In just the last few weeks, Buttigieg—a mild-mannered Midwesterner who has been tucking in his shirt since grade school—has sparked blinding, irrational hatred from the online left. It’s a strange new disrespect from the identity politics set, given that Buttigieg is mounting a historic candidacy as the first credible gay presidential candidate in American history.

Of course, if you aren’t a frequenter of progressive Twitter—or if you are an Iowa caucusgoer who has vaulted Pete to the top of the polls—you might not even realize this is all happening. So I’d like to take you on a penny tour through some of the more maniacal Buttigieg “problems” that have “surfaced” as we enter this holiday season of fellowship.

On Wednesday, David Klion, a contributor to the Nation, retweeted a thread which accused Pete of keeping a “token black woman” by his side recently and featured several pictures of her. “This is the 9th sighting since I noticed…Mayor Pete is an exploitative twerp.”

The woman in question, Nina Smith, is a veteran of multiple Democratic campaigns and Pete’s traveling press secretary. She joined the campaign in May. It’s unclear exactly why Klion and the Twitter user “@net-enforcer” feel entitled to demean Smith as a token. You might say they are erasing her agency in an attempt to enforce their own views of identity. Who could say?

Meanwhile, Teen Vogue, which has unironically become a Democratic Socialist magazine that appeals to Red Rose Twitter, published an article about “Petey Bourgeoius” premised on the fact that he “almost too perfectly represents a danger Karl Marx raises” because his aw shucks appeal is masking his fealty to the ruling class.

Mediaite, meanwhile, published a dispatch from the Pete campaign bus that is so psychotic you need to read it yourself, but it can best be described as a stream of consciousness ranting from an unwell street corner preacher who is screaming ludicrous questions while the candidate responds to them calmly. Mediaite framed the article as “Pete Buttigieg Does Not Want You To Read This Interview.”People did read it, and they laughed.

The Root published an article that was widely praised on the left titled “Pete Buttigieg is a Lying MF” which was premised on an 8-year-old “surfaced” clip in which Pete makes a common argument about how sometimes people in lower income, minority neighborhoods don’t have role models they know personally who testify to the value of education. Offering a different perspective as someone who grew up in one of those communities to shed some light on blind spots that Mayor Pete had would be one thing and something Pete clearly welcomes as evidenced by his return call to the author. Using it as the launching point for calling him a “lying motherfucker” in a disdain soaked essay is just a wee bit out there.

There has been an absolutely bizarre series of articles about how Buttigieg isn’t “gay enough,” most notably this one from the New Republic that referred to him repeatedly as “Mary Pete” and projected onto him a desire to hook up with an older man in a bus station. It was so bad that TNR retracted it and deleted it from their site. Politico published a confounding article premised on a few lesbian Democratic activists who weren’t supporting Pete. It is unclear why there should be an expectation that Pete would earn the vote of every living lesbian—or gay man, for that matter. The very fact that Buttigieg isn’t running an identity-based campaign for gays is part of his appeal.

Prominent online Democrats have said that Pete’s success, coming in spite of low polling with black voters, is a sign of white supremacy. This is a real thing.

A Vice headline accused him of supporting a literal India style caste system. Adam Jentleson, a noted Twitter antagonist to Mayor Pete and former advisor to Harry Reid—who was, just so we’re clear, not exactly the wokest horse in the barn—shared an accusation that Buttigieg has “high hopes of reinforcing systemic racism.”

Back in my days of doing rapid response for Republicans, that would have been a pretty serious charge. And that’s especially the case when a Democratic strategist is accusing fellow Democrats of supporting “systemic racism”—a claim like that is liable to end up in a Trump campaign Facebook ad aimed at depressing the black vote should Buttigieg wind up on the eventual Democratic ticket.

Some teens on TikTok—the hot new social site owned and controlled by the Chinese government which absolutely does not have any incentive to meddle in U.S. elections—have taken to calling him “Mayo Pete” and the progressive press has lapped it up, spilling substantial digital ink on this brilliant pun and brutally mocking the earnest Pete volunteers who sparked the meme by daring to show some off keyboard enthusiasm for politics through a cheesy dance number.