Pete Buttigieg Dropped Out and It’s Reshaping the Race
The once enormous Democratic presidential primary field has suddenly gotten quite small
Pete Buttigieg always thought a step ahead. With reporters, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor was deliberate in every word he spoke. On stage, before a crowd, his voice seemed to follow a rhythm like a needle tracing out a groove on an LP, the path always plotted ahead.
His decision to drop out of the presidential race was no different. An aide told GEN that he made the decision on Sunday afternoon in the wake of his fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, but the possibility had been under some discussion since a disappointing finish in the Nevada caucuses a week earlier. He had finished a distant third there and failed to crack the 15% threshold to be viable statewide and earn delegates. But a poor finish in South Carolina “changed everything,” according to another aide, who emphasized that this was “not a resource issue.” It was instead a calculation about the direction of the Democratic Party.
As the narrow winner of the Iowa caucuses, Buttigieg had a solid hold on third place in the delegate count, with 50% more delegates than Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren combined.
