With great fanfare last month, Pete Buttigieg has announced “Phase Three” of his presidential campaign. Campaign adviser Lis Smith described the first two phases as teaching people how to pronounce his name and then raising gobs of money. For this new phase, the Buttigieg team plans to “blow them out of the water with our organization.” …
You may have seen Democratic presidential candidates categorized as “wine track” and “beer track.” Political analyst Ron Brownstein popularized those labels, observing that the “brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform” on the wine track tend to lose in Democratic presidential primaries to candidates with support “rooted in the blue-collar and minority communities” on the beer track. But six months after Buttigieg wowed the Democratic donor class in a CNN town hall, and four months after he peaked at 8 percent in the RealClearPolitics poll average, Buttigieg can’t even crack the wine track. Instead, he seems to be pioneering a new campaign lane: the “craft beer” track. CONT.
Bill Scher, Politico Magazine