Mayor Pete and 'the Bradley Effect'

Depending on which poll you trust, Pete Buttigieg (D) wavers between a whopping 24% in the Iowa State poll, and hovering around 7 to 9% in most of the other polls of late.  Should Mayor Pete pull off a major upset and win the Iowa caucus in February, he could be a serious challenge to the other mainstream Democrats (also called Socialists) in the field.

Then again, it's that faith that you put into these polls.  If we all recall, Donald Trump 'had no path' to the Oval Office just a month out from the elections.  No chance, no way, no how.  The polls had Hillary Clinton ahead by double digits, and yet that's not the way it went, not even close.

I suspect that back in 2016, if a pollster asked you if you supported Donald Trump, you would tell them that you did not, lest your house get egged, toilet papered, or worse, set on fire by Antifa or another Democratic organization which is prone to violence.  But left alone in that voting booth, all by yourself with just that chad waiting to be punched without anybody knowing, you knew what to do.

Same thing happened to Mayor Tom Bradley (D-Ca) who ran for the California governor's seat against the ultimate victor in 1982, George Dukmejian (R-Ca) and yet Bradley lost despite a huge lead in the polls right up to the day of the election.  The subsequent 'Bradley Effect' was applied to a white vs black contest, and the results of polling that had respondents indicating they would vote for the black and yet did otherwise, responding that they would support the black candidate out of fear of appearing to be racist to the pollster should they lean the other way.  

This effect can widely be applied to any number of electoral dynamics, such as the Trump/Clinton tilt in 2016, or in this case, not wanting to appear to be anti-gay and indicate support for openly gay candidate Mayor Pete, but once in that booth pulling another handle than the one they told the pollster.

Mayor Pete and his supporters are clearly suggesting the the U.S. is ready for a gay president.  I suspect they are wrong; most of the U.S. voters are not actively against the gay movement, but it is a very noisy, vocal and hostile constituency and to slight this crowd in any way will invite undesirable effects onto those foolish enough to oppose this movement publicly.  Better to just bake their wedding cake and shut up.

We will certainly see in a few weeks how this all plays out, but my guess is that Mayor Pete and his gay movement will fall by the wayside with a distant 5th or 6th place showing in Iowa despite the polls.  

The 'Bradley Effect', or something akin to it will surface, and Mayor Pete will diminish from the front page to become a footnote down the road, similar to the late Geraldine Ferarro (first woman to be tapped for U.S. Veep).  We are still waiting for that first woman to show up on the winning ticket.

And the first gay president is a long way off as well.