evidence: Over the next few months, Buttigieg's star rose, his campaign coffers fattened, and his place in the polls improved. In a Democratic field dominated by familiar—not to mention old—Washington faces, he was a breath of fresh air from flyover country. At the same time, his presentation was as slick as that of any veteran politician, reassuring supporters—including a growing group of Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors—that he wasn't out of his depth. Little things, like video of Buttigieg speaking Norwegian to a reporter from Norway (he'd learned the language in order to read the untranslated works of a Norwegian author he admired) only burnished his legend. [...] As for his own health care plan, Buttigieg calls it Medicare for All Who Want It, which allows for employer-sponsored and individual private health insurance. But even as he moves into the centrist lane, Buttigieg likely knows that he can't be seen as being too moderate. When I told him, for instance, that I thought he was trying to get to the right of Sanders and Warren with the plan, he rejected the idea. "This would be the most ambitious thing done to American health care in the postwar era," he insisted. It's that type of big—or at least big-ish—thinking, combined with his youth, he argues, that makes him more electable than Biden.