The Atlantic Lays Out Pete Buttigieg’s Path to Presidency — in 2024

The Atlantic magazine published a profile piece on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Tuesday and plotted his path to the presidency that would involve him replacing incumbent President Joe Biden.

Writer Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote the glowing report about Buttigieg’s attempts to gather support for a massive “infrastructure” spending bill that redefines traditional infrastructure to include elder care and electric vehicles.

In the story, Dovere laid out Buttigieg’s potential path to the presidency — which he sought in 2020 — in 2024:

Here’s the winner of the 2020 Iowa caucus, living out his grand political plan to … how exactly would it work? Something like: He takes an inherently snoozer job as a low-ranking Cabinet official, spends a few years quietly kissing up to mostly forgettable members of Congress with talk about railroads and broadband, and going on TV to defend the administration. Along the way, he counts on Biden not to run again and Kamala Harris not to emerge as Biden’s natural heir. If everything comes together perfectly, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, becomes the first president since Herbert Hoover to have come out of the Cabinet.

“For now, though, Buttigieg is the public point man for the infrastructure bill,” Dovere wrote.

In March, Yahoo News reported Buttigieg was promoting the infrastructure proposal and boosting “his own brand in the process.”

In another profile piece, Yahoo said:

First and foremost, he’ll be the administration’s salesman, making the case to Republican governors and mayors that supporting the infrastructure plan will be in their best interests. He has also pledged to turn the Transportation Department into an unlikely crucible of progressive policy, vowing when he first came to Washington that the agency would “rise to the climate challenge.” He has also promised to apply an “equity lens” to infrastructure projects.

…

National infrastructure, racial equity and climate change are an ambitious portfolio for the young secretary. They also sound like the sturdy pillars of a Democratic presidential campaign, something Buttigieg won’t talk about but that is not lost on his former staffers.

“He gets to be Build Back Better,” an anonymous former presidential campaign staffer told Yahoo, referring to Biden’s campaign slogan.

“He gets blank checks. He can tie himself to feel-good projects coming out of the administration,” the person said.

Yahoo noted the spending extravaganza also affords Buttigieg the opportunity to travel the country and introduce himself “to prospective voters, and tout those aforementioned feel-good projects to media both national and local.”

Despite Buttigieg’s efforts, the deadline for a bipartisan bill has twice passed with no agreement in sight.

Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.