The EconomistFebruary 8th 2020 BriefingThe Democratic race 192
1caucus, the most striking success belonged
to Mr Buttigieg. For a young, gay local poli-
tician with a name many still struggle to
pronounce, winning the most delegates
was quite the coup. Some might see the fact
that he spent heavily in the state—more by
some accounts than any other top-tier can-
didate save Mr Sanders—as diminishing
this achievement. But being able to raise
such sums is an impressive feat in itself,
and going all-in on must-win Iowa speaks
well to his nous.Standing here outside your door
In high school Mr Buttigieg won a national
contest with an essay praising Mr Sanders’s
political courage. Today he is firmly in the
party’s moderate wing. His plan to let peo-
ple choose to subscribe to a public health-
care insurance scheme is cheekily referred
to as “Medicare for All Who Want It”, thus
differentiating it from Mr Sanders’s more
absolutist “Medicare for All”. He argues
that subsidies for poor college students
should be significantly expanded, rather
than that college should be made free to all,
as the radicals propose; he wants to see
$700bn more spent on child care over the
next ten years rather than to guarantee its
free provision to everyone.
Like all the Democratic candidates, Mr
Buttigieg has ambitious plans to tackle cli-
mate change. He prices his version of the
“Green New Deal”—which includes a car-
bon tax, something orthodox economists
like but many doctrinaire greens do
not—at $2trn over ten years. That is a lot:
the equivalent of 4.5% of federal spending
at 2019 levels. But it is only marginally
higher than the price tag on Mr Biden’s plan
($1.7trn) and far less than Ms Warren’s
$10trn or Mr Sanders’s $16.3trn.
Along with an increase in the federal
minimum wage to $15 an hour and an ex-
pansion of the earned-income tax credit—
also espoused by all the other candidates—
this might look like moderation in many of
Europe’s political parties. It would never
previously have been seen as such by the
Democrats. Like Mr Biden’s, Mr Buttigieg’s
agenda is considerably more progressive,
and expensive, than that on which BarackObama and Mr Biden ran in 2008, or than
Hillary Clinton offered in 2016. None of
them would have dreamed back then of ex-
plicitly treating their health-care plans as a
step on the way to a universal single-payer
scheme, as Mr Buttigieg does. Mrs Clinton’s
biggest commitment on climate was
costed at just $60bn.
In some ways Mr Buttigieg’s ideas are
hard to distinguish from Mr Biden’s; their
policies for capping the premiums sold on
the Obamacare exchanges are identical
down to a fraction of a percentage point.
But Mr Buttigieg is more keen to be under-
stood, at least in part, as the sort of progres-
sive voice which his policies would have
made him in every previous election since
the Great Depression, not least because his
youth can set a message of change apart in
a field of septuagenarians.
Unlike Mr Biden, but like Mr Sanders
and Ms Warren, he favours the legalisation
of marijuana at the federal level. His car-
bon tax would be the basis of a rebate to all
Americans. He is less of a free-trade fan
than Mr Biden—though not as protection-
ist as Mr Sanders—and more hawkish on
China. His plans to allow trade unions to
bargain across sectors of the economy, bor-
rowed from the Nordic countries, are far
less ambitious than Ms Warren’s plans for
the representation of workers on boards,
but they are more achievable, and fresher
than Mr Biden’s.
Mr Buttigieg is enthusiastic about the
Midwest’s “strong progressive tradition”
and pays tribute to William Jennings Bry-
an, the Nebraskan who was just 36 when or-
atory and populism won him the Demo-
cratic nomination in 1896. Mr Buttigieg is
almost as young and widely seen as the
best speaker in the current bunch, though
he does not come up to Mr Obama’s stan-
dards. But he lacks Bryan’s polarising dem-
agoguery. He is keen to build bridges to
moderate Republicans—“future former
Republicans”, as he likes to call them—and
to convince party bosses that he can deliver
their votes come November. Once happy to
toy with structural reforms like eliminat-
ing the electoral college or enlarging the
Supreme Court, today he talks less of suchpotentially divisive matters.
Elderly voters have taken a shine to Mr
Buttigieg. Young voters have generally pre-
ferred the more radical camp. They favour
Mr Sanders, who draws large, enthusiastic
crowds and works the stage with the energy
of a man half his age (which would still
make him slightly older than Mr Buttigieg).
He presents himself as a tribune of purity,
unsullied by the politics of compromise.
Polls suggest he will notch up a sizeable
victory in New Hampshire’s primary on
February 11th, and perhaps another in Ne-
vada’s caucuses on February 22nd.Ready to go
Some of Mr Sanders’s advantage stems
from the fact that he has been running
since 2015, when he first took on Mrs Clin-
ton. His surprisingly strong showing
against her revealed an appetite for poli-
cies much further to the left than the party
was used to, thus shifting its centre of grav-
ity. It also gave him the basis for a run in
2020 three years before anyone else really
got into the game. He used that head start to
strengthen his organisation and develop
his platform.
The most famous plank in that platform
is Medicare for All, which would replace
the entire private health-insurance indus-
try with a government-run programme
free to all Americans (including undocu-
mented immigrants) at the point of service.
He also wants to cancel $1.6trn in student
debt,guarantee jobs for all—his version of
theGreenNew Deal is meant to provide
20mnewones—and give workers 20% of
theequityin large companies.
A rough estimate suggests that Mr Sand-
ers’splans would cost at least $50trn over a
decade.His tax rises (which include, like
MsWarren’s but unlike those of the moder-
ates,a wealth tax) might bring in $20trn in
additional revenue—which suggests that
theannual deficit could triple to $3trn. The
Urban Institute, a think-tank, estimates
thatMrSanders’s health-care plan aloneSee you on Super TuesdaySources:FiveThirtyEight;TheEconomistUnited States, Democratic-primary polling
National average, %
Trend 90%confidenceinterval2010203025155Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb
2019 2020AmyKlobucharAndrew YangBernie SandersElizabeth WarrenJoe BidenPete Buttigieg Mike BloombergTulsi GabbardIs that clear?Source:Pressreports;NewYorkTimes *StatedelegateequivalentsUnitedStates,Iowacaucusresults
With97%ofresultsreported,Feb6th 2020
%share Estimated
Candidate of SDEs* delegates
Pete Buttigieg 26.2 13
Bernie Sanders 26.1 13
Elizabeth Warren 18.2 8
Joe Biden 15.8 6
Amy Klobuchar 12.2 1
Andrew Yang 1.0 0
Others 0.5 0302520151050
First vote, % share Final vote1