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Comment by dawg- | Hacker News Reader

He worked in D.C. think tanks and as a consultant for McKinsey before becoming a mayor. He was always going to be an "establishment" candidate. He was always "young Joe Biden". People just expected him to be more progressive I guess because he's gay? In retrospect it didn't make much sense.

In any case, if there is going to be an establishment Democrat running against Trump I would still rather have Buttigieg than Biden. If I had to guess, I would think the DNC will not be super excited about the prospects of Bernie or Warren vs Trump, and Buttigieg may get a big boost as a result.

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I'd also like to point out it's not just "the DNC". Seems like whenever a candidate presents more centrist positions these days, it is only "the evil establishment" that supports them, and not "the true people".

While I like a lot of the policy positions of Warren and Sanders, there are a lot of positions of theirs I just plain disagree with and I believe will be damaging to this country.

There just happen to be a lot of people who are strongly anti-Trump and want more progressive taxation, but who think things like the 2% wealth tax and blanket cancellation of student loan debt is a bad idea. I'm kind of sick of this false idea that the only reason people don't support "bold policies" is we think they're too bold. Sometimes we just think they're wrong.

True, I wasn't trying to say the DNC is evil or that real people don't support "establishment" candidates - of course they do. Just saying that whoever the DNC throws their weight behind will get a really big boost. And since it probably won't be Warren or Sanders, I think it could be Buttigieg.

Buttigieg is less progressive than he was originally presented as but I don't think that's necessarily a terrible thing. It's just a thing. And now that it's been acknowledged that he's actually pretty moderate, we can start talking about whether he's a better moderate candidate than Biden.

When it comes to Buttigieg, though, I don't see how anyone can win the Democratic nomination without African-American support, and Buttigieg basically has none (IMO a result of the racial issues in his hometown, and the fact that African-Americans at large have shown much more reticence to supporting gay candidates and issues): https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/10/can-mayor-petes-cash-pil...

He came of as progressive because (but not limited to) his views on M4A single payer, defending it and calling it the compromise solution, when comparing it to the UK system, where all hospital are own by the government and doctors work for the government.

That all changed.. just 9 months later

Not a fan myself... but of the establishment people running him and Beto are probably the only ones I'd vote for. Biden, Harris, Booker are all on my abstain list.

I don't know whether they're go left on things that matter to me like single payer/universal healthcare, but I hope their 'youth' and the public popular opinions would possibly sway them to be more progressive if that's what the country wanted.

Biden, et al I feel are much more entrenched w/ the establishment and would not budge at all and would kowtow to insurance and big-pharma.

Of course I'd much rather see Bernie, Tulsi, Warren, or Yang succeed.

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