Before Pete Buttigieg launched into his remarks in Osceola, Iowa, on Tuesday, he wanted to let the crowd of a hundred or so at the county fairgrounds event center know that heād been there before. Well, not there at the event center, specificallyāthough he also wanted them to know that his husband, Chasten, standing in the back of the room, was a trophy-winning 4-H participantābut the small town itself, in rural Clarke County, about halfway between Des Moines and the Missouri state line.
āI spent New Years in 2008 right here in Osceola, and we were volunteering, knocking on doors, a couple of us, for a young man with a funny name,ā he said. āWe were here when Iowa got the worldās attention when Barack Obama won here and started on the pathway to win the nomination.ā
Hmmāmaybe youāve heard of him? At this point, voters already knew the story. A few minutes earlier, theyād heard it from the chair of the county party, who introduced the former mayor of South Bend. Maybe theyād also read his recent interview about it in the Washington Post. (Come for the rare photo of Buttigieg wearing something other than a white dress shirt and blue tie; stay for the anecdote about his car going into a ditch.) Or maybe theyād heard him tell it at the state Democratic Partyās Liberty and Justice Coalition Dinner in November. In the run-up to the caucus, Buttigieg is going all in on the Obama comparison, asking voters to remember 2008, ruminating about the meaning of āhope,ā and floating the chance to āmake history one more time.ā
Obama has hovered over the 2020 field like a thick fog, a nebulous presence that candidates (or their supporters) can lay claim to but never quite wield as their own. Kamala Harris was the āfemale Obamaā and Cory Booker āObama 2.0,ā though in retrospect, no they were not. Joe Biden, of course, was literally next in the line of succession to Obama at one point, and refers back to his work with āBarackā so often itās almost a gulp word in his remarks. But Obama has not endorsed Biden, and Biden, for his part, has said he does not want Obama to endorse him, and in any event, Biden spent the run-up to the history-making 2008 caucuses knocking on doors for Joe Biden.
At the same time, the primary has forced an extended conversation about the 44th presidentās legacy. During an early debate, for instance, Biden framed arguments for Warren’s and Sandersā Medicare for All proposals as an attack on the previous administration. āThe senator says sheās for Bernie,ā Biden said of Warren. āWell, Iām for Barack.ā Biden has relished the role of defender of Obamaās policies, at one point telling a debate moderator that a comparison between Obamaās deportation regime and Trumpās was āclose to immoral.ā
The policies are only a part of it. One thing Buttigieg is currently lacking is Obama’s coalition of supporters: A nationwide poll Tuesday found him with zero-percent backing among African American voters, and while his message of generational change is quite popular among white senior citizens, it’s had considerably less traction among people of his actual generation. But Obama 2008 was also about a feelingāand that feeling, more than anything, is what Buttigieg is trying hard to remind voters of in the closing week. As he wrapped up his remarks in Osceola (and again, a few hours later, in Indianola), Buttigieg returned rhetorically, if not by name, to the campaign he had opened with, only this time, the skinny young man with a funny name was him:
Iād like to close by pointing out the role of hope at a time like this. And I know hope is an odd word to use given that it fell out of fashion in our politics, because of how weak and divided our climate is in Washington, but I also think it takes a bit of hope to get involved at all. And I also think thereās a reason why, on the news, they took the word “hopeful,” turned it into a noun, and used it as another word for “candidate.”
…So Iām urging you to bottle up whatever hope compelled you into this room and made you think it was worth spending part of your Tuesday to be here right now. And if everybody does that, everybody weāre talking toā¦this coming Monday we are gonna make history one more time in a state that has a history of changing expectationsāthat did it that night a few days after I was experiencing Osceola New Year’s for the first time, and changed what America thought a nominee could be.
Itās not exactly subtle. But hey, itās worked before.