This May Be Pete Buttigieg’s Last Chance to Break Out
In South Carolina his backers cheered and cringed as he took on competitors at the Democratic debate
Shots were fired and blows were traded on the debate stage in Las Vegas Wednesday night. But, 2000 miles away in a converted auto shop in the South Carolina Piedmont, no one was even on Twitter to snark.
Instead, at a debate watch party in a Pete Buttigieg campaign office in Rock Hill, a group of a dozen supporters and undecided Democrats took in the most raucous debate of the 2020 presidential primary without any of the frantic intensity visible on cable news. There were oohs and aahs as Sen. Elizabeth Warren surgically dismembered Michael Bloomberg in several exchanges early in the debate. There were shouts of “oh Jesus” when Sen. Bernie Sanders attacked Buttigieg’s campaign as funded by special interests, and laughs when their favored candidate responded to an attack from Warren that his health care plan was just a PowerPoint presentation by insisting, “I’m more of a Microsoft Word guy.” But the most noise came from an infant named Owen Beadle, who found various distractions crawling on the floor in a room filled with unfamiliar people.
The crowd was disproportionately white and female in a corner of the state that was once a…
