America’s Next Story: Pete Buttigieg

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Opinions – America’s Next Story: Pete Buttigieg
Date: October 14, 2025
Host: David Leonhardt (NYT Opinion)
Guest: Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary, presidential candidate, and mayor

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Episode Overview

America’s Next Story centers on the search for a new narrative to unify America during an era of division and cynicism. David Leonhardt interviews Pete Buttigieg, discussing themes of belonging, the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, the transformation required within the Democratic Party, and lessons from the marriage equality movement for social change.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Buttigieg's Move to Northern Michigan and Community Divides

• Family and Place: Buttigieg describes his family's move to Traverse City, highlighting the importance of family ties and the familiar, if more rural, Midwestern culture.

  "Chastain's parents live here. My mother lives here now, too... It's definitely more rural than I grew up, but also very Midwestern in ways that make me feel right at home." – Buttigieg [02:32]

• Community Dynamics: Despite political differences in Traverse City, everyday kindness and civic cooperation persist.

  "People will even come up and say, I don't share your politics. But it's nice running into you." – Buttigieg [04:30]

2. American Optimism and the Prevalence of Dark Narratives

• Decline of Optimism: Leonhardt and Buttigieg note that America’s historically optimistic narrative has given way to darker outlooks from both right and left.

  "President Trump tells this terribly dark story... The left can be pretty dark in its own ways." – Leonhardt [05:15]

• Underlying Causes: Buttigieg attributes the sense of decline partly to real economic frustrations (stagnating mobility) and partly to fragmented, polarized media environments.

  "If you were born the year that my mother was born, you had roughly a 90% chance... The year I was born, 1982. It becomes a coin flip." – Buttigieg [06:19]

3. The Need for a Shared National Project

• Historical Precedents: Buttigieg points to periods like WWII as models of national unity and argues for a new, compelling collective project.

  "I actually think there are projects like that waiting for us as a country. I've long believed that climate could be one." – Buttigieg [08:06]

• Role of Political Parties: Both major parties must shift—the GOP from destruction to building, and Democrats from defending the status quo to imagining new possibilities.

4. The Search for Belonging

• Redefining Belonging: Buttigieg critiques Trumpism for promoting belonging via exclusion and proposes a broader, more inclusive vision tied to community, national service, and local engagement.

  "I think there's a different way to think about belonging... some of them code more conservative than not. I'm thinking about things like community and a certain concept of nation and faith..." – Buttigieg [10:00]

• Impact of AI on Identity: Automation and AI threaten traditional professional identities, highlighting the need for new forms of belonging.

  "People being thrown out of their jobs... not a lot of solutions in terms of what had happened to their identity." – Buttigieg [11:27]

5. Policy and Cultural Solutions for Belonging

• Practical Examples: Leonhardt applauds bipartisan school phone bans as an accessible, unifying step to promote real-world connection.

  "Most of the country now putting in place some kind of... ban on phones in schools. It's really bipartisan." – Leonhardt [12:33]

• Further Ideas: Buttigieg advocates for investment in physical “social infrastructure” (parks, community programs, national service), echoing his military experience as a model of real-world community.

  "If you have more safe physical spaces for your kids to play in and people to gather... that really matters..." – Buttigieg [14:28]

6. Confronting Cynicism and Institutional Sclerosis

• Facing the Darkness: Buttigieg urges Democrats to admit failures and rebuild institutions rather than simply defending old structures.

  "A lot of the institutions we care about... built for very good reasons... need to be completely rebuilt now." – Buttigieg [16:03]

7. Democratic Party Soul-Searching

• Perception as Party of the Status Quo: Buttigieg traces this to Democrats’ defense of imperiled institutions and a demographic shift toward more comfortable, educated voters.

  "If more of the people who make up the Democratic Party are... those who are... doing better in the status quo... you can expect there to be a... small C conservatism..." – Buttigieg [17:44]

• Identity Politics and Fairness: Buttigieg distinguishes between focusing on righting historic wrongs and allowing those wrongs to become the party’s sole message.

  "I believe in a story where some of the most extraordinary moments... came through our process of wrestling with our demons." – Buttigieg [19:20]

8. Losing Ground with Minority and Working-Class Voters

• Voter Shifts: Both discuss migration of Latino, Black, and Asian voters toward the GOP, challenging the efficacy of “identity-first” strategies.

• Fairness as Unifying Principle: Buttigieg spotlights fairness as a way to link different groups’ struggles without making some feel excluded.

  "There's a way of talking about fairness that can knit different groups... together." – Buttigieg [22:48]

9. Admitting Democratic Missteps

• Example - Immigration and Border: Buttigieg acknowledges downplaying the border crisis was a mistake.

  "We were wrong to downplay the importance of what was happening on the border." – Buttigieg [25:23]

• Importance of Introspection without Defeatism: Democrats should learn from mistakes but also stand firm on core popular policies.

10. Democracy and Authoritarian Threats

• Alarming Trends under Trump: Buttigieg and Leonhardt express grave concern over Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies and the risks of unchecked executive power.

  "There's a reason why humanity has found out the hard way that dictatorships are terrible, not just... academic... but... what it feels like to live in them." – Buttigieg [27:36]

11. Consensus and Movement Building

• Balancing Consensus and Boldness: Buttigieg believes politicians must both build consensus and move public opinion toward big, bold change—often requiring risky stances today to enable future shifts.

  "We need to open the window on big, bold changes, even if people aren't prepared for that yet." – Buttigieg [29:46]

12. Strategic Lessons from Marriage Equality

• Marriage Equality as Model: Leonhardt and Buttigieg agree that the movement succeeded by marrying (pun intended) ambitious long-term vision with pragmatic, inclusive messaging.

  "So much of politics, so much of making change, has to do with how people feel about themselves..." – Buttigieg [32:19]

13. Hope and Action in Bleak Times

• The Nature of Hope: Buttigieg, echoing Obama-era rhetoric, encourages building hope through collective action, even in the darkness of the Trump era.

  "Hope is the consequence of action more than its cause... we actually have sort of an obligation, a responsibility to build hope." – Buttigieg [34:32]

• Learning from History: Finds hope in historical resilience and the cyclical nature of dark and redemptive periods.

  "Some of the things that feel unprecedented are more precedented than we think." – Buttigieg [34:32]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's just has that kind of texture to it." – Buttigieg on small-town fame [02:58]
• "There's a disconnect between how people might behave online and how they actually act when you're sitting next to them at a restaurant..." – Buttigieg [04:30]
• "If you have more safe physical spaces for your kids to play in... that really matters..." – Buttigieg [14:28]
• "Hope is the consequence of action more than its cause." – Buttigieg [34:32]

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Important Timestamps

• 02:32 – Buttigieg discusses the move to Michigan and community dynamics
• 05:15 – Decline of optimism: America’s dark narratives
• 08:06 – Search for a unifying national project
• 10:00 – Belonging as a political and societal need
• 12:33 – Phones in schools as bipartisan policy for belonging
• 16:03 – Need to rebuild rather than just defend old institutions
• 17:44 – How Democrats became identified with the status quo
• 19:20 – Identity politics: The party’s message on exclusion and progress
• 22:48 – Fairness as a crosscutting principle
• 25:23 – Admitting mistakes: Democratic missteps on immigration
• 27:36 – The threat to democracy under Trump
• 29:46 – Consensus politics versus championing movements
• 32:19 – Lessons from the marriage equality movement
• 34:32 – Buttigieg’s message on action and hope

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Tone & Language

The conversation is thoughtful, reflective, and frank, with Buttigieg oscillating between analytical diagnoses of national malaise and calls to pragmatic, hopeful action. The tone is respectful, at times personal, but always engaged with the country’s larger future.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode delivers a deep dive into America’s political crossroads—and offers practical, hopeful ways forward, rooted in belonging, institutional renewal, and lessons from recent social progress.

Transcript

[Podcast Narrator]

Don't just imagine a better future. Start investing in one with betterment. Whether it's saving for today or building wealth for tomorrow. We help people in small businesses put their money to work. We automate to make savings simpler. We optimize to make investing smarter. We build innovative technology backed by financial experts. For anyone who's ever said, I think I can do better, so be invested in yourself. Be invested in your business. Be invested in better with betterment. Get [e-mail] investing involves risk performance not guaranteed. This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

[David Leonhardt]

I'm David Leonhart, an editorial director in New York Times Opinion, and this is America's Next Story, a series about the ideas that once held our country together and those that might do so again.

[Pete Buttigieg]

We the people, in order to form.

[David Leonhardt]

A more perfect union, ask not what.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. America is too great for small dreams.

[David Leonhardt]

Change is what's happening in America, and we will make America great again. God bless you and good night. I love you. Today I'm talking with Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, presidential candidate, and mayor of South Bend, Indiana. These days, he lives with his family in Northern Michigan, and he's spending a lot of time thinking about the country's future, which means that just like this podcast, he's trying to figure out what America's next story should be. In the conversation that you're about to hear, we talk about American search for belonging, about how artificial intelligence might be about to change that search, about how the Democratic Party can stop being the party of the status quo, and about how the marriage equality movement can be a model for future change. I hope you find the conversation as thought provoking as I did. Mr. Secretary, thanks for joining me today.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Thanks for having me. Good to be with you.

[David Leonhardt]

Before we get to your thoughts about the next American story, I want to talk a little bit about you. I know your husband, Chastain, is from Traverse City in northern Michigan. Can you talk a little bit about your decision to move back there rather than back to Indiana?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Yeah. So the decision really was propelled by family. Chastain's parents live here. My mother lives here now, too, not far from us in Traverse City. It's definitely more rural than I grew up, but also very Midwestern in ways that make me feel right at home.

[David Leonhardt]

And how would you notice the differences in terms of the community, in terms of the politics anything relative to the other places you've lived?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, certainly the community and the politics reflect that. It's a more rural place. On one hand, it's more or less a 50, 50 county, which is true of the county I grew up in as well. On the other hand, where I grew up, people might have Trump yard signs. Here they have Trump flags on flag poles. So it's just feels different. And even compared to a place like South Bend, Indiana, which I think, population wise, is roughly 10 times Traverse City, where we live now, you notice the smallness of it sometimes. People scratching their head about why they know me, because they know they recognize me from somewhere. I was with the kids out recently, and this woman was giving me a hard stare, and I was kind of waiting for her to come up and say that she realized she'd seen me on TV or something. And she said, are you. Are you my kid's soccer ref? And I thought, well, I'm glad that the person you think I might be is an authority figure at least. But no. So it just has that kind of texture to it.

[David Leonhardt]

It reminds me a little bit. One of my close relatives takes her kids to the Jersey Shore, and at the little spot where they set up at the Jersey Shore, the family next to them often has a big Trump flag that they bring to the beach. And her politics are left of center. And when she brought a friend there with them, the friend said to her, sort of in a low voice afterwards, oh, my good. What are those people like? And my relative said, you know, they're really nice, and they're really nice to my kids. And it feels like we need a little bit more of that in America today. And it sounds like you've gotten a little of that even as high profile as you are in Traverse City.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Totally. I mean, you know, not long ago, we had a neighbor who I know has very different politics than we do, who I don't even know personally, but made a point of stopping by Chastain's uncle's welding shop to share a story about a photographer who was snooping in the neighborhood, hoping to be the first to get a picture of our kids and how she sent him packing. Very protective of our privacy. While also somebody who I think is completely different than we are politically. So I think there is that disconnect between how people might behave online and how they actually act when you're sitting next to them at a restaurant or bumping into them at Target. People will even come up and say, I don't share your Politics. But it's nice running into you.

[David Leonhardt]

One of the things that I think has long distinguished the United States relative to other countries is our optimism. We went west, we went to the moon, we won world wars, we invented the airplane and the Internet and the American dream. And yet we sure don't feel very optimistic today. President Trump tells this terribly dark story about crime and violence and the country being ripped off. And the left can be pretty dark in its own ways. And I'm curious, why is it that you think that these dark narratives seem to have really taken over?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I think part of it's based on very real things, and part of it's based on the way we get our information. The very real part, I would say, is mostly about our economy. It's a simple fact that if you were born the year that my mother was born, you had roughly a 90% chance of being able to expect that you would materially live better than your parents did, that you'd economically be better off by the time you were an adult than the family you were born into.

[David Leonhardt]

So that's the 1940s, I imagine.

[Pete Buttigieg]

That's right. The year I was born, 1982. It becomes a coin flip, 50, 50, whether you're going to be better off than the generation before you. And there are some indications that that's trended even worse for a younger generation that struggles to be able to even realistically hope to have a home of their own. So I think there is a real trajectory. Even as our nation, in total, on average, has grown wealthier and wealthier and wealthier, the concentrations of it, the difficulty getting ahead, I think, has made it so that people question whether they're going to get ahead in their own lives and relate that to a bigger national picture of us being on the wrong track. At the same time, I also think part of this is related to information and the way we get information. The proportion of Americans who believe that we were in a recession shows you that there's a mix of both an expression of something very real in our economy and very fragmented information that people are getting when they look at the news. And that's why often you see a lot of disconnect between what people feel is happening in their personal finances and what people think is happening to everybody else, or these weird partisan swings in how people tell pollsters they feel about their own financial situation just based on what happened in the last election.

[David Leonhardt]

And so even if part of it is real and part of it is more perception, it's all the reality that we're living with. And it all makes me wonder, boy, how can we get the country to move out of this incredible darkness? How can we possibly break out of that, given the real frustrations and given that we can't simply invent a new media landscape?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I think part of what has to happen is a sense of a shared national project, and it's simpler to do that in the context of something like a war, which we hope will not be the future of this country. If we think back to periods when there was a shared national narrative, World War II generation, I think, is the example that kind of shines most clearly out of the last century. I actually think there are projects like that waiting for us as a country. I've long believed that climate could be one. It's an example of something that's bigger than any one of us. I think also paradoxically, all of the damage that the Trump administration has done to our institutions actually creates a very important potential future moment where even if we bitterly disagree on how those institutions were destroyed, we can come together on what we should build in their place. Now, for that to happen, that means a Republican Party needs to evolve into being more about building than destroying. And it means a Democratic Party needs to get more interested in what we can do next than in preserving the status quo that is being smashed to pieces.

[David Leonhardt]

As much as I would like climate to be a potentially nationally unifying story, I think that it's gotten coded so partisan, at least for the foreseeable future, that it's much more likely that the second of the two possibilities you just named could look like something of an optimistic and unifying story. Right. Some kind of message about putting us on a better path, making it possible for people to live better lives in their communities, make it easier for young people to buy homes, and maybe a little bit of the competition with China. That, to me, feels like the broad set of subjects that could actually produce a unifying narrative, rather than something like climate that just primes people in a partisan way.

[Pete Buttigieg]

So immediately, I think that's right. I would add one more, which is search for belonging. Perversely, it's actually one of the main themes of Trumpism, except that they are concerned with belonging from the perspective of who you can exclude. I think there's a different way to think about belonging, but I actually think that in a future where. Where we have even less certainty about our professional lives, as AI looks poised to displace lots of workers, including white collar workers, whose entire social identity revolves around their jobs, there's actually A very interesting potential opportunity to find more of a center of gravity and sources of belonging that don't have an automatic ideological coding to them. In fact, some of them code more conservative than not. I'm thinking about things like community and a certain concept of nation and faith, for sure, but also that there's a concept of nation and national service that could align well with progressive values, too. That the local, the power of the local, the meaning of knowing your neighbors and investing in that part of your life that is literally physically around you. So we know the very ugly alternatives that are out there for people who can't seem to find belonging, and those include extremism and nationalism. I think we can and should do better. And I think some of the labor market upheaval that's coming our way will probably force us to do that.

[David Leonhardt]

And I assume that's a reference to AI.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Absolutely. Look, we are already in the early stages of seeing it completely transform a number of things that have gone a certain way for hundreds of years in our lives, like what it's like to teach students how to write an essay. And also things that a generation ago, we thought were surefire ways to get ahead in the economy, like becoming a coder. I mean, these things were already being transformed, and there's more where that came from. Now, if we get it wrong, those transformations will play out in a way that resembles what I grew up surrounded by in the industrial Midwest. People being thrown out of their jobs because of. In the 2000s. It was a mixture of automation and globalization, either being completely left behind or getting some solutions or attempted solutions economically, like retraining into new careers, but not a lot of solutions in terms of what had happened to their identity. And having lived that and seen how that can go wrong, I think we have an opportunity to do better this time. Even if we don't know exactly what to expect from AI, we can expect disruption.

[David Leonhardt]

You know, to someone who says belonging, what could that possibly look like in a political or policy sense? I actually think there's an initial answer, which is phones in schools. I am encouraged by this idea that we see most of the country now putting in place some kind of or considering some kind of ban on phones in schools. It's really bipartisan. And when you talk to teachers at schools that have done this and kids, people really like it. And. And I do think it fosters a sense of belonging. And you. You hear about schools putting board games in the cafeteria, that really does create a sense of belonging that I think even if it's really hard at first to put down your phones is just so much more satisfying, even in the relatively short term.

[Pete Buttigieg]

I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's very telling that at a moment when bipartisan consensus is scarce, there's a real overlap between right and left. And it's interesting. I think a lot of people are upset about what tech has done to our politics, but the thing that's really changing it is seeing what social media has done to our kids. I think about this a lot. Having four year old twins who are not quite old enough for us to confront these decisions about when and where you get access to social media, but we know that they're coming. I do think that the bans on phones in schools are an example of people in ways that aren't dictated by party or ideology, coming to a gathering consensus about what we want our everyday life and experience to be like, at least for our kids. And I think we can build off of that.

[David Leonhardt]

I realize you haven't sketched this all out, but what are some of the ideas that intrigue you about other things we should do broadly to promote belonging that don't look like, say, a big healthcare law, but are a little bit more cultural, even if they also can involve policy changes?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think there are signs of policies that could basically redirect our attention to experiences that are a little more offline investment, and I mean real physical investment in things like service, national service in particular. There have been models for this, including California has done a lot of really good work on promoting service. AmeriCorps, which unfortunately has taken a lot of hits under this administration, but was on the right track for me. Military service did this too. Military is not for everybody, but it was an abundantly offline experience with people that I had to get to know and sometimes trust with my life in a very short amount of time. I think investing in what's sometimes called social infrastructure, I mean, it sounds very parks and rec, but I literally mean things like parks and rec. If you have more safe physical spaces for your kids to play in and for people to gather in, that really matters in ways that I think can help us help be an antidote to this retreat into the screen that is harmful for kids and I think pretty poisonous for adults too.

[David Leonhardt]

So if a key thing here is to have a story about belonging, about a shared national project rather than a partisan one, how do you think that can appeal to people? Given the level of cynicism today and the darkness, how do we make sure it Just doesn't fall on deaf ears because people are so frustrated and because of the way media works today.

[Pete Buttigieg]

I think it actually begins by facing the darkness, saying, okay, a lot of the things that we've inherited or that we've built don't work. And again, a message, a bit of a tough love message, I think, for my party and my side of the aisle is a lot of the institutions we care about that were built for very good reasons and did a lot of good since they were built in the 30s, 40s and 50s need to be completely rebuilt now. It doesn't mean it was okay to burn them down. Whether we're talking about the Department of Education or our public health infrastructure or our system for international development aid or any of the other things that are being burned down. I'm not saying it's okay to tear them down. I'm saying since that's happening, we might as well face that they weren't exactly perfect before and we can rebuild them now. We can have a different kind of, maybe less partisan set of arguments about what we would build if we were starting from scratch. Because in a lot of cases, I'm afraid we will be. So I think it's not by downplaying the darkness. I think it's by sailing right into it that we can actually get to a place that compels us to work together on these projects.

[David Leonhardt]

Let's continue with some tough love for the Democratic Party. There are a few things I want to talk to you about that. So I'm really struck that at this time of frustration and an anti establishment national mood, the Democratic Party has become so identified with the status quo and the establishment, which is not historically where progressives have been. I mean, the reason the word is progressive is because it's about making progress. How do you diagnose how the Democratic Party came to be seen as defenders of the status quo? And I think if we're being honest in some real ways, as actual defenders of the status quo?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I think part of it is because we saw attacks on institutions and systems that we cared about that really do deserve to be defended. I'm thinking about things like Social Security, but there's a whole set of things that are core commitments of our party. And I think that did put us in the mode of being less open to ideas about how to change some of these institutions. And then we saw them being attacked in the way they were being attacked and couldn't help but defend them. I think part of it also tracks the educational gap that has opened up in party affiliation that just wasn't there as recently as when I was getting started in politics in Indiana. If more of the people who make up the Democratic Party are disproportionately those who are socially, economically actually doing better in the status quo than everybody else, then you can expect there to be a kind of reluctance, even ironically, a small C conservatism about changes that are needed taking root in the party. And I think that's why you have such a fierce clash within the party between people who sometimes sound more populist or are more populist and those who would like to make more incremental change.

[David Leonhardt]

You recently said that there's a perception that Democrats, and I'm using your words here, Democrats have become so focused on identity that we were only for you if you fit into a particular identity bucket. Can you go into some more detail about what your critique of the Democratic Party is on these identity issues?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, to pick up a thread from earlier in our conversation, you mentioned a kind of a darkness that seems to take hold in the left, too. And I think that there are two very different things that have been conflated. One is the idea that we confront some extremely serious patterns of exclusion and unfairness in the way this country has treated people, and we have a responsibility to do something about that and that that's an important part of our politics. Another is to say that or make it seem like that's our entire view of this country. And what I think certainly Trump and Trumpism has accused Democrats of is preaching a message that the country is fundamentally evil because of these failures. Now, I believe in a very different story. I believe in a story where some of the most extraordinary moments, the most inspiring and compelling and uplifting moments of this country came through our process of wrestling with our demons, much of which has to do with the mistreatment of, you name it, any number of groups of Americans and doing better and getting better at that. And that's been a bit zigzaggy, but a clear direction of travel in the history of this country and something I think we should be proud of, even if it's always incomplete and always imperfect. So between those two ways of stating the case, one in which we are defined by unfairness that has played out versus one in which we are defined by our readiness to confront unfairness and make it better, I think in the play between those two things is the whole struggle over what the party's actually going to be. I think that if it seems that all we can see is one group at a time, then we're not really telling a story that speaks to everybody and one that people can see themselves belonging in whatever group or identity they might claim.

[David Leonhardt]

I think to me, the biggest reason for Democratic introspection on this is the fact, and I want to be clear, I didn't expect this or predict this, but it's the fact that in the era of Donald Trump, large numbers of Latino, Asian and black voters have moved away from the Democratic Party toward the Republican Party. And that to me, suggests that the identity first message that Democrats have often offered, immigration being a good example. Right. Democrats thought that a more and more open immigration policy would help them win more and more Latino and Asian voters. Instead, it's cost them a lot of Latino and Asian voters. And I think that really calls for some introspection that when you look at Americans who are actually vulnerable, working class Americans of all races, who the Democratic Party has such a proud history of defending in so many ways, when you look at Americans like that, they've looked at this Democratic Party of the post Obama years and basically said, that party is less appealing to me. And it seems to me that as part of the belonging story and shared national project story that you and I have been talking about, it's really important for the American left to find a way to speak a language that emphasizes our similarities with each other, rather than always going to gender and race and sexuality and religion. As important as those factors are in American life.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Do you think that's fair or situating it in something that cuts across. So that's why I really think talking about fairness is the right way to come at this. Concern about fairness can apply to so many different groups that might have encountered unfairness for different reasons, but it knits us together in a bigger picture. That's definitely how we tried to think about it. When I was working at the Department of Transportation, for example, many of the projects we worked on were to make sure that communities that had been underinvested in, maybe because it was a low income or minority community that they got taken care of, but also huge numbers of grants that went out to help communities improve their transportation went to rural communities that were excluded, not because of racial reasons, they were mostly white communities, but for other reasons. We still knew it was unfair that they had been left out, and we tried to do something about that. So there's a way of talking about fairness that can knit different groups with different experiences together. And there's other ways of talking about it that make it seem to a lot of People like we're not for them them. And in addition to agreeing that there should be introspection about many of these constituencies that our party counted on starting to move in a different direction, I would talk about an exceptionally important constituency which is poor people. I haven't seen a definitive quantified answer on whether Democrats lost the vote of poor people in 2024. But what is clear is that a party that prides itself on being concerned with making sure low income people get ahead did not comm the support of the people that it thinks of itself as helping. That's a huge problem, and I think one that calls for us not only to look at our message and how we say things, but where our focus is at a policy level to knit.

[David Leonhardt]

Two of these themes together. It seems to me it will also be much easier for Democrats to fight over these economic policy issues where Democrats tend to be on the side of public opinion if they can get more voters not to essentially disqualify, qualify them because the voters see the Democrats as too elite and just too far left on a whole bunch of social and cultural issues. And to me, doing that will require more than what Kamala Harris did in her campaign, which was changing her position without talking about why do you think it's important for Democrats in some pretty clear and salient ways to say we were wrong about this, whether the this is crime or immigration or something else?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Yeah, I think there's some moments where we need to do that, not only because it might be politically important, but because it's true. We were wrong to downplay the importance of what was happening on the border. It's clear that we thought that some of what we were hearing was overblown when actually it was impacting people in a real way and Democrats could have paid more attention. Now, look, I also believe that what's happening on the border was the result of a lot of cynical Republican politics blocking bill after bill over the last 20 years to make sure that it stayed a problem because it helps them politically for it to be a problem. Still, there is a substantive concern that my party just didn't accept the importance of that issue, the real as well as political importance of an issue like that. So I think we need to contend with that. And at the same time, we can't let introspection turn into navel gazing. We can't lose sight of the fact that on the majority of the biggest issues, most people tend to agree with us and we need to hold fast to that. I could point to issue after issue where there's 60, 70 or more percent consensus on a position that Democrats hold and Republicans are against. So what I don't want us to do is to think that we need to shy away from our values or shy away from some important fights just because the last election didn't go our way.

[Podcast Narrator]

Way.

[David Leonhardt]

We haven't talked that much about what President Trump is doing right now, but it's kind of been the backdrop to our conversation and it greatly alarms me. I'm not talking about individual policies so much as I'm talking about his entire approach to government. I'm deeply alarmed about American democracy, even if I don't necessarily think it is the most winning political issue right now. And I'm curious how you think about that balance. How alarmed are you and what is the not the way to take on Trump that feels best for his opponents, but the way to take on Trump that is actually the most effective at preserving the parts of American democracy that really need preserving?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I think we have to speak to these democracy issues. I'm alarmed, too. I know there's a school of thought that says no one cares about democracy when there are economic problems. I think we have to talk about both. And part of how we do it is we demonstrate that they're connected. We talk about how if you have an executive branch that has just shredded any of the institutions, even in the private sector that could hold it accountable, then you're going to get really bad outcomes in your day to day life too. That a president who doesn't have to go to Congress for anything is a president who can increase the prices on your daily basket of goods through tariffs and no accountability, and has and has in ways that have been determined, at least in some courts, to be illegal. And so whether the administration obeys the courts is not just some nicety of constitutional principle. It's going to affect how much you pay. Whether you get up in the morning and want to see federal troops marching down the streets of your city. That's something that, that affects your everyday life. I mean, RFK denying you eligibility for a Covid shot that you were going to get this year. Kristi Noem sitting on aid that was going to go to flood victims in Texas. I think policies like that don't happen in administrations that care about accountability. So when you have, look, there's a reason why humanity has found out the hard way that dictatorships are terrible, not just by the lights of some academic idea about freedom, but in terms of what it feels like to live in them.

[David Leonhardt]

Yeah, I'm curious how you think about the trade offs and tensions between kind of trying to work between the system and trying to bring about more radical change. I've been reading, in some cases rereading profiles of you to prepare for this conversation. And the New Yorker in 2019 described your politics as one that tries to steer consensus rather than champion a movement. And I'm curious if you think that's fair or even if it's partly fair, what it gets right about how you think about how to actually achieve change in the United States.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I think about it a little differently from that. I definitely understand as somebody who's had to function and deliver results in government as well as politics, that building consensus is a really important part of what you do in public life. But I also believe that, that we need to open the window on big, bold changes, even if people aren't prepared for that yet. And part of how you prepare people for that is take political risks to popularize or champion those ideas. Look, nobody, I don't think even Bernie was willing to talk about expanding the Supreme Court. When I said we need to reform the Supreme Court, including potentially through expansion to make it less partisan. I think now that's more of a mainstream view. I'm not saying I single handedly did that, but I'm proud that I, it held helped by making that an issue, a risky issue in my presidential campaign. There are big structural things we need to confront as a country in terms of things around money and politics that probably can only happen through constitutional amendment. Things that might well take a generation to deliver precisely because it might take a generation for people to get used to the idea. People like me ought to be helping people get used to the idea by making the case. Now I think we can do that as well as making sure that something where there's a consensus and it's just down to the bargaining over how to do it, that is also a very real element of what it means to earn your paycheck as a politician or as somebody in government.

[David Leonhardt]

That makes me think about the marriage equality movement and the gay rights movement more broadly. I mean, one of the things that I'm really struck by with that movement, which I think is the most successful progressive movement of the last quarter century, is the way in which it set out an incredibly bold goal, radical goal.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Right.

[David Leonhardt]

A goal that most of the country at the time didn't agree with. And then it pursued that goal in what I think was a ruthlessly strategic way. And it tried to win over people who weren't Already won over. Right. It talked about let us join the military. It talked about marriage, which is a fundamentally conservative institution. And to me, there's a real lesson there, which is you don't have to trim your ambitions, but you also can't pursue a strategy that is just making the people who disagree with you feel bad about themselves or feel ignorant. You have to take them seriously. And I wish that more parts of progressivism today included that second part, the ruthless strategy of the marriage equality and gay rights movement.

[Pete Buttigieg]

No question. Look, so much of politics, so much of making change, has to do with how people feel about themselves, how you make people feel about themselves. And. And a lot of what happened with the struggle for equality was to try to coax people onto the right side of history versus drag them there. Now, there was also a history of very important activism that broke a lot of proverbial glass trying to draw attention to things like the AIDS crisis. I don't want to discount that. That's part of the picture, for sure. There's a trajectory here, though, that shows us that enormous change can happen. Happen when you have a willingness to play out that strategy over the long term. And part of. To me, what is inspiring about especially something like the gay equality movement, not just as somebody who benefits from it, because every time I fill out a piece of paperwork is a married person who can have the benefits of legal equality, but also it's inspiring to me because it didn't just take something from being unpopular to being popular. It took ideas that were preposterous for one generation and made them consensus for the next generation. That's the level of ambition we ought.

[David Leonhardt]

To have to wrap up here. I think so many people today just feel a little bit hopeless. They think that reality doesn't matter. They think that politics can't fix things. And on some level, being involved in public life as you are is an act of hope. And I'm curious what you would say to people who say, hey, I agree with you on a lot of policy stuff, but I just don't think this matters anymore? Trump has shown that it doesn't matter, and I've kind of given up. How would you encourage people to find some sense of hope, that actually some of our very deep problems are solvable and that we're not destined to live in the Donald Trump era for the rest of our lives?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Well, I've heard it said once that hope is the consequence of action more than its cause. And that's something I try to think about a lot in this moment. That we actually have. Instead of waiting around for hope, we actually have sort of an obligation, a responsibility to build hope. Hope. And that that's a result of what we do in this moment. That's how I think about the present. I also draw a lot of hope from the past and from the future. From the past. I draw hope from staring down the darkness of some of the moments that humanity and America have been through. It can feel totally disorienting and alienating that we no longer even have access to the same facts in terms of how our information system works. But you know what? That's not totally unlike what it was like when everybody had their own ideological newspaper in the 19th century and we figured our way through that. Some of the things that feel unprecedented are more precedented than we think. And I think that can be a source of hope. And same thing with the future. When I think about the future, it is by looking at the darkness that I actually find my way to the most hope. Because I can see that we are headed toward a time that will be like many of the most consequential times we've studied. Studied the times that generate the heroes that we name buildings after and write about in history books and look up to are not good times. Nobody ever became an inspiring historical figure by just kind of doing their thing during a period of stability and calm and consensus and kindness. It is precisely in moments like this that Moore is calling called for from us. And the more gets burned down around us in this awful period that we're living through right now during the Trump administration, the more we have to get to build things that will stand for the next century. And the sooner we orient ourselves around what that would look like, I think the sooner we can bring that about. In other words, all of us must recognize that at some point, sooner or later, one day, Donald Trump will not be active in American politics. And the sooner we spend our energy thinking about what to do next, I actually think the sooner that day will come.

[David Leonhardt]

Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much.

[Pete Buttigieg]

Thank you.

[Podcast Narrator]

If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur Bishaka, Darba, Christina Samuluski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Allison Bruzick. Engineering, mixing and original music by Isaac Jones. So sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Aman Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.