This analysis was excerpted from the February 11 edition of CNN's Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Sign up here to receive it every weekday morning.

(CNN) Pete Buttigieg's Democratic presidential rivals are trying to kill his White House bid by highlighting the very quality that helped get three of the last four presidents elected: inexperience.

"We have a newcomer in the White House and look where it got us," warned Minnesota's third-term senator, Amy Klobuchar. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who boasts a near-half-century-long Washington career, is blasting the former mayor's record as small potatoes in a contemptuous ad. But here's the problem with their attacks: It's hard to recall a time when beating up on greenhorns actually worked.

Jeb Bush's long resume didn't get him far against newcomer Donald Trump in 2016, and Hillary Clinton's blasts about his foreign policy inexperience fizzled. Eight years prior, Clinton had targeted rookie senator Barack Obama's inexperience in a notorious ad -- but her own vote as a senator to authorize war in Iraq helped doom her campaign. And in 1992, Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush (who boasted one of the all-time great Washington resumes) because his life outside Washington helped him vocalize the human cost of a recession.

It might seem sensible to argue that Trump's legacy will require a real Washington fixer to clean up. But presidential campaigns rise on emotion more than logic. Anyone who can cast themselves as an outsider running to purge a corrupt political system has a huge advantage.

"The answers are going to come to Washington, not from Washington," Buttigieg said over the weekend. It's a clichéd argument used by nearly every up-and-comer running for Congress, but it works. Naturally, it drives Washington insiders nuts.

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