enough to climb rapidly (and therefore become a young national-level politician) simply must adopt those postures to make the ascent, regardless of whether they’re really a true believer or not. The party infrastructure does not encourage moderates at the “young climber” level.

Recall that Pete himself gained national-party energy during the Democratic primaries not because of any of his policy positions (which were all pretty reasonable as far as I remember, I think he would’ve been an “OK” president, certainly better than senile Biden…) but because he would have been the First Gay President. So even their one young moderate star came into his role not because of his beliefs but in spite of them, through identity politics.

I would say Buttigieg'a initial rise was more that he was a young mayor in a midwestern state. It would have been a nice story, but it is also the case that everyone realized that a gay candidate would be unelectable in the general even if they never said it.

If memory serves it was kind of both, the "young Midwest mayor" angle made him look like the kind of reasonable centrist type the Democrats were searching for in the general and the "first gay president" angle gave him energy within the party. So the combination was very appealing in the early primary season. I think you're right that the Democratic electorate at the time was too focused on the "we absolutely must beat Trump, and we need a super-electable back-to-normalcy candidate to do so" to vote for a gay candidate as the primaries went on. But his rise within the party, before that point, was definitely very much helped by his being gay.

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