There's an old saying about the way the two parties pick their presidential nominees - Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.
After a 2016 election that turned conventional wisdom on its head by producing iconoclastic Donald Trump and establishment-favourite Hillary Clinton as the nominees, that nostrum could be reasserting itself. While the Republican Party is closing ranks behind the president, there's nothing logical or expected about the early success Pete Buttigieg is having in the Democratic fight to take on Trump in November.
He's the former mayor of a modest-sized Indiana city, the 306th-largest in the US - a college town like Oxford in the UK, only smaller.
He's 38 years old, which would make him the youngest president in US history.
He's also the first openly gay major-party presidential candidate, a historic candidacy that would have seemed inconceivable just a few decades ago, when Republicans were campaigning - and winning - on opposition to gay marriage and mainstream Democrats, by and large, avoided the issue. » | Anthony Zurcher, North America reporter | Sunday, February 9, 2020
