Wayne Messam's Lesson for the Big, White “Buttigieg Bump”
Plus, I take a bite out of the bursting (im)peach(ment) trial.
This was the week that a stage full of Democrats did nothing of great importance, a small-town mayor finally ended the campaign we forgot he was running, and Ariana Grande ate the rich alive with Bernie Sanders.
I’m Chris Erik Thomas. Welcome to Issue 30 of Rubber Chicken Circuit, the weekly election newsletter from Study Hall.
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The Big Idea
A Tale of Two Mayors: What Wayne Messam Can Teach Us About that “Buttigieg Bump”
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I never expected that the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Wayne Martin Messam, would drop out of the race by the end of the day. For months, this small-town governor has run a formidable campaign for the presidency, amassing a legion of fans along the way and raising untold sums of money. To now hear that he was dropping out was shocking. Even in the midst of one of the most chaotic eras in our history, Wayne Messam ending his presidential campaign felt like the unfathomable icing on the cake of democracy.
Please, put your LifeAlert down. You’re not hallucinating. You haven’t missed some vital piece of information. I mean, yes, Wayne Messam has officially dropped out of the race, but was the mayor of Miramar, Florida and noted thirst trap taker ever truly in the race? All signs point to no, judging by his almost total lack of campaign events, inability to qualify for a single debate, and mind-blowing Q3 fundraising haul of $5 (or $15,312, if you believe his “computer glitch” theory.)
He’ll never touch the Oval Office in 2020 save for a guided tour, but despite his Casper the Friendly Ghost-level of exposure in the race, Wayne Messam is one of the best candidates in the race to contrast with the other small-town-mayor-turned-presidential-candidate: Pete Buttigieg. If you hadn’t heard by now, Mayor Pete is havinganothermoment. This time, with the word “frontrunner” shouted into the void by excitable political pundits on TV and Twitter, which is a stretch. But before we get to that, let’s compare Messam and Buttigieg.
Both have no experience beyond being two-time mayors: Buttigieg to the 102K residents of South Bend, Indiana, and Messam to the 140K residents of Miramar.
Both did very all-American things before running for office: Messam won a national championship as a college football player and Buttigieg helped invade a country while in the military.
Both…care about things.
Alright, so they’re mostly just small town, all-American mayors. What makes Mayor Pete different is that his campaign has skyrocketed from obscurity. He’s raised millions of dollars, been on every debate stage thus far, and become one of the frontrunners in Iowa and New Hampshire — culminating in an Iowa poll last week that put him ahead of every other candidate by 9 points. He was even given more attention at Wednesday’s debate but definitely didn’t get the kind of attention that would mark him as a true threat just yet. That might be because, for all of the mouth-frothing coverage he’s getting as a potential leader in the race, there’s a pretty damn big elephant — or donkey — in the room, and it’s called Non-White Support.
Beyond his bubble in states like Iowa and New Hampshire that are over 90% white, Pete Buttigieg has a race problem. Not only is he polling badly in diverse states like North Carolina and Nevada, but his national polling average also sits at 2% with Black Democrats and 2% with Hispanic Democrats. Maybe it’s because he’s the human embodiment of vanilla ice cream or maybe it’s because his Douglass Plan (the one that’s supposed to be a “comprehensive investment in the empowerment of black America”) got called out for using a stock image of a Kenyan woman? Or maybe it was because the list of 400 South Carolinians who support the Douglas Plan didn’t know they were on the list and 42% of them are white people?

If you view his campaign outside of the white gaze that has lifted him up as a great centrist hope, it’s clear that Buttigieg just isn’t it. He may eventually get people of color to warm up to him, of course, but while I watched him try to compare the struggles of being gay to the struggles of being black in America, I couldn’t help but think about what could’ve happened if Wayne Messam was on the stage in Buttigieg’s place.
Sure, Messam was a bit too busy engaging in sweaty running sessions and refusing to pay his staff, but imagine if he had taken a page from the Buttigieg playbook. Maybe next time, he can speak a few languages, play a Miles Davis song on the piano, and contort himself into whatever ideological position is necessary to win over voters but until then, we’ll have to settle for the 2% milky white, gay-but-not-too-gay energy of Mayor Pete and his chaotic, flash-mobbing supporters.
Have feedback or want to slip us a tip? Reply to this or email chris@studyhall.xyz with your scoops and suggestions.
Quick Hits
— Who is watching these debates, seeing things like this, and thinking that JOE BIDEN is anything but a senile senior citizen who needs to be sent home so he can retire in peace?

— Nobody can seem to agree on whether we’re seeing “the liberation” of KAMALA HARRIS after Wednesday’s debate or the end of her “free-falling” campaign, but I’d bet on the latter. A few sharp comebacks every debate isn’t enough to keep a sinking campaign afloat — take note, CORY BOOKER.
— Hell is trying to watch TV and having to sit through a 30-minute infomercial from JOHN DELANEY pleading with you to remember he exists as you panic and try to find your remote to change the channel.
— Who could’ve known BERNIE SANDERS was such a Sweetener stan? Give me a video of him and Ariana Grenda licking some donuts with Ariana Grande and lipsyncing to “Dangerous Woman” and I’ll give him my paycheck.



Biting Into the Impeachment’s Dripping, Democracy-Breaking Spunk.
If you haven’t spent your waking hours watching CSPAN and/or reading recaps of the impeachment trial, congratulations. You’ve probably held on to your sanity longer than millions of Americans who are glued to the proceedings. I’ve largely kept my distance from them since I still believe the odds of Republicans voting to impeach him are as high as the odds of a Call Me By Your Name cinematic remake where Oliver actually eats the whole cum peach, but alas. Here are the absolutely essential things you need to know about the impeachment:
A$AP Rocky keeps getting brought up because Trump loves rapping “Babushka Boi” in the Oval Office. Also because Ambassador Gordon Sondland advised Trump that they let Rocky go to jail in Sweden for assaulting someone and then “play the racism card.”
Speaking of Sondland, he was "absolutely convinced" that the delay in aid to Ukraine was linked to investigations into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Fiona Hill, a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council (NSC), wasted no time in going full badass and ripping into the Republican Party’s new favorite pastime hawking conspiracy theories.

Will all the daily “bombshells” finally materialize into something more than a long game of “I Told You So” that keeps media and political Twitter circle-jerking over the fantasy of Trump getting kicked out of office before the November 2020 election? If America’s track record on impeachment is anything to go by, don’t count on it.
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