He’s pushed policies occasionally that single out people who are LGBT, most famously the ban on transgender soldiers in the military. But it’s a weird-yet-true fact that the most reactionary president in modern American history, who enjoys a stalwart following among social conservatives, betrays no personal distaste for gays becoming increasingly mainstream in America.

Then again, it would be a bit weird if a guy who chose to live his entire life in New York City and has been in and around Hollywood for ages did show personal distaste.

“Even Alfred E. Neuman is entitled to love,” he should have said here.

Another sneak peek of our EXCLUSIVE interview with @realDonaldTrump – listen below to what he has to say about @PeteButtigieg, and don't miss the full interview this Sunday at 9PM ET on @FoxNews! pic.twitter.com/YS9kobn4d0

— The Next Revolution (@NextRevFNC) May 16, 2019

Question: Is our right-wing POTUS, whose motto calls for making America as great again as it was in less progressive times, actually more progressive on this issue than core parts of the Democratic base? Politico looked recently at Buttigieg’s trouble getting traction with black voters in the primary.

[A]s the mayor of South Bend, Ind., devotes more effort to campaigning for black votes in the South and elsewhere, he will have to break down some resistance over his sexual orientation, particularly among older voters, according to interviews with more than a dozen African American activists, political strategists and clergy, as well as a review of public polling…

“He’s white, male and gay, all three of those things are going to create obstacles for various communities — specifically, I think, the white and the gay, for the black community, are definitely going to be obstacles for him,” said Harrison Guy, a Houston-based choreographer and LGBTQ activist who led the discussion with the mayor. “He’s very aware of that.”…

“For older African-American voters, yes, it may be an issue, and with older clergy, it may also be an obstacle. That’s also true for older, white, working-class voters, too,” said one national Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “Whether they tell a pollster that is an open question. Most people don’t like to admit that they have bias.”

Blacks run about 10 points behind the general population in terms of support for gay marriage, notes Politico, and older blacks run about 20 points behind. Buttigieg’s problem may be deeper than those numbers suggest, though. The latest primary poll of South Carolina, where the Democratic electorate is around 60 percent black, found him pulling 18 percent of the white vote (good for second place, ahead of Bernie Sanders) and … zero percent of the black vote. Zero. Bernie, who’s also had trouble attracting black voters, won 15 percent of that group in SC. Ultra-longshot Andrew Yang took three percent. Buttigieg, who’s received all sorts of fawning national press in the last couple of months and speaks often of his faith on the stump, somehow got goose-egged. How come?

Buttigieg had an interesting comment today about Trump too, coincidentally. Although Trump wasn’t really the target of it.

“You don’t even get a presidency like this unless something’s wrong,” Buttigieg says. He adds that waiting to find “smoking gun proof that the president’s not that good of a guy” is misguided.

— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) May 16, 2019

Some people, Buttigieg says, voted for Trump “in order to send a message that they wanted to burn the house down.”

— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) May 16, 2019

Which — in what sounds like Buttigieg is alluding to Biden — is why “a promise to return to normal” is the wrong approach. “A promise to return to normal ignores that normal hasn’t been working for a lot of people.”

— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) May 16, 2019

Right. Biden’s campaign slogan, unofficially, is “Make America Normal Again.” Get rid of Trump, end his “aberrational” presidency, and get back on the Obama track circa 2016. Return to normalcy! Every other Democratic candidate in the race, Bernie Sanders foremost among them, is going to counter the same way Buttigieg just did by insisting that if the status quo of three years ago was as great as Biden thinks the country never would have rolled the dice on Trump. What can Uncle Joe say to that? Probably he’ll say that if Obama was running for a third term he would have won 40 states from Trump. Think progressives will buy it?