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Pete Buttigieg is probably the most authentic candidate for nomination among the current Democrats running.Although his campaign is at times problematic, and he has demographics challenges reaching out to black folks, for the reason I laid discuss here…Something happened on 4/17/2019 that convinced me he is a viable candidate for those voters with “mid-west” values: homophobic protestors interrupted his Iowa rally by chanting, “Sodom and Gomorrah.”To put that into context imagine if someone interrupted President Obama’s speeches by chanting racist slurs over and over.How do you come back from that in a politically beneficial way? You do what Pete Buttigieg did, and respond, “The good news is: the condition of my soul is in the hands of god,” and as he gestured to the crowd, “but the Iowa caucuses are up to you.”Perfect answer. He didn’t walk back his faith. He didn’t shame anyone for their views on sexuality. He didn’t put anyone in the basket of deplorables. He empowered the crowd to show their best self.These are leadership qualities. They show he owns who he is even as some Democrats have attacked people over their sexuality recently.I don’t know if I would vote for him, but he is definitely a serious contender, because he will not back down when you call him a faggot, and so far that’s all Republicans can come up with.Do I agree with his position on religion and sexuality? Vehemently, no.Do I respect what he is doing for our society as a whole? Absolutely, yes.Then turning to everyone else who is running:Kamala Harris: went on a talk show and tried to get street cred by joking about smoking weed. Under her tenure as Attorney General in California (2010–2016) misdemeanor drug arrests were up 158% by 2015. Black and Latino communities have had to bear the brunt of the over half a million arrests California has made for marijuana in the last decade.Beto O’Rourke: I wrote a whole essay here about why he is a candidate entirely based on benign White Supremacy. Frankly I think he is just a decoy to get the Republicans to waste money in Texas, and O’Rourke is just riding the donor wave.Cory Booker: is unfortunately, a Wall Street patsy masquerading as an everyman, and has similar issues to Harris when it comes to his public career.Elizabeth Warren: I honestly thought she would be the first woman to become President watching her fight for Dodd-Frank in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.Unfortunately she spent the next few years claiming she is a Cherokee Native American, because she supposedly had an ancestor 4 generations ago. I’m going to say that Elizabeth Warren probably has not faced the same issues Native Americans have.5. Bernie Sanders: has great ideas, but much less practical follow through. Take his STOP BEZOS ACT (I did not add the caps…). Part of it argued that for every dollar of public benefits employees of a corporation use, companies will have a dollar added to their tax bill. Cool! We need to stop Walmart from appropriating taxes without public consent (see point 3).But the bill included no measures to stop companies from dodging the act, or discriminating against employees on public assistance when hiring. So, it’s rather incomplete.Personally, I would like to see either a Warren-Buttigieg ticket, or a Sanders-Buttigieg ticket. That said, I think we will see a Sanders-Warren, or Biden-Warren ticket.Pete Buttigieg is not the perfect candidate, yet this one quotation about running as an openly gay candidate sums up his authenticity perfectly, “I did what I had to do, and let the chips fall where they may.”

I will answer with my own experiences. I started college in 1968 and it was a turbulent time. I was a liberal hippie who is just as liberal now if not more so. Unlike some, I came from a liberal background. My parents were news junkies and liberal political activists. They were part of the middle class although they did not start out that way (both were born and raised in Appalachia). I point this out to show that not all those who saw themselves as "hippies" were rebelling against their parents. I wasn't, although I was definitely part of the hippie community in Denton, Texas, where I was going to school at the time, My parents had moved to southern California by then (I joined them later).The group I was part of was a mixture of types, with some just into "drugs, sex, and rock & roll" and others more political, along with those who were more sincere about dropping out of mainstream society, living in communes ( I was one of those who were more political and activist). There also were a fair share of hangers on, band groupies, and what we disparagingly called "weekend hippies." The latter just wanted to seem "cool" by wearing bell bottoms, doing some drugs, and engaging in "free love" (sex). The length of hair or type of dress was not always a reliable marker of who actually was a hippie.Still, this was in Texas. What the original question ignores in the premise is that there were a lot of conservative students on campus at that time (as well as in society as a whole). Not only the Young Republicans but also the more right wing group Young Americans For Freedom (YAF) were active on my campus, holding rallies and counter protesting any action by the SDS (Students For a Democratic Society) or other groups. Many of these students also were part of the Greek system but not all. Not all were clean -cut or conservative in their dress, but they were definitely conservative in their values and political views. This was true all over the United States, but especially in the mid-west and south (but even California was far more conservative than people think, certainly out where my parent's lived).Because it was such a diverse group, it is hard to make conclusions about possible attitude shifts. Some former hippies no doubt became more conservative, but large numbers stayed liberal or became more so, even after having children and getting jobs (although some of us actually had jobs in college--I know I did past my first year). I have always disliked generalizations of any kind, especially the assertion that people grow more conservative with age, as I have not seen that in my life, or the lives of many of my old college cohort, although most of us are now in our late 60s and early 70s. As noted earlier, I am just as liberal and politically active as I always have been. As are most of my friends from that time period.It would be interesting to see if there is any data of on attitudes of the young in the 1960s-1970s and see how they compare to now. If I get time later I will look for some I think.For your amusement, a much younger me, in the spring of 1969:

Because it usually indicates that you had extremely low expectations of that person."Well spoken" is a "compliment" given by some people when a person from a racial or ethnic group that they look down on speaks in a more "educated" manner. It conveys the message that the person who tells the compliment has some deep held racist beliefs.In American society this is usually white people toward black people because they consider speaking in black vernacular to be indicative of poverty and low level of education.Kiki Richards elaborates on the words, "well spoken.I’m black and have lived in the mid-west all of my life. My parents were college educated with my father having earned his degree with a 4.0 in math and science. That same passion for education, as well as the importance of proper enunciation of the English language, was instilled in me. What amazes (and offends) me is to hear someone (usually a white person) express their pleasant surprise that a certain black person ‘is so well spoken’. This can be in relation to anyone from a black college kid, to a young black businessman, and even in relation to the President of the United States when he was running for election. Saying, “He/She/You’re so well spoken’ is NOT a compliment. It’s an insult, especially considering that same sentiment is rarely used when a Caucasian adult is being discussed. It’s as if it’s an anomaly to hear a black person enunciate their words or express an opinion in a more concise manner than the Sterotypical crime witness, reporters love to find on the local news. As one who has had this ridiculous sentiment directed at me, it is all I can do to remind myself that the individual who is speaking, is utterly clueless and more likely as not doesn’t even realize how ignorant he/she sounds.John Oliver states the phrase is suspicious because when a person says those words it usually indicates that they're quite racist, even if they might not come across as a that on first glance.Source: "You're well spoken," isn't a compliment! - The Race Card Project