1. Mayor Pete is surging in the polls. Good for the Jews?



It was November of 2007. Democratic candidates were getting ready for the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, and the race could not have been any clearer: Hillary Clinton was cruising at 44 percent in the polls. Far behind trailed the young senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, with 22 percent, battling John Edwards, who was polling in the low teens.

By early February, Clinton would lose her lead in the polls to Obama, who never looked back and went on to win the nomination.

This is a scenario some are now looking at, as Pete Buttigieg, even younger and less experienced than Obama was at the time, is having his moment. The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana is surging in Iowa, the first state to vote in February. He is now polling at 25 percent, leaving Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in a tight three-way race for second place.

This could be Buttigieg’s Obama moment (or, for those who remember, the Bill Clinton “comeback kid” moment). His supporters are already visualizing the fairytale of the young, gay, centrist Midwesterner who came from nowhere to defeat the Democratic Party’s most seasoned politicians.

But it could also be no more than a blip. In a super-crowded race, with voters split not only along ideological lines but also within the two rival camps of moderates and progressives, Buttigieg can easily be the one benefiting as his competitors fight it out between themselves. But his great polling numbers (and he’s doing pretty well in New Hampshire, too) could also be meaningless. Mayor Pete comes in a distant fourth in a poll gauging voters’ feelings in the 16 first states to vote, and there is little reason to believe, at least for now, that the enthusiasm he is evoking in Iowa or New Hampshire will carry on to states with larger minority voter populations.

But let’s just say that this is a defining moment in Buttigieg’s race to the top.

Does it mean anything to Jewish voters?

As far as policies are concerned, he could be a good fit. Older Jewish voters, who tend to be a tad more cautious on fiscal issues, can appreciate Buttigieg’s positions on healthcare and taxes; younger members of the Jewish community can relate to his personal story and his battle for LGBTQ equality. Both, and that’s a rarity, can probably live well with his policies on Israel.