Robert Spencer writes for PJMedia.com about one media outlet’s attempt to revive a flagging political career.
Among the kingmakers, queenmakers, and they/themmakers of the far left is a stubborn contingent that clings to the belief that the cure for what ails the nation’s self-styled “progressives” has been right there among them for several years now, and that his name is Pete Buttigieg.
The failed transportation secretary has the gift of being acceptable to both the Democrat Party’s leftist establishment and power-to-the-people-right-on-let’s-burn-the-house-down wing, and while there really isn’t a dime’s worth of difference ideologically between the two factions, that’s still an unusual accomplishment.
Yet Pete is not polling all that well, coming in a weak second in a recent poll. It’s a crowded field with no clear frontrunner: Buttigieg’s 16% was better than Kamala Harris’ 13%, but Gavin Newsom led the pack with 20%. And he has a big weakness, one that Kamala Harris herself identified in September 2025, as she surveyed the smoking ruins of her 2024 presidential campaign and tried to figure out whom to blame.
One of the groups she hit upon was the same American people she had just been trying to convince to vote for her. Kamala’s post mortem of the 2024 election was that Americans were just too racist to vote for her, and too besotted with traditional morality to embrace a homosexual who was “married” to a man, such as Pete. …
… And so one of the left’s flagship propaganda organs, The Atlantic, has now decided to try to give Pete a little boost, and what a boost it is. From the photo that accompanies the article, it’s clear what’s going on here. …
… The title is “Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness,” an attempt at a double entendre encompassing both Pete’s also-ran status among the 2028 presidential hopefuls and his new attempt to project a rugged masculinity.
