COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA—Mayor Steve Benjamin has spent the weekend as the maitre d' of Columbia, a situation that probably has the unholy ghost of John C. Calhoun rotating even faster on his spit in hell, Benjamin being the first African-American mayor in this city's history. On Friday, he welcomed Beto O'Rourke to the University of South Carolina and, later on Saturday, he would introduce Senator Cory Booker at a local health center across town.

Now, though, he had come to a golf palace-cum-downtown restaurant complex called The Venue to present Mayor Pete Buttigieg, whom Benjamin knows, because he's also the president of the United States Conference of Mayors, and who is presently picking up no little traction in the opening laps of the 2020 presidential election. Benjamin is determinedly neutral so far, which is smart, because South Carolina is vital to the nomination process, and that means he's vital as long as he hasn't declared a preference yet.

"My job as mayor of this city and, to some degree with a national profile, is to serve as a gateway for the most talented group of Democratic politicians we've seen in a very long time," Benjamin said, "and using every bit of leverage I can to open doors up and present them. The level of enthusiasm makes it clear that people want smart, thoughtful leadership and, I'm convinced, that if we run the kind of Democratic primary that's thoughtful and conclusive, that we will definitely unify behind the nominee."

Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin speaks at the the U.S. Conference Of Mayors on June 8, 2018 in Boston, Massachusetts. Scott Eisen Getty Images

That general feeling accounts for Buttigieg's sudden emergence to many people as the thinking voter's dark horse in the opening strides of this race. At the same time, he is working the same beat as Cory Booker and, to an extent, Beto O'Rourke. They represent a more conciliatory attitude toward the people who voted for the president*, if not toward the president himself. This is a delicate and increasingly dangerous line to walk. To me, it's an almost impossible one; I have long been out of patience now with the people who lost so much faith in America that they willingly handed it over to the political equivalent of the Dalton Gang. And I never had any with the people who can look at the ongoing damage and still support this administration*. I get the feeling that I am not alone.

Anyway, Buttigieg is walking, hassock by shaky hassock, through a vast mire in saying things like this, which he laid on his audience earlier on Saturday and which Dave Weigel helpfully put up on the electric Twitter machine:

Look, I think a lot of folks are waiting for some piece of evidence to come along that finally proves once and for all that he’s not a good guy. And what they forget is that there are a lot of people where I live, and maybe a lot of people around here too, who, knowing that he’s not a good guy, walked in to the voting booth and voted to burn the house down because of some very deep issues that motivated them to send a message. Some of which I think we should give no quarter to, like racism, but others of which deserve to be taken seriously. The sense of displacement, and the belief that Democratic and Republican presidencies have let them down, and the failure of this enormous American prosperity to reach so many people in so many communities. If we're not paying attention to that, I fear somebody like this president will come along in a different guise and we'll be right here having these debates.

Or this, which he laid on his audience in Columbia.

It’s time for some of the more visible national voices of our Democratic Party to come from the red states. It's time for a little more of a regional mix in the faces that our party puts forward in the highest level. We love our friends in the big cities, but it is time for us to confront the idea that any state, any county, or any community has to be conservative because it's been voting Republican for the last few years. Where is is written that this has to be a Republican state? Where is it written that Indiana has to be a Republican state? So would it not make more sense for more people to come from red states [to] the Democratic party and change the way some people think of our part of the country?

Buttigieg, along with Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke, is presenting a more conciliatory attitude towards Trump voters. Allison Zaucha Getty Images

Buttigieg's appeal is easy enough to understand. He is young, and he speaks with a fine sense of irony that never becomes overbearing. And he's very good at making the personal political. In Columbia, he spun a riff about what freedom is that turns a tired argument on its head.

To the folks on the other side, freedom means 'freedom from.' Usually, freedom from government, as if government were the only thing that could make you unfree. That's just not true. Your neighbor can make you unfree. Your cable company can make you unfree. If they get into the business of telling you who you can marry, your county clerk can make you unfree. Let's talk about what freedom really means. Freedom means being able to start a small business because you know that when you leave your old job, that doesn't mean you have to lose your healthcare. Freedom means that your reproductive health is up to you. Freedom means that when you have paid your debt to society, you get to re-enter society and become a productive, tax-paying, voting citizen. Freedom means you can organize for fair day's work, a fair day's pay, and a fair day's conditions.

From there, Buttigieg, openly gay and married to a high school drama teacher named Chasten, talked about what a blessing it was for him to have his husband as a complete part of his family when his mother got sick and his father died, almost simultaneously. It was a genuine moment drawn from a new and more humane country, which is what he seems to be offering the voters along with himself.

But whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person is going to have to begin with the unshakable conviction that we are living through a dangerous aberration as a country, and that some 65 million of our fellow citizens arranged for that to be the case, and that many of them seem either perfectly content, or dully willing, to do it again. Many of those people do not need to be wooed. They need a bucket of ice water over their heads. That is the reality of the 2020 election, set in stone already.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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