South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is in Des Moines, Iowa, speaking today to liberal advocacy group Progress Iowa Corn Feed about his “Hitting Home” project. Buttigieg was elected Mayor of South Bend, Indiana in 2011, the year that
Newsweek named South Bend as one of “ten dying cities in America.” Buttigieg is the youngest Mayor ever elected in a U.S. city of over 100,000 residents. He is also the first openly gay executive in the history of the State of Indiana. He has a lot to say.
Politico:
Every day he is in office, Donald Trump yanks out threads from the very fabric of what it means to be an American. He says, “You don’t belong here,” and he pulls out a thread. He says, “You can’t serve your country,” and he pulls out a thread. He says, “Your hatred is justified,” and he pulls out a thread. One thread at a time, he is unravelling our republic. And he’ll keep pulling until the American dream is a tangled mess of yarn in his hands.
What’s important is that Buttigieg is not here to complain. He has a solution and he speaks directly to Democrats, about what the party’s message is and should be:
Our party is never going to recapture the faith and imagination of the American people if all we have to offer is a litany of this president’s many sins.
Here’s our message: We support and protect people going about their everyday lives.
This has been Democratic bedrock ever since FDR saved the nation and the free world. Freedom. Freedom from want, freedom from fear is our guiding purpose. And that’s very different from what our Republican friends think. They use the word “freedom” all the time. But freedom from government is the only freedom they can imagine. [...]
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Conservative talk sounds good on TV but when you play it out in real life it stops making any sense. Which is why we need to get back to talking about real life again. One reason good things can happen at the local level is that there are no alternative facts when it comes to peoples’ everyday experiences. People know whether I’ve filled a hole in the road or picked up the trash. We need to bring that same clarity back to state and national politics. That’s why I’ve launched a new political project. It’s called “Hitting Home.” Our purpose is to move the center of gravity of American politics back to the kitchen table. Back to real lives that are shaped by policies, good and bad.
Then Buttigieg really starts hitting home:
There is nothing theoretical about politics to me. I’ve looked into the eyes of an eight year old American boy who lost his father to deportation and tried to tell him things were going to be okay. I’ve called 911 for a young man on a front lawn having an overdose, and rolled him over so he wouldn’t choke to death. I’ve stood in a basement flooded by extreme rainfall hitting South Bend in just the way scientists have warned us about for decades. And I’ve carried a weapon in a foreign land on the orders of an American president.
See, when Donald Trump and his sons were working on Season 7 of Celebrity Apprentice, I was driving and guarding convoys outside the wire in Afghanistan. I had a lot of different responsibilities but the job that mattered most was to make sure the men and women in my vehicle got where they were going alive. And when they got in my vehicle, they didn’t care if I was a Democrat or a Republican. They cared about whether I had selected the route with the fewest IED
And when they got in my vehicle, they didn’t care if I was a Democrat or a Republican. They cared about whether I had selected the route with the fewest IED [improved explosive device] threats, not where my father immigrated from and whether he was documented or undocumented. They cared about whether my M-4 was locked and loaded and whether I knew how to use it, not whether I was going home to a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
He concludes with this:
We’ll stand up to Congressman who draw the maps so they get to pick their voters instead of the other way around...we’ll stand up to a president who cheapens the most respected office in our land with the heart of a miser, the mind of a cheater, and the soul of a schoolyard bully.
Buttigieg is a breath of fresh air. Instead of the politics of despair and divisiveness coming out of Washington, Buttigieg’s common sense, common man approach is exactly what we need. He said, “so much of what has to happen — so much of what has to change, starts right here in the middle of the country. So much of the next chapter in the American story will be written in the places where you and I come from.” Here’s hoping for “Hitting Home” to be a success and for Buttigieg’s message to spread.