Pete Buttigieg for DNC chair? "The Midwestern mayor seems a better bet," says The Economist.

What strikes me as noteworthy about The Economist's assessment is that it devotes almost no ink to Tom Perez, the establishment choice.

Three cheers for at least THAT much.

Who should lead the Democrats after their calamitous defeat? (The Economist)

Pete Buttigieg is pitching himself as the compromise candidate

 ... The tussle between Mr Perez and Mr Ellison, the front-runners among the nine contenders for the job, could be a boon for Pete Buttigieg (pronounced boot-edge-edge), the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “We don’t want to relive 2016,” says Mr Buttigieg, alluding to the fierce battles between Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Mr Buttigieg presents himself as the compromise candidate who can bridge the divide between the Sanders and Clinton camps, build alliances with progressive organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and connect with the white working class as well as minorities.

Mr Buttigieg joined the race late, but picked up momentum quickly. He bagged the endorsement of five former DNC chairs as well as nine mayors of cities such as New Orleans and Austin, Texas. Howard Dean, another former DNC chair and former presidential candidate, thinks Mr Buttigieg has a shot at winning. If he were elected, the former Rhodes scholar and Harvard graduate would be the youngest, and first openly gay, chairman of the DNC. He would bring to the job his experiences as mayor, navy officer and nerd at McKinsey, a management consultancy (a CV remarkably like that of Tom Cotton, a Republican senator with big ambitions).