The much trickier question is what comes next. While he made for a slick campaigner, France’s president has paid a hefty price for ignoring the sources of political disenchantment that made his rise possible in the first place. Like his recent predecessors, Macron has sought to cap spending on the country’s popular public services — something the Yellow Vest movement helped bring, among other things, to the attention of the world. Meanwhile, his administration has continued to oppose demands to significantly hike the minimum wage or to address the problem of employment insecurity, both of which hit young people particularly hard. These issues are the same ones that have fueled support for the extreme right and, ironically, paved the way for Macron to swoop in as a palatable alternative.

It should be obvious that things are not normal when an inexperienced mayor is leading the delegate count to be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States. And yet, Buttigieg, like Macron, seems unwilling or uninterested in grappling with the underlying factors that have upended his country’s politics in recent years. He essentially sees President Trump as an anomaly — a glitch in the system — rather than as the product of an increasingly unhealthy and dissatisfied body politic. True to that vision, Buttigieg hasn’t revealed much interest in seriously tackling economic inequality or structural racism, the twin evils of American society today.