I also think that Buttigieg rising in the polls as "Mayor Pete" has been an annoyance to De Blasio and Bloomberg. The nerve!
Looks like Pete is
annoying a lot of his competitors:
"Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, another younger candidate with limited government experience, was particularly aggrieved by Mr. Buttigieg, whom he viewed as 'a human weather vane' that represented the worst of politics, according to an O’Rourke aide."
"[Julian Castro] said Mr. Buttigieg isn’t trusted by minority voters who comprise a vast portion of the Democratic Party’s coalition and suggested the South Bend mayor is reverse engineering political positions to fit the moment."
I'm sure Pete appropriated his beloved computer (which he named
Bertha) from his consulting days at McKinsey and built a model with which to reverse engineer his positions. It's possible! Though to me this sounds like Castro is merely complaining his competitor is too skilled of a politician. Castro, to his credit, has the situational awareness to also note:
"He’s going by the old playbook of following the focus groups, going by what political consultants tell you. If we’ve learned anything from Donald Trump, unfortunately in a bad way, it’s that focus grouping and poll testing ain’t the way that you’re going to win."
Just beneath the surface, that actually sounds like more of dig at Hillary than Pete. The problem with Hillary wasn't her reliance on back-room analytics but her inability to inspire widespread passion in her base. Castro also seems to
misunderestimate the Trump campaign's analytics effort, as well as not acknowledge Trump's live-testing of various positions and thematic elements while stumping at his earlier political rallies. Despite the fact he's a Vulcan, Pete's strange sort of charisma
has gained a bit of tractionNote that the Warren bubble has popped. I predicted in April that she would win the nomination (when the betting market aggregate had her at ~4%) and still expect her to have the time and ability to retrench, pivot, and recover from her recent missteps. Buttigieg's rise to ~15% has been a surprise since I expected him to follow a softer-landing version of Beto's trajectory.