"The Trump era has been all about dissolving moral norms and waging vicious attacks. This has been an era of culture war, class warfare..."

"... and identity politics. It’s been an era in which call-out culture, reality TV melodrama and tribal grandstanding have overshadowed policymaking and the challenges of actually governing. The Buttigieg surge suggests that there are a lot of Democrats who want to say goodbye to all that. They don’t want to fight fire and divisiveness with more fire and divisiveness. They don’t want to fight white identity politics with another kind of identity politics. They are sick of the moral melodrama altogether. They just want a person who is more about governing than virtue-signaling, more about friendliness and basic decency than media circus and rhetorical war. Buttigieg’s secret is that he transcends many of the tensions that run through our society in a way that makes people on all sides feel comfortable.... Buttigieg’s policy positions are not all that different from the more identifiable leftist candidates. But he eschews grand ideological conflict."

Writes David Brooks in "Why You Love Mayor Pete/Buttigieg detaches progressive policy from the culture war" (NYT).

ADDED: A really interesting top-rated comment at the NYT, from Brad Malkovsky of South Bend (who may be this person):

A story has been making the rounds in South Bend since last week about Mayor Pete some time ago (just how long ago was not stated) showing up in the emergency ward in one of our local hospitals to help a Somali boy who had nearly hanged himself. The story is reported by an emergency physician. Neither the boy nor his mother spoke English. Pete had heard over the police scanner that an Arabic translator was needed. He showed up, knowing how dire the situation was, did the translating, and stayed with the boy and his mother for an hour, accompanying them right into the ICU. Only afterward, when pressed by the physician to reveal how long he had been working as a translator for the hospital, did Pete casually reveal that he was not in fact a translator but rather the mayor of South Bend. He then shook hands with the physician and quietly left. This is our Mayor Pete. He gets things done quietly and without drawing attention to himself. He is the grownup in the room.

Wow. It's called a "story," so I guess I have to say "if true..." So, if true, that's the most perfect political anecdote I've ever read.