Opinions Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris reflected America as I know it

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

by Jonathan Capehart

For the second time in almost exactly three months, I gasped out loud on a plane upon seeing the news that a candidate was leaving the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The first time was on Dec. 3, 2019, when Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) ended her campaign. The second time was Sunday night. I was settling into my seat on the flight back to Washington from Columbia, S.C., when a friend texted me a tweet from CNN’s Jake Tapper dropping the news that former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg would be ending his campaign.

Neither departure was all that surprising. Each candidate had to confront his or her own electoral mortality. For Harris, it was not enough time or money to keep the campaign afloat until Iowa. For Buttigieg, it was the message sent by the the decisive victory of former vice president Joe Biden in the South Carolina primary. Despite his efforts to appeal to African American voters, Buttigieg could not break their loyalty to and confidence in Biden. None of the candidates could, which is why Tom Steyer dropped out of the race within hours of Biden being declared the victor in the Palmetto State. The San Francisco billionaire bet everything on South Carolina and came in a distant third.

But I gasped at the departure of Harris then and Buttigieg now because of what they and their candidacies meant to me. Each appealed to my two identities, and each made me enormously proud.

Mayor Pete wasn’t the first openly LGBTQ person to run for president. Fred Karger ran for the Republican nomination in 2012. But the little-known mayor from a post-industrial Midwestern town, who so impressed former president Barack Obama that he named him as a rising star in the Democratic Party, took that baton from Karger and ran much farther with it. With his husband by his side, Buttigieg won the most delegates during the Iowa caucuses. He tied Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the fight for delegates in the New Hampshire primary. And Buttigieg won the endorsement of the State, an influential newspaper in South Carolina, where 60 percent of the Democratic electorate is African American.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-pete-buttigieg-and-kamala-harris-reflected-america-as-i-know-it/ar-BB10Dx81?ocid=msn360

[Hav]

1. Thinking about it,

I think they could be a great duo in the future. Both are also very intelligent and empathetic.