Here’s a trivia question that’ll win you a free beer at the neighborhood pub: when was America’s first aircraft carrier deployed in war?
Most folks are probably gonna guess World War I, because the Wright brothers took flight on December 17, 1903, and we entered the “War to End All Wars” in 1917. That’s less than 15 years from the airplane’s invention to all-out, cross-continental aerial combat!
But you bar-buddies would be wrong… by about 60 years.
On Nov. 10, 1861, the USS Coeur de Lion towed the USS George Washington Parke Custis down the Potomac River. Aboard the George Washington Parke Curtis was a man named Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, whom President Lincoln had just named Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps. Armed with a pair of gas generators, Lowe launched a hot-air balloon from the deck of the ship and spied on the Confederates:
“I have the pleasure of reporting the complete success of the first balloon expedition by water ever attempted.”
—Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, 1861
If we define an “aircraft carrier” as a boat that launches aircraft, then America’s first aircraft carrier was successfully deployed in the Civil War — several decades before the Wright Brothers ever opened a bike shop.
(Enjoy your free beer.)
Since the 1860s, America has been the land of trial balloons: we launch ‘em and see what happens. It’s part and parcel of the American psyche — a carryover of our frontier ethos of rugged individualism and self-determination. We’re risk-takers and adventurers; a nation of gamblers and dreamers.
Especially our political parties. As we noted in early March:
[T] the Democrats will be auditioning a new leader every month. Right now, their candidate du jour is Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). The tip-off is when “friendly” media outlets including NBC and the New York Times suddenly churn out over-the-top puff pieces — and other outlets, such as The Hill, are opening hard news stories with sentences liberals love: “Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has emerged as one of his party’s loudest critics of the Trump administration…”
That’s how trial balloons work. And when Murphy flops, they’ll audition someone else.
These trial balloons aren’t flying very far. Since March, the Dems have auditioned a new “frontrunner” each month:
In March, it was Sen. Murphy, the fearless defender of wrongly-deported illegal aliens. In April, left-leaning pundits such as Nate Silver were declaring AOC the party’s undisputed 2028 frontrunner. Last month, it was the bloated, bulbous Gov. Pritzker (D-Ill.) who auditioned for the lead act on the main stage.
[Looks at the calendar.] Well, well, well! Sunday is the first day of June! Time for a brand-new Democratic trial balloon — which means, the mainstream media ought to be readying their anointing oil for another would-be savior.
And just like clockwork, we have a new frontrunner: Newsweek dropped the big announcement at 9:39 p.m. on Friday evening: “Most Accurate Pollster Finds New Lead 2028 Candidate.”
American pollster AtlasIntel found in its most recent survey that former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is leading the pack for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Newsweek reached out to Buttigieg’s talent agency via email outside normal business hours and to former vice president Kamala Harris via online form.
The veteran pollster and election analyst Nate Silver touted AtlasIntel as “top-rated” and the most accurate pollster of the 2024 presidential election. [emphasis added]
AtlasIntel has a solid reputation for accurately polling left-leaning voters. What’s especially eye-opening isn’t just that Pete Buttigieg is in the lead — but that he’s in the lead by double digits!
The AtlasIntel poll surveyed a total of 3,469 U.S. adults and was conducted from May 21 to May 27 and had a margin or error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Among those who identified as Democrats, 31.5 percent ranked Buttigieg as their top choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most progressive members of the party, came in second place with 19.4 percent and Harris ranked third with 16.6 percent of the vote.
Other top candidates included Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey (10.4 percent), California Governor Gavin Newsom (7.1 percent), Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (4.8 percent) and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (3.7 percent).
Kamala Harris’s anemic 16.6% — despite her overwhelming advantage in name-recognition — is a horrifying omen for the ex-VP. At this stage on the ’28 campaign, you’d expect her Democratic support to be significantly higher.
I suspect that most of Pete Buttigieg’s current support migrated from Harris.
Which would make the most sense: AOC is the undisputed Queen Bee of the socialist wing. She has the highest basement and the lowest ceiling, which means she needs a crowded race to wrest the nomination. AOC is the kind of candidate who has locked in 15% to 25% of the vote.
In a primary with 10+ candidates, that’s enough to keep her in first or second place for a very long time.
But in a Democratic primary with just one other candidate, she’s extraordinarily vulnerable. Her mentor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was destroyed in 2020 when the other candidates were pressured by the DNC to drop out, leaving Sanders one-on-one against Biden.
Just as Sanders was destroyed by Biden, AOC will be obliterated as well. The real race, then, is to see who’ll inherit the “DNC-approved candidate” title.
And that’s the big opportunity for Pete Buttigieg. It’s the entire point of this trial balloon.
But is he up to the task?
Well, he’s smart. Young. Doesn’t make a lot of unforced errors. And just like Gov. Gavin Newsom, he’s been moving to the middle. When asked what mistakes were made by his party since 2020, Buttigieg’s answer may surprise you:
“One, for the love of God, [we needed to] figure out a way to get the schools open sooner,” Buttigieg said. “We got very knee-jerk about this and the costs were — not just politically — but in a profound way I think, for a generation, the costs were profound, and I think anybody who’s involved, who was, by the way obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans, but I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly.”
“Obviously, [we needed to] pay more attention to the border,” he said, noting another piece of advice for 2020 Democrats. “That’s real, and that’s going to be something that you can’t just, like, take your time to deal with. These are all things, by the way, that’s super, you know, policy-wise and politically, we have the benefit of hindsight to reflect upon this.”
The third piece of advice he offered, particularly to himself, was about the nature of how the economy is perceived.
“Three, even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that ‘the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it’s a good economy, and if you have a problem with jobs, it’s a bad economy.’ Remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy, it just hasn’t come up much in the last 40 years,” he said.
Working against Pete Buttigieg is the fact that he’s a white male in a party that’s hostile to and suspicious of white males. For some liberals, that alone is a dealbreaker.
Plus, he’s a gay guy whose last name begins with “Butt.”
It’s stupid and silly, I know. But politics is stupid and silly, and the Democratic Party is hair-trigger sensitive to ridicule. They’ll blame conservatives, of course — saying things like, “This country is too damn homophobic to elect a homosexual whose name sounds like Booty-Gig!” — and use their own fears to smother his chances.
The sharpest, most homophobic elbows won’t come from conservatives. Democratic primaries can be surprisingly vicious and mean-spirited, with underground “whisper campaigns” that go for the jugular. The 2008 campaign between Barack Obama and the Clinton Machine was among the nastiest in recent history, with “darkened” images of Obama’s skin and the circulation of Obama photos in “ethnic” garb.
Pete Buttigieg has a quiet demeanor. He’s not bombastic or (ahem) cocksure. Instead, he’s a throwback to the Obama administration’s policy of “leading from behind.”
But that’s okay: Joe Biden wasn’t the first choice of many Democrats, either. He still won the nomination because he was enough Democrats’ second or third choice, and was an “okay, whatever” compromise.
That’s the lane Buttigieg is gunning for. He’s trying to win the nomination by staying milquetoast, safe, and noncontroversial. In essence, he’s the candidate who’s leading… from behind.
Until July, at least.
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