Free Republic

Pete Buttigieg came into Wednesday night’s debate bracing for an onslaught that never came. Yes, Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard questioned his experience. Cory Booker dinged the young mayor’s résumé, pointed out that he himself is the “other Rhodes scholar mayor on the stage” and warned voters against picking a Democratic nominee with an “inauthentic” connection to African American voters — a bloc that has largely ignored Buttigieg’s campaign so far.

DES MOINES, Iowa — As Democratic presidential candidates descended on the Iowa State Fair, a plane buzzed overhead, an ominous warning fluttering behind it on a banner: “Focus on Rural America.” Democrats hoping to win the White House in 2020 recognize how critical that advice is after 2016, when Hillary Clinton turned in strong performances in many cities and suburbs but lost rural voters 2-to-1, falling short to President Donald Trump by slim margins in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats clawed back some gains in rural counties in the 2018 midterm elections, and they want to build on that...

Joe Darby, a prominent pastor in Charleston, S.C., was discussing the Democratic presidential field with fellow clergymen when Pete Buttigieg’s name came up. A fellow pastor quickly interjected. “Isn’t that the dude who kissed his husband on TV?” the person asked skeptically, according to Darby. The exchange highlights a major obstacle for Buttigieg, who’s vaulted into the top tier of Democratic candidates without gaining traction among African Americans, according to recent surveys of national and South Carolina Democrats. But as the mayor of South Bend, Ind., devotes more effort to campaigning for black votes in the South and elsewhere, he...

Donald Trump has inserted himself into one of the most contentious House primaries in the country this weekend, endorsing GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers in her member-versus-member race in North Carolina. Trump makes a personal appeal to voters to back Ellmers in a robocall released Saturday. She was "the first congresswoman to endorse me and she really was terrific and boy, is she a fighter," Trump says in the call. It is the first time this election that Trump has picked sides in a congressional race.