Now that the holiday travel disaster driven primarily by Southwest Airlines is mostly behind us, people are looking to point the finger of blame and ensure this doesn’t happen again. The CEO of Southwest has already made a public apology and promised to try to get refunds to travelers and return the mountain of lost or abandoned luggage that was left behind. But plenty of people, including some Democrats in Congress, are giving the evil eye to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. At Fox News, Colin Reed is asking if this will be the straw that finally breaks the back of Buttigieg’s lofty political ambitions.

The Christmas travel nightmare involving Southwest Airlines left a wide wake of destruction with long-lasting implications. From frustrated travelers on the nearly 16,000 canceled flights to the reputation of the once-popular airline to the political future of Pete Buttigieg – it’s been a tough week for all involved…

For Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, the headaches are only just beginning. Critics are questioning the credentials of a 40-year-old former mayor of a city of 100,000 residents to oversee an agency with nearly 60,000 employees.

Already, he has become a pinata within his own party. For an ambitious and talented politician with his eye on higher office, this spells trouble. The Bernie Sanders-aligned wing of the party has been especially noisy. Nina Turner, who co-chaired Sanders’ 2020 campaign, accused Buttigieg of “failing up.”

It hasn’t just been Nina Turner suggesting that Mayor Pete might not have the required chops for this job. Democrat Ro Khanna of California also took to social media over the holiday break and pointed to Buttigieg when saying that the disaster with Southwest “could have been avoided.” Reed goes on to describe Mayor Pete’s position in the Cabinet as having become “a political lead balloon.”

It’s clear that Pete Buttigieg has not made any significant policy changes during his time at the Transportation Department. He also clearly failed to anticipate any of the travel disasters that have unfolded over the past two years and did nothing to prevent or alleviate them.

But beyond that, Buttigieg has largely been an absentee secretary. When serious issues arose, he was frequently either on paternity leave or on vacation. He was relaxing in Portugal when the rail workers’ threatened strike almost shut down our supply chain (again). When shipping containers were lined up for miles trying to get into our ports last year, Mayor Pete was nowhere to be seen. During this snow emergency, he managed to show up on television to offer comments, but he didn’t really take any bold actions to get everything back in order.

All of this appears to have even some of Buttigieg’s potential supporters wondering how he managed to rise so far and so fast. He was the mayor of a relatively small city where he couldn’t seem to manage to fix the potholes in the streets. And then, seemingly suddenly, he was running for his party’s nomination to be president and performing fairly well, though he couldn’t manage to compete with Bernie Sanders. After swearing fealty to Joe Biden, he was quickly appointed to the Cabinet in a position responsible for transportation, despite having virtually nothing relevant on his resume.

So will this poor performance, particularly the holiday travel meltdown, be what it takes to finally break the spell and put the breaks on this Democratic “rising star?” Mayor Pete has been a liberal media favorite ever since he showed up on the scene because he’s from a favored demographic group. But sooner or later you have to prove that you can actually get the work done, don’t you? If Joe Biden shows some common sense and chooses not to run again, we should find out soon enough.